The evidence for this is laid out in their own published research.  

Since we are continually being told be evolutionists since the time of Darwin that humans have a common descent with simians, what was the earliest supposed common ancestor thought to have been for men and apes, when did this first missing link appear and where was it supposed to have lived? 

The first link in the evolutionists' story of man's primate history are the insectivores, from which the prosimians, the early or "lower" primates, supposedly branched off from. The Insectivora, or those animals that eat insects, are little, squirrel-like mammals, similar to tree shrews, and sometimes the tree shrew is classified with them, but usually the shrew is placed with hedgehogs and moles, in the Order Rodentia. Evolutionists claim that men and apes descended from them.

Let us look at the evidence, if any, that has been discovered to substantiate these claims.

The insectivores supposedly thrived about 60 million years ago. The oldest known missing link is a creature named Purgatorius. He is accurately described in exquisite detail by the authors of Physical Anthropology:
 "The earliest primate comes from Cretaceous times which was before the beginning of the Cenozoic. A single tooth is known from the fossil beds of Montana. . . Although much can be learned from a single tooth, it would be a little bold to draw major conclusions on the basis of such evidence . . . It's exact position in the story of primate evolution remains unknown. . . . From the meager evidence of a single tooth we progress to the abundant prosimian fossils of the Paleocene and the Eocene." ⁽¹¹⁾

We may look forward someday to some ambitious historian with a minor in paleoanthropology  writing a best selling novel about the fascinating history of The Clan of the Purgatorious. Time will tell.

Howells gives us valuable insight into the evolutionary pedigree of the insectivores. Bear in mind, this was written by one of the most respected anthropologists of the twentieth century, a noted Harvard professor, distinguished for scientific integrity and careful examination of the facts before making a statement in print. He wrote: "There is no difficulty in showing in full detail, that a primitive insectivore is a hairy, four footed, air-breathing, warm blooded, live-bearing, tree-going fish." ⁽¹²⁾

That's quite a statement indeed.

In Physical Anthropology the authors state: "As yet there is no direct evidence of what the very earliest primates were like, but it is reasonable to speculate that they broadly resembled the tree shrew . . . it is still the best living approximation of the small proto-primate from which all primates, including man, probably descended." Howells wrote in his study of the Arboreal Theory: "The one order which has changed least of all, and in truth represents the first mammals in living form is that of the insectivores . . . Furthermore, there are other families among the Insectivores and even genera, which can, without difficulty, contain side by side fossils from the Mesozoic and living species of today." ⁽¹³⁾

Thus the tree shrew has remained unchanged except for some minor variations in size, with no sign of evolution throughout millions of years in the evolutionist's scrapbook.

Further on the authors of Physical Anthropology write: "Although most texts discussing primate origins touch on the question of basal transition from or origins within the insectivores, there appears to be almost no actual fossil material that convincingly documents such a transition. The lengthy debate on primate origins appears to have its roots in hypothetical considerations (speculation). ⁽¹⁴⁾

Thus the insectivore theory is simply a piece of imagination, the drawings and stories in our textbooks that are supposed to document this evolutionary progress from insectivorous tree shrew to primate is made up, absolute fiction. Howells confirms this as well. He wrote: "The first and worst gap is here (58 million years to sixty million years ago, supposedly) from this insectivore to a small and generalized monkey, which nevertheless has a good brain, stereoscopic vision, and a marvelous grasping hand: a gap which is spanned not by history but by the somewhat romantic Arboreal Theory." ⁽¹⁵⁾

Howells plainly stated here that there is no historical or fossil evidence for the insectivore theory of man's origin at all- the entire story is pure fantasy!

This does not in the least bit deter Howells from continuing on to discuss the Arborial theory, so let us move along with him to look at the next link in our diminishing chain of descent.

The insectivores were supposed to have given rise to the prosimians, the "early primates." The prosimians consist mainly of tarsiers, lemurs, and loris. They thrived during the later part of the Paleocene and Eocene eras, a period from about 35 million to 60 million years ago on the evolutionists clock. It is thought that after the prosimians evolved from these shrew-like creatures they later somehow evolved into the higher primates; the monkeys, apes, and men. This theory is known as the Arboreal Theory, since most of the prosimians lived in trees and it is speculated that they developed the opposable thumb that all primates have in common from grasping on to tree branches. Darwin propounded the Arborial Theory as the route that led to the development of mankind in his Descent of Man: "We thus learn that man is descended from a hairy, tailed quadruped, probably arboreal in its habits . . ."⁽¹⁶⁾

How different were these fossil lemurs and tarsiers from their modern counterparts? Geoffrey H. Bourne wrote: "There are something like 25 species of lemurs now living in Madagascar. Some of them have changed so little in the 50,000,000 or 60,000,000 years that they have been isolated there that they are like living fossils." ⁽¹⁷⁾

Bourne says much the same about the tarsiers: "Tarsius has thus survived millions of years on this earth with very little change and has thus been described as a living fossil."⁽¹⁸⁾

Thus since they first appeared in the fossil record there has been no evidence of their evolution.

Elwyn L. Simons of Duke University was probably the worlds most respected authority on this time period. He wrote on the prosimians in Scientific American, July, 1964, in his article The Early Relatives of Man. He described these creatures as nearly identical to modern day lemurs, loris, and tarsiers, and groups them into eight families inhabiting the Northern Hemisphere during the Paleocene and Eocene eras. Three species of prosimians had long front teeth much like mice and rabbits, and used them for chewing and gnawing. Simons tells us that they all became extinct before the middle of the Eocene, roughly 40 million years ago and couldn't have been ancestors of men.

One of these families, the Plesiadapis, was the only genus of primate order besides man that lived in both the Old and New world. According to Simons it was a creature that "varied in size from about the size of a squirrel to the size of a housecat. In life they probably looked as much like rodents as they did like primates . . . It had limbs much like living lemurs of Madagascar. All that we have here is something very much like a rodent, and in fact Simons wrote that "some workers have suggested that the order of rodents may be descended from animals not very different from it."

He concluded, ⁽¹⁹⁾ "Plesiadapis is clearly too specialized a primate to be the ancestor of later prosimians. This sterile offshoot of the family tree is significant to primate history on other grounds."

Scratch Plesiadapis off of the line up for possible human ancestors.

Simons wanders through the remaining five prosimian families of the Middle Eocene, Notharctus, Smilodectes, Protoadapis, Adapis, and Necrolemur. Of the first three, Simons said it was unlikely that they were ancestral to living Lemurs. Of the latter two he wrote: "None of these possible Old World precursors of living lemurs is sufficiently represented by fossils to provide the kind of detailed skeletal information we possess for their New World contemporaries." They were dead ends. Lastly he wrote of Necrolemur: "it is probably not ancestral to any living prosimian." ⁽²⁰⁾

Thus, according to Simons, none of these prosimians scampering through the texts on paleontology and anthropology ever made it in the evolutionists ball game, however they are still referred to as our ancestors with confident bravado in books and documentaries that deal with the subject. How come? Evolutionists simply don't have anything better.

In Physical Anthropology the authors detail the changes that evolution has brought about between the ancient lemurs of the Eocene and those of today: "In general, these extinct forms were larger than those living today."

That's all.

So there is no evidence of any type of evolution having occurred among these creatures, the ancient lemurs and tarsiurs were virtually identical to their modern counterparts. The authors then expound on the wonderfully exact system of cataloguing and defining various species of lemurs:

". . . the great similarity between the fossil lorises from the African continent and the fossil lemurs from the island of Madagascar should be noted . . . The name Necrolemur is one of the many confusing designations that often are applied to both living and fossil taxa . . . The appearance of more than one name for a species in the literature has led to much confusion." ⁽²¹⁾

In other words, it's a regular zoo. Howells sums up the evidence for man even descending from arboreal  prosimians in the first place: "It follows from this, according to Le Gros Clark and Wood Jones, that man and the higher primates never passed through a lemur stage but developed independently out of another, if similar (and unknown), line of insectivores . . . The development of the higher Primates is much of a mystery because there are no early or primitive fossils of the Anthropoidea...What we need, for an ideal ancestor, is a generalized, non-hopping Tarsius, a creature which is as yet only a figment of paleontological wishfulness." ⁽²²⁾

After Howells decimates the Arboreal theory he still continues to discuss it.
Oh well, why not? He proceeded: "Although this creature has not been discovered, and although we do not know the exact causes of primate evolution [sound convincing?], nevertheless Wood Jones and others (including the late Sir Grafton Elliot Smith) have brilliantly speculated how such an animal might have been impelled to evolve into the form of the higher Primates by life in the trees . . . For this arboreal history of man let us imagine that changing human ancestor who has come up from the fishes to be the first mammal . . . According to the arboreal theory his evolution now proceeds as follows" ⁽²³⁾

Howells mentions the opposable thumb, the differentiation of the limbs, the emancipation of the forelimb, and the affect of the upright position on the senses in this "imaginary"scene, and then sums up the real evidence for the Arboreal Theory: "The philosophical jay-walking in the theory has brought down upon it the scorn of Hooton (among many), who accuses Wood Jones of having created a 'Just-So Story" of primate evolution . . . The arboreal theory, at least in it's soundest portions, is the best thing we have with which to fill a yawning gap in primate history . . . There are missing links aplenty in the ancestry of man . . . This is why the paleontologists appease themselves with a rigged-up, unspecified Tarsius for an original ancestor; and even if we accept this we still have to use the arboreal theory as a cockhorse on which to ride the rest of the way up to meet the monkeys and the apes." ⁽²⁴⁾

Absolutely amazing. One thing I have to admire about Howells, unlike some of the other authors on anthropology, just like some school boy caught in a tall tale, he "'fesses up" with a big grin (Ah shucks guys, we was only fibbin' all along) and says so.

So the Arboreal theory of man's descent along with the apes from the prosimians has been declared to be a fairy tale by the most prominent paleontologists of the twentieth century. It would be nice if they admitted as much more often. So much for thirty million years of supposed evolution of the primates. No evidence up to this point for human evolution or any evolution.

After having traversed quite a few million years, from Cambrian depths to tropical forest tree tops, we still have not found the elusive missing link yet! As we say good-bye to our prosimian friends swinging from the treetops somewhere back in the Eocene with that final, poignant quote from Howells to kind of wrap it all up, Simons of Duke University continues on undaunted and writes: "The evolutionary progress made by prosimians during the Eocene, both in North America and in Europe is obvious. Yet not a single fossil primate of the Eocene epoch from either continent appears to be an acceptable ancestor for the great infra order of the catarhines, embracing all the living higher Old World primates, man included. One cannot help wondering what developments may have been taking place in Africa and Asia during the Eocene's span of more than 22 million years. In both regions the record is almost mute...From the Eocene of Africa there are not only no primates but also no small mammals of any kind."⁽²⁵⁾

Next we enter the eleven million year span of the Oligocene, by the evolutionists time frame roughly 35 million to 25 million years ago, and here we shall move on empty handed to the true primates: the hominoidae. Simons wrote of the first appearance of primate fossils: "Not until the close of the Eocene do some puzzling fossil fragments from Burma offer a hint of what must have been a major, even though still undocumented evolutionary development in the Old World Tropics. This development can be postulated [guessed at] with confidence, in spite of a paucity of evidence [no evidence] because early in the following epoch-the Oligocene-fossil Anthropoidea appear in substantial numbers and varieties . . . It is highly improbable that these Oligocene primates could have evolved, in terms of geologic time, almost overnight." ⁽²⁶⁾

This puts us back where we were with Darwin again, the only evidence is assumed evidence, taking for granted that evolution occurred without any facts to back it up at all! This is a win-win situation for evolutionists. If they had any evidence for evolution, they could say, " See, we have evidence for evolution, therefore it occurred." But since they have no evidence for evolution, they still say, "See, we have no evidence for evolution, therefore it occurred." It's rather like a con-man with a two headed coin, heads he wins, tails you lose, whichever side comes up he wins the bet. Incredible but true.

Simons further wrote of this period: "Throughout the entire 11-million year span of the Oligocene the fossil fauna of Europe does not include a single primate." That's pretty significant. What they do find are some possible primate fossils in the Fayum in Egypt, a desolate place near a small, almost uninhabitable lake shore southwest of Cairo. In 1961 a partial fragment of a lower jaw was discovered there, and from this fragment of a lower jaw they were able to establish an entirely new genus of primate, Oligopithecus. ⁽²⁷⁾

Simons informs us that until a recent Yale expedition "the primate inventory from the Fayum totaled seven pieces of fossilized bone: one skull fragment . . . one heel bone, three fragmentary portions of jawbone and two nearly complete lower jaws" and yet from these meager fragments Simons tells us " . . .these seven fossils represent at least four distinct genera and species of Oligocene primates."⁽²⁸⁾

We should balance this viewpoint with a comment from John Pfeiffer, anthropologist at Rutgers  University, on the announcement of an ape find by Louis Leakey near Fort Ternan, Africa in 1961: "The announcement proved of special interest to Elwyn Simons, whose digging in the Fayum region of Egypt is only part of a long and continuing investigation of primate evolution. He had spent considerable time studying hundreds of fossils from sites throughout the world in an effort to avoid the bad habit which affects paleontologists as well as others-overestimating the importance of one's own work . . .paleontologists often make too much of their finds. The tendency is to interpret small differences in tooth size and other factors, differences that fall within the normal range of individual variation, as signs of a new genus or at least a new species. In an extreme case, North American grizzly bears, now recognized as members of a single species which also includes Old World varieties, were once divided into more than twenty species."⁽²⁹⁾

One find from this area that they pinned high hopes on for awhile was Aegyptopithecus. Elwin Simons said that Aegyptopithecus was, 'the oldest creature we know that is in the direct ancestry of man.' National Geographic described it as "superficially resembling a cat . . ."⁽³⁰⁾

It would seem that a second opinion might come in handy when dealing in paleological fossil finds. Another description of it comes from Simon's colleague, David Pilbeam. In a conversation with author Michael Brown, he said, "The thing about Aegyptopithecus is that it's so primitive that it's unrealistic to refer to it as having many resemblances to living things whether monkeys or apes . . . Its just a very generalized primitive animal."⁽³¹⁾

Nothing unique about it at all.

Unfortunately for those evolutionists who were at first excited about the possibilities of Aegyptopithecus position in man's family tree, he is classified within the Family of Pliopithecidae, which were nearly identical anatomically, as far as can be determined, to modern gibbons, except in size, and they are considered the ancestors of gibbons.

To further disqualify Aegyptopithecus, Simons' apparently changed his mind since the National Geographic article and contradicted himself later on, for we find that Michael Brown wrote a few years afterward:"Although he [Simons] doesn't himself subscribe to the theory of Aegyptopithecus being ancestral to all higher primates . . ."⁽³²⁾

Still no common ancestor. After the Oligocene, we arrive at the Miocene, the period extending from 25 million years to five million years ago. This is where the evolutionary waters get a little bit murky, where we find the so-called "ape-men"showing up.

Michael Brown described this period in hominoid history quite well:
"So what we have here is a tangled and unresolved notion of the ape picture."⁽³³⁾

There is a plethora of exotic names for the fossil finds of those primate creatures who lived during the Miocene period. The star player in this drama being Dryopithecus,discovered by Edouard Lartet in 1856 in France, with best supporting fossil awards going to Sivapithecus, discovered by Guy Pilgrim in 1910 in the Siwalik hills north of New Delhi, India; Proconsul, discovered originally by H.L. Gordon in 1927 in Kenya; Ramapithecus, discovered in India by G. Lewis in 1932; and Kenyapithecus, discovered by Louis Leakey in Kenya in 1962.

Darwin even wrote of Dryopithecus in his Descent. Like Oligopithecus, all that had been found of the unfortunate fellow was a lower jaw. Still, his discovery caused quite a sensation, and from this meager evidence William Howells had written glowingly that Dryopithecus "is a real 'missing link' in one of the customary senses of the term." ⁽³⁴⁾

How much of this 'missing link' did they actually have besides a jaw? Howells wrote: "Furthermore, a possible arm and leg bone of Dryopithecus have been found. . . Unfortunately, we actually know nothing else about his body form, having only fragments of jaws to accompany the teeth."⁽³⁵⁾

Elwyn Simons gives us some insight on what they had deduced from this evidence on Dryopithecus: "As long ago as the 1920's William K. Gregory of the American Museum of Natural History, after studying the limited number of jaw fragments and teeth then available, flatly pronounced man to be 'a late Tertiary offshoot of the Dryopithecus-Sivapithecusgroup, or at least of apes that closely resembled those genera in the construction of jaw and dentition."

Simons further stated, "Because the fossil inventory for Dryopithecus consists mainly of individual teeth and teeth in incomplete jawbones, the reader will find useful some additional facts about primate dentition." ⁽³⁶⁾

Teeth seem to hold a significant place for paleontologists in their schemes of classification of mans supposed ancestors. Simons further wrote in Scientific American, Ramapithecus, May, 1977: "The first Dryopithecus fossils from France consisted of three partial lower jaws, one of which had retained all but one of its teeth. No upper jaws were found, and most other fossils of Dryopithecus found consisted only of isolated teeth."

So dentition is pretty important in the study of primate fossils. From just a few teeth and jawbones we can construct an entire species of apelike creatures. We get more again on the importance of teeth in primate taxonomy from Howells, where he tells of the discovery of Paranthropus (another ape that lived in the Pliocene and will be discussed later) by Broom in South Africa in 1938. A South African school-boy had found some fossil teeth which Robert Broom immediately pronounced belonged to Paranthropus, a new "missing link." Broom, who had already been looking for evidence of a "missing link", proclaimed that he had " four of what are perhaps the most valuable teeth in the world in his trouser pocket."⁽³⁷⁾

Couldn't do much with those old fossils without the teeth. In fact, Howells said concerning most of these ancient apes: "It is unfortunately true that all of this knowledge is based on teeth alone, since no other parts of the skeleton have been found. However, the fact remains that teeth are the most reliable single indicator of relationship...". ⁽³⁸⁾

This is indeed unfortunate, for later Howells went on to write: "Now a great legend has grown up to plague both paleontologists and anthropologists. It is that one of these wondrous men can take a tooth or a small broken piece of bone, gaze at it, and pass his hand over his forehead once or twice, and then take a sheet of paper and draw a picture of what the whole animal looked like as it tramped the Tertiary terrain. If this were true, the anthropologists would make the F.B.I look like a bunch of Boy Scouts . . . But it is not quite true . . . A tooth, all by itself, may speak volumes,but only about teeth." ⁽³⁹⁾

One can't help but wonder how other evolutionists felt when Howells would just open up like that, out front and honest, and reveal what they really knew on the subject, but it is refreshing to hear one from their own ranks admit to it.

Simons said that the situation had not improved much since for fossil apes: "Until recently students of primate evolution have had little more evidence to work with than Gregory and his contemporaries did. Within the past 15 years, however, a number of significant new finds have been made-some of them in existing fossil collections . . .Many such specimens have become available in recent years, but they do not lie in the exact line of man's ancestry."

He gave us some insight on the science of categorizing primate fossils: "The grammar of primate taxonomy is not this simple. Two factors are responsible. First, there is no agreement as to how the order of primates should be subdivided." ⁽⁴⁰⁾

So much for primate classification being anything at all like an exact science. Simons continued: "Since that time many other fossil fragments of Dryopithecus-but no complete skulls or skeletons-have been found in strata of Miocene and even in Pliocene age in Europe."

Recently, (circa January 11, 1996, Associated Press) the first complete skeleton of a Dryopithecus has been found. Scientists concluded that it walked in a semi-erect position like today's apes often do, and we shall see that Dryopithecus was simply an ape all along.

No really startling finds of man's ancestors as yet. Let us research Dryopithecus just a little bit more though, since these are respected men of science, and we need to give them the benefit of a doubt. Simons further stated: style="FONT-SIZE: 13pt">"In spite of this variety in size, all these species [Dryopithecus] are assigned to the single genus Proconsul.. ." ⁽⁴¹⁾

Then, after classifying Dryopithecus within the genus Proconsul, Simons  clarified the situation by classifying Proconsul within the genus Dryopithecus,  when he wrote that nothing more was found of Dryopithecus until Leakey found more Proconsul remains at Lake Victoria in 1948. "These ape remains included parts of jaws that ranged in size from those of living gibbons (the smallest of today's apes) to those of living gorillas . . . These fossil African apes were assigned to the genus Proconsul . . . Studies in recent years lead to the conclusion that Proconsul is not a unique genus but an African member of the cosmopolitan genus Dryopithecus."⁽⁴²⁾

So Proconsul was merely an ape, and was not uniquely different from Dryopithecus, thus Dryopithecus was only an ape as well, not an ape-man.

Simons further describes these fossil apes as close to the ancestry of living chimpanzees:

"The picture that emerges . . . is that of an advanced catarrhine, showing some monkey like traits of hand, skull, and brain. . . including an incipient ability to swing by the arms from tree branch to tree branch . . ."⁽⁴³⁾

These were definitely apes, nothing more, and of the tree swinging variety it seems.

They didn't have much to work with when attempting to identify some of these remains, and this led to more than a few mistakes. Michael Brown said that Proconsul was "an ape that was about the size of a baboon, with a cranial capacity of 167 cubic centimeters, which is half that of a chimpanzee's." ⁽⁴⁴⁾ He further wrote: ". . . one time crocodile thighbones were mistaken for Proconsul collarbones! I had the opportunity to hold Leakey's Proconsul skull in my hands during a visit to the National Museums of Kenya in 1988. The crushed skull is small enough to belong to a terrier dog."

Our next available candidate for human ancestor is Sivapithecus. It shouldn't come as much of a surprise to learn that the Sivapithecus genus and species was originally established by a single tooth, a lower right molar. Not only does this sound familiar, but Simons went on to write: "Recent examinations of Sivapithecus species suggests that they are not markedly different from Dryopithecus." ⁽⁴⁵⁾

So now we find that Sivapithecus and Dryopithecus a.k.a. Proconsul, were all virtually identical, and all only apes. After starting out with five little missing links we have fewer and fewer as we travel along the Miocene trail.

Wading into all of these "variation on an ape theme" scenarious, Simons tries again to clarify the situation for the benefit of the perplexed reader:
"However confused and confusing Dryopithecus taxonomy and evolutionary relations are at present . . . " ⁽⁴⁶⁾

I hope that helped.

The last two significant Miocene players are Kenyapithecus and Ramapithecus.

Kenyapithecus was discovered in 1962, in Southwest Kenya by Louis Leakey. Simons wrote: ". . . Kenyapithecus not only has an abundance of close anatomical links with Ramapithecus but also exhibits no pertinent differences."

Thus Kenyapithecus and Ramapithecus were virtually the same species. Now, let us assess our situation. From starting out with five species of Miocene apes originally, we have nicely consolidated them down to Dryopithecus and Ramapithecus, the latter discovered in 1932 by G. Lewis near the border of India and Pakistan. ⁽⁴⁷⁾

Simons had been absolutely ecstatic over the possibility that Ramapithecus was ancestral to man. In fact, by 1965 he very nearly staked his career on it. After all, there wasn't anything else left by that time that hadn't been pretty much discredited. What did we have of his remains? Parts of an upper and lower jawbone with some teeth were found, that's all, no post cranial bones or other parts of the skeleton were ever found. David Pilbeam wrote: "Taking first the upper jaws Lewis made a new species, Ramapithecus brevirostris, based on a single piece of bone with two molars, two premolars, the canine socket, an incisor root, and part of the socket for the central incisor."⁽⁴⁸⁾

Donald Johanson said of Ramapithecus: "Like many other apes of the Miocene, Ramapithecus was represented only by gnathic (tooth and jaw) parts." ⁽⁴⁹⁾

Thus all that we had were a few old teeth with which to classify an entire species with. At least these creatures must have brushed after every meal.

Based on this scanty evidence, Pilbeam has given us a remarkably detailed description of Ramapithecus habits, environment, and over all social life: "Ramapithecus was a very small form, no larger than a medium-sized dog, at 30 lbs. or so. As far as we can tell at present it was not a biped but an agile four-footed animal perhaps equally at home in the trees and on the ground. . . . I suspect that it climbed easily and frequently in the trees, slept, rested, played, socialized, fled there, even ate there. Yet it also utilized the ground, in woodland and at the forest edge, gathering tough and abrasive vegetable food, perhaps occasionally catching small prey. When on the ground it probably frequently moved, as do the smallest living apes, on two legs, especially when carrying objects. . . . I assume [the peculiarity of its teeth] was an adaption to a new and tougher kind of vegetarian diet. Ramapithecus probably used tools no more than does a chimpanzee." ⁽⁵⁰⁾

That's quite an evaluation based simply on parts of an upper and lower jaw-bone and less than five teeth. Pfeiffer along with others have also made much in suggesting that Ramapithecus was a genuine human ancestor. He wrote: "One of man's earliest-known ancestors consisted of a single species with the official title Ramapithecus punjabicus. . . Not many Ramapithecus specimens have been recovered so far, less than a dozen in all and (of these) only fragments and teeth. But that is enough to serve as the basis for a number of speculations." (Pfeiffer, The Emergence of Man, pp.43)

Before we find out the ultimate status of Ramapithecus, let us find out why all the fuss was being made  over him. There are three primary reasons why Ramapithecus was postulated as man's ancestor. First of all, the chaotic state of paleoanthropology demanded that some unequivocal candidate step forward and assume the role of human ancestor, and Simons, one of the most respected men of this century in that field had given him his strongest endorsement.

Second, Ramapithecus had small canine teeth, suggesting that he might have used his hands more than his teeth for defense and feeding. We have already found out about the reliability of teeth from Howells.

Third, it was speculated that since he had small teeth he might have walked upright. How this chain of reasoning developed is not clearly explained. Pfeiffer reveals what was known of Ramapithecus history: "Ramapithecus stands alone, isolated in time, a face or the shadows of a face seen in the distance. His successors, like his predecessors, are still elusive (unknown). Practically nothing is known about his development during the period between fourteen million and five million years ago, the biggest gap in the story of human evolution (perhaps he hadn't read up yet on Simons gaps when he wrote this, hang on though, we have larger gaps still to come) . . . So the ten million years after Ramapithecus are still an almost complete blank as far as hominid traces are concerned." ⁽⁵¹⁾

Here is indeed a typical evolutionary story, very much like the ones we have already seen. Absolutely nothing is known on Ramapithecus' origin, he has no ancestors in the fossil record, then he simply disappears again, with a ten million year gap in the fossil record afterwards and no indication that he left any descendants, with no sign of evolution occurring after his disappearance.

Robert D. Eckhardt wrote in Scientific American, January, 1972: "Fossil hominids such as Ramapithecus may well be ancestral to the hominid line in the sense that they were individual members of an evolving phyletic line from which the hominids later emerged. They themselves seem to have been apes, morphologically, ecologically, and behaviorally."

So Ramapithecus was only an extinct ape, not an ape-man, along with his indistinguishable African neighbor, Kenyapithecus. ⁽⁵²⁾ After all the speculation and assurances that Ramapithecus was the best evidence available for ape-human ancestry it was indeed "much ado about nothing." Not only were they merely apes, Eckhardt wrote that they were in no way ancestral to man, contrary to what he and Pfeiffer had just suggested:
 ⁽⁵³⁾"Amid the bewildering array of early fossil hominids, is there one whose morphology marks it as man's hominid ancestor? If the factor of genetic variability is considered, the answer appears to be no."

Furthermore, molecular biology has proven that he could not be in the ancestry of man either. Michael Brown wrote: ". . . According to Sarich and Wilson [experts in the field of biochronology], Ramapithecus could not possible have been an early Hominid-a direct ancestor of man . . . and so the beloved Ramapithecus was demoted by biochemistry back into being a simple ape instead of a man-ape of any kind." ⁽⁵⁴⁾

Pilbeam himself later changed his mind and decided that Ramapithecus was not an ancestor of man either.⁽⁵⁵⁾ Eckhardt has stated that there was only one hominid line evolving during the Miocene era of Ramapithecus, and that the difference in dentition between Ramapithecus and Dryopithecus was less than the variation among diverse chimps of the same species, so they were essentially the same animal.

Simons wrote: "Recent taxonomic investigations show that the species of the genus Proconsul, with their relative abundance of skeletal remains, should almost certainly be lumped together with the genus Dryopithecus.What such an assignment would mean, in effect, is that all these Miocene-Pliocene hominoids-not only Eurasion but African as well-belong to a single cosmopolitan genus. This might have been recognized 30 years ago except for a series of mischances [blunders]." ⁽⁵⁶⁾

It turned out that A. T. Hopwood of the British Museum of Natural History, the man who named Proconsul in 1933, used teeth from the wrong fossil specimen when comparing Dryopithecus to Proconsul in classifying it. This went undetected until 1963, when it was found that Hopwood had been using part of a Ramapithecus fossil by mistake.

Science writer Kenneth F. Weaver wrote of this entire epoch in National Geographic: "A gulf of mystery separates Aegyptopithecus at 33 million years and Australopithecus at four million. Candidates for intermediate ancestors that have been proposed at one time or another include two from Kenya known as Proconsul and Kenyapithecus; two from India, Pakistan, China, and Kenya called Ramapithecus and Sivapithecus; and two from Europe called Rudapithecus and Dryopithecus. These apelike creatures lived at various times between 8 and 20 million years ago."

"Despite much debate and speculation, none of these primates has been finally accepted as a human ancestor . . . the long geologic epoch known as the Miocene (24 million to 5 million years ago) will remain a largely veiled chapter in hominid evolution." ⁽⁵⁷⁾

Simons, one of the most respected men among paleontologists in the twentieth century, began writing his article on Dryopithecus with this confident pronouncement, "And a major event in the evolution of the primates was the appearance 12 million years ago of animals, distinct from their ape contemporaries, that apparently gave rise to man."

This is indeed significant that he would make such a statement, not because he proved his premise, but quite to the contrary, when we reach the conclusion of his article, his final sentence reads thus: "Pending additional discoveries it may be wiser not to insist that the transition from ape to man is now being documented from the fossil record, but this certainly seems to be a strong possibility."⁽⁵⁸⁾

We have seen that evolutionists begin with grandiose claims of near infallibility, but then when all is said and done they finally have to admit, if they are honest enough, that they have no real evidence, just like Darwin, but that it makes a nice story.

So we find out that all of these various hominoids of the Miocene era were simply one and the same species of ape, that there was no evidence of evolution having taken place among them, that they didn't lie in the ancestry of man, that there were huge gaps of millions of years between them and any other species of ape, and that they were merely apes, nothing of the "man-ape" fictional stories cooked up by idle paleontologists given to imaginative fancies. What we have is a fascinating example of Shakespear's phrase: "That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet."

As we take leave of our hairy little friends of the Miocene and enter the Pliocene era (roughly 4-5 million evolutionary years ago), with precious little time left in geologic terms for our unknown common ancestor to make his appearance, the next characters to show up on the scene are comprised mainly of the Australopithecines.

The Australopithecines have perhaps been more well renowned than just about any other fossil ape ever found. Rest in peace was not meant to include the lowly Australopithecines; their fossils have been dug up with shovel, spade, and in some cases unearthed by earth movers over the past seventy years by eager paleontologists plying their trade. Numerous research grants have gone into studying their possible relationship to human ancestry, volumes have been written on them in countless magazine articles; television reports on the "missing link" have been broadcast to multitudes, books are published on them, expeditions have been mounted by intrepid men and women who have trekked off into the African wilds to find our lost but not forgotten dearly beloved and departed supposed ancestral relatives.

As Weaver mentioned above, we have another gap of quite a few million years between Ramapithecus and Australopithecus. The Miocene era ended along with all of it's ape inhabitants about eight to ten million years ago, however the Pliocene era does not begin until about five million years ago. Simons writes: "The only evolutionary room available in the fossil record for such a postulated ancestral form is the period between the last appearance of Ramapithecus and the first appearance of Homo and Australopithecus. This is the period between four and eight million years ago, or exactly where there is now a large gap in the fossil record."

The fossil record sounds like an orthodontists dream: a few isolated, worn out teeth with plenty of gaps in between.

Of course Howells asks the question of the day: "Where are the fossils?"⁽⁵⁹⁾

Hmmm. Where indeed? Well, with that enigmatic question unanswered, let’s move on to find out more about our next contestant, Australopithecus.

Donald Johanson has given us a concise, scientific assessment of the discovery of the very first Australopithecus: "The Australopithecus mess actually started in 1924 . . . " ⁽⁶⁰⁾

This was the Taung child, discovered in 1924 by Raymond Dart in South Africa. He named it Australopithecus africanus, meaning "The Southern Ape of Africa." Most British scientists at the time did not consider it a hominid at all, but Dart was persistent and his Taung child outlasted most of its early critics. Skull representations of it show very little difference between it and a young gorilla skull. It is still brought out now and then and proclaimed by the media as the genuine "missing link" despite the fact that Sir Arthur Keith and Sir Grafton Elliot Smith, the leaders in the scientific establishment of that day ridiculed it as "just a somewhat beat-up chimpanzee." Controversy surrounds it to this day in paleontology circles.

The actual skullcap of the Taung child was never found, the skeleton was never found either. All that they had was part of the jaw, some teeth, some facial bones, and part of an endocranial cast formed by the accumulation of lime inside of the lost skull, the rest of it had been blasted to smithereens at the limestone quarry where the remains had been discovered. Dart at first thought it was merely the endocranial cast of a baboon. It was cemented into clay and sand, and it took him four years to chip the face loose.

The Taung child was estimated to be between three and six years old. Representations of it resemble the juvenile skull of a gorilla. It had a brain capacity of roughly 440 c.c., which is comparable to a young chimpanzee's brain size.

There are three main reasons why it has been proclaimed as a missing link:

First, the teeth are supposed to resemble human teeth, despite the fact that the teeth of young gorillas and chimpanzees can look quite a bit like human teeth. All gorillas and chimpanzees along with man have 32 teeth, comprised of incisors, canines, pre-molars and molars. There is a wide morphological variation found in the dental arcades of various apes, some of them are strikingly similar to those of humans. The teeth of any primate can be ground flat with excessive wear, which could occur if the food supply for some reason were reduced and the animals were forced to forage for hard shelled nuts and even the barks and branches of certain trees.

The second reason Taung was proclaimed a missing link was that later discoveries of Astralopithecines showed that the Foramen Magnum, the opening at the base of the skull through which the nerves from the spinal cord pass, was located near the bottom of the skull, similar to humans, indicating an upright posture and the possibility of bipedality, instead of having the opening near the back of the skull as found in most apes.

Of course this argument is useless, since it has already been stated that it was a juvenile creature. Juvenile gorillas and chimps have a Foramen Magnum located near the bottom of the skull much as humans do, but as the animal grows older the occipital condyle bones shift, while the Foramen Magnum gradually moves towards the back of the skull.

The third reason it has been proclaimed as a missing link was simply that, like Ramapithecus, there wasn't anything else available, all of it's original contemporaries were Nebraska Man, a pig; Piltdown man, a fraud; Java Man, disowned by it's discoverer and found to have been made up of parts of ape and human remains, while the evolutionists have still to figure out just what it was (see Foley's foggy reasoning above), etc. although some of these were not proven to be mistakes and forgeries until many years later, during which time the Taung child was ignored, proclaimed an ape skull by the best and brightest of the anthropological community. It has simply outlasted it's competition. We will go into the details on the importance of bipedality shortly.

Actually, there is a fourth reason for Taung's role in the Keystone-cop-like saga of man's evolution, which is human ambition. The fact was that Dart, like Dubois before him, despite what others have said about him, as well as his own disclaimer, had been obsessed with finding the "missing link" for years, that is what brought him from Australia to England to study under Smith, and then to South Africa. While he was teaching in Johannesburg he had sent out reports for anyone to bring him fossils that might prove useful in pursuing his theory that the missing link was in Africa. He already had negotiated with the quarry owner to bring back any fossils that he might find.

Michael Brown wrote of the Taung child as recently as 1990: "Taung was clearly more ape, with a brain only slightly bigger than a chimpanzee's. The nose was flat. The Jaw dominated the face. There was a gaping, thrusting mouth . . .Whatever anyone wanted to call the Taung child, it belonged in a zoo more than it belonged in a day-care center."⁽⁶¹⁾

Sir Grafton Elliot Smith, the reigning patriarch among paleontologists of that day wrote: "It is unfortunate that Dart has had no access to infant chimpanzees, gorillas or orangutans of an age corresponding to that of the Taung skull for had such material been available he would have realized that the posture of the head, the shape of the jaws, and many of the details of the nose, face and cranium on which he relies for proof of his contention that Australopithecus was nearly akin to man, were essentially identical with the conditions met in the infant gorilla and chimpanzee."

Although most of the scientific community disregarded Dart's Taung baby, he did have one persistent and ardent supporter. This was Robert Broom, a wandering Scottish physician and fossil connoisseur who traveled to South Africa to find evidence of man's evolution. Broom was something of a rascal, he was barred from the South Africa Museum fossil collection for suspicion of absconding off with fossils that did not belong to him and selling them to Museums in Great Britain and America. He began snooping around the limestone quarry at Sterkfontein, South Africa to garner additional support for Dart's Taung child.

At least he was in the right place. The quarrymen at the mine had found so many fossils there that they had a guidebook for Sunday tourists with the headline:

"COME TO STERKFONTEIN AND FIND THE MISSING LINK."

Not too surprisingly, after two weeks at Sterkfontein Broom had his "missing link." In 1936 he found the  first adult representative of Australopithecus. He arranged to purchase more fossils from the manager of the lime quarry. Through this contact he met the South African schoolboy whom Broom enthusiastically described as having "four of the most wonderful teeth ever seen in the world's history."
From additional fragments Broom pieced together a skull and named it Paranthropus robustus, later changed to Australopithecus robustus, the third Australopithecus to be discovered after Dart's Taung child.

The editors of Anthropology Today state that the Taung child and the rest of the Australopithecines were virtually identical to the apes that have already been discussed: "When taken together, all these specimens suggest that in dentition and facial structure Ramapithecus was a diminutive version of Australopithecus."⁽⁶²⁾

Kenneth F. Weaver has concluded that Broom's Australopithecus Robustus, along with another later "missing link" found by Louis and Mary Leakey in 1959, the famous Zinjanthropus boisei, known as Australopithecus boisei, were nothing more than extinct species that were never in the lineage of man in the first place: " . . .robustus is considered a ruggedly built, massive-jawed hominid. A similar form from East Africa is designated Australopithecus Boisei. Both may represent a single wide-ranging species. These two forms disappear from the fossil record, apparently as evolutionary dead ends; Although robustus' brain size might suggest that it was more advanced than africanus, this powerful creature is believed to be a dead end, an offshoot from the direct line of hominid ancestry. It seems to share this fate with an even more robust australopithecine known as boisei, which faded out perhaps a little later than robustus . . .Thus Zinj (Zinjanthropus) was probably a contemporary of robustus . . .He now bears the name Australopithecus boisei. Like robustus, boisei is believed to be a dead-end branch of the hominid line." ⁽⁶³⁾

This still has not kept evolutionist Jim Foley from listing Zinjanthropus and Robustus on his Website in the supposed pantheon of human evolution.

It would be difficult to place the Taung child and his Australopithecus cousins in man's ancestry by evolutionists standards anyhow. Recent evidence has shown that the Taung child existed less than 900,000 years ago, yet Mary Leakey reportedly found footprints that indicated the presence of modern, bipedal humans as old as 3.5 million years ago.⁽⁶⁴⁾ (These are the dates used by evolutionists, not necessarily those ascribed to by the author, J.M.F.)

Problem: Since 1924 a whole host of partial bones of Australopithecines, along with teeth, and a few skull fragments have been found in various parts of Africa, and these have all been postulated at one time or another as man's Pliocene ancestor. It would be a disservice to these humble creatures to simply dismiss everything that has been written concerning them down through the years without at least finding out what further paleological study has revealed, so lets investigate the matter a little bit more just to settle any remaining questions.

In the article, Tools and Human Evolution, in Scientific American, Sept.1960, Sherwood L. Washburn stated, "The primary evidence for the new view of human evolution is teeth, bones and tools." ⁽⁶⁵⁾

Out of the above three categories which one would you pick as the wrong answer for the most reliable evidence of human ancestors? Most people might think that bones and teeth would be the most important evidence, unless they had read what Howells said earlier about teeth, so let us look at bones and tools.

In the Scientific American article, Stone Tools and Human Behavior, April, 1969, Sally R. Binford and Lewis R. Binford write: "The main evidence for almost the entire span of human prehistory consists of stone tools."⁽⁶⁶⁾

In November, 1977, Lawrence H. Keeley wrote in Scientific American, The Function of Paleolithic Flint Tools: "Almost the only evidence of man's presence on the earth for a period of more than half a million years is vast numbers of stone tools." ⁽⁶⁷⁾

We should have the matter pretty well in hand now, stone tools are definitely the best evidence for information on our early ancestors.

We have one slight difficulty. When these articles were collected with others into book form under the title Human Ancestors in 1979, Richard Leakey stated in the Introduction to that volume: "One of the most serious limitations in our understanding of the long-term record of stone-tool making has been our almost complete ignorance of the usage to which the tools were put and of their role in adaption."

Even Washburn himself admitted: "Of course the association of the stone tools with man-ape bones in one or two localities does not prove that these animals made the tools."⁽⁶⁸⁾

Now we are lost somewhere in the middle of the Pliocene, searching for mans remote ancestor, and tools don't seem to be doing us any good. That's okay though, we still have bones and teeth . . .  well, bones anyway, to help us out.

Washburn covered all three categories in his article, so let us find out what significance bones have from him. He discusses the discoveries made at Olduvai Gorge in 1959 by the famous L.S.B. and Mary Leakey. These are more of the Australopithecines. There are two main varieties, known as Astralopithecus Robustus (already discussed) and the gracile Australopithecus Africanus, (or George and Gracile) meaning respectively the "robust" strong Astralopithecines and the gracile, smaller Astralopithecines. Concerning these, he wrote: "The man-apes themselves are known from several skulls and a large number of teeth and jaws, but only fragments of the rest of the skeleton have been preserved." ⁽⁶⁹⁾

Of the two kinds of ape, one weighed in at 50-60 pounds and the other at roughly twice that much, and Washburn wrote: "The differences in size and form between the two types are quite comparable to the differences between the contemporary pigmy chimpanzee and the common chimpanzee." Of their cranial capacity: "On the scale of brain size the man-apes are scarcely distinguishable from the living apes, although their brains may have been larger with respect to body size."

As the body sizes were comparable to the modern day chimpanzee and pigmy chimpanzee, and their skulls were about the same size, then perhaps they were apes. He further writes that "the skulls of the females and young of the apes look more like man-apes."⁽⁷⁰⁾

So the skulls of juvenile and female Australopithecine apes resemble so called "man-ape" skulls, in other words, the difference between apes and "man-apes" may only be the difference between sex and age characteristics among an extinct ape population.

Alan Walker and Richard F. Leakey write on the two types of Australopithecines that: "If among the species A. Robustus the morphological differences between males and females were as great as they are among gorillas, then the robust, crested specimens from East Turkana could be males and the more gracile specimens could be females." These two types of ape species might really be just the male and female of one single species.

Thus what had been supposed by some to be two distinct species were merely the variations due to sex and age characteristics. As for the accuracy of classification, they state that "we ourselves cannot agree on a generic assignment for KNM-ER 1470."⁽⁷¹⁾ 

One of the problems in any attempt at a cohesive study of the claims of paleontologists and their various schemes on how primates supposedly evolved into men is that the science of paleontology, if it can even be called a science, is in absolute chaos. Things couldn't be worse if we had a group of monkeys trying to date the ancestry of human beings. Dates are thrown around from 3 million years to 30 million years with little or no consensus as to what fossil belongs to which "ape-man"family, and as has been demonstrated, many paleontologists have a predilection to contradict what they have just stated, sometimes nearly in mid-sentence.

Perhaps this is where the phrase "blind dating" might be useful.

Stein and Rowe have this to say on primate classification: "Much of the confusion on interpretation of the fossil record is the result of the incorrect usage of scientific nomenclature . . . With each new find, a new debate begins over its placement in the evolutionary scheme . . . The discovery of a new fossil is a highly emotional experience, and a new find becomes more significant if it can be said to represent a new species rather than simply another specimen of an already known species." ⁽⁷²⁾

The prominent Paleontologist G.G. Simpson said: "It is notorious that hominid nomenclature, particularly, has become chaotic."

Page 308 of Physical Anthropology shows a series of six fossil skulls, differing quite a bit in appearance. The authors write: "Note the great amount of variation. How many species are represented here? In this case they are all modern gorillas. Yet a series of hominid skulls which shows as much variation or less would be broken up by a great many paleontologists into a number of distinct genera and species."

Concerning the accuracy of fossil taxonomy, they state, ⁽⁷³⁾"How can species be defined for the fossil record? First, it must be reiterated that all taxonomic categories, with the exception of the living species are arbitrary." In other words there is no coordinated scientific scheme, the paleontologists classify fossils without any systematic definitions apart from their own personal, subjective conjectures. Further on they write: ". . . The species concept cannot be legitimately applied to fossil forms."

This statement sort of trashes the entire science of anthropology altogether, but since we wouldn't want evolutionary paleontologists swelling the welfare rolls of our country, I suppose that any kind of a job for them would be better than general relief, even with the kinds of salaries that a University professor makes for teaching their brand of nonsense.

Stein and Rowe further say that the "fossil record is an incomplete history of evolutionary change." ⁽⁷⁴⁾This is one of the classic understatements of all time.

Homo habilis enjoyed a brief moment of evolutionary fame. He was discovered by Louis Leakey sometime around 1962 (his full report did not come out until 1964).

Talk. origins primate evolutionist specialist Jim Foley has devoted an entire Web page to Homo habilis. Many of them were found in the 1970's. Foley takes issue here with certain creationist positions on habilis, while demonstrating that the evolutionist position on habilis has flip-flopped so many times over the years that it has reached dizzying propensities. It is unfortunate that Foley wasted so much of his time in this research, for C. Loring Brace (not a creationist) stated in 1979:
"Homo habilis is an empty taxon inadequately proposed and should be formally sunk."⁽⁷⁵⁾  Foley even referred to Brace in his FAQ but ignored this quote.

Alan Walker and Richard Leakey wrote that Louis Leakey's naming of Homo habilis "was not accepted by other students of fossil man and has even caused heated argument." ⁽⁷⁶⁾

He is still used as an ancestor (more or less) of man in evolutionary textbooks.

Walker and Leakey write in Scientific American, August, 1978, on the problem of classification of Australopithecines in The Hominids of East Turkana: "If we ask further what fraction of the ancient population is represented by the relatively complete skulls in the collection, it may be smaller still; it is between a hundred-thousandth and a hundred-millionth of the total. The second figure is the equivalent of someone's selecting two individuals at random to represent the entire population of the U.S. today. It is on this small sample that our hypotheses concerning hominid evolution must be based . . . Again, do any or all of the species show signs of evolution during this interval of perhaps 1.5 million years or perhaps only 700,000 years (does this sound like accurate dating?) . . .The answer to this question is not an easy one. Conspiring against a clear cut response the smallness of the sample, the fragmentary conditions of the individual specimens, the fact that even among individuals of the same species a large degree of morphological variation is far from uncommon [as demonstrated by the above section on gorillas] and, under this same heading, the fact that a great deal of variation is often found between the two sexes of a single species. Also, not to be neglected is the fallibility of the analyst, who is prone to human preconceptions. For example, the very order of discovery of the East Turkana hominids has affected our hypotheses, and we have had to chop and change in order to keep abreast of later discoveries."⁽⁷⁷⁾

Of the three supposed species of Australopithecines they state: "At the same time we may have seriously misunderstood the quantity and quality of variation in any one of the three species."

One suggested reason for their confusion was the possibility that " . . . The three forms are only artifacts of our imagination..."

In fact C. Loring Brace and Milford H. Wolpoff of the University of Michigan believe that this is exactly the case. Another possibility they mention is that two of the three forms are actually only the male and females of one species, and the third possibility is that there are only two species with one of them having a high degree of variability. ⁽⁷⁸⁾

These are the people who are supposedly telling us how we arrived here on planet earth, they are carving out comfortable livings from taxpayer supported grants and research funds to spread their specious stories, and getting international prestige as "experts" when they can't even agree with each other on what they are writing about, yet they get by with ridiculing the religious faith of Christians who call their fantastic propositions into question.

Sometimes I ponder this possibility: Could ten anthropologists typing randomly at typewriters for 100 billion years eventually type out Darwin's Origin of Species? Well, statistically that could never happen, but I think that the science of anthropology could hardly be in a less chaotic condition now then whatever they might come up with before then.  

Bipedalityis one of the primary characteristics that supposedly marked Australopithecus as a postulated ancestor of man. Mary Leakey said, "One cannot overemphasize the role of bipedalism in Hominid development. It stands as perhaps the salient point that differentiates man from other primates." ⁽⁷⁹⁾

Richard Leakey said: "The attainment of bipedality and upright posture signifies a very major change in the way these animals made a living. And it is probably at that level that you would draw your generic distinction. I think the main distinction we should be looking for is the most fundamental, which is locomotion (upright walking)."⁽⁸⁰⁾

That was written before the National Geographic article of March, 1992, entitled Bonobo's: Chimpanzees with a Difference. ⁽⁸¹⁾Eugene Linden writes: "Bonobo's live in trees but they sometimes walk upright. This contradicts the conventional wisdom that upright posture began when hominids abandoned the forest and moved to the Savanna."

So we have bipedal chimps walking around in the African forest. The article, complete with pictures, documents the Bonobo's lives in the heart of Africa, as well as tool using chimpanzees who also live in "hunter gatherer" societies, two things once used to classify early humans. There is also documentation of baby-sitting among gorilla (and giraffe) communities, food-sharing, and mother chimpanzees teaching their young the correct methods and the right kind and size of rocks to use to crack nuts with, all qualities that were once used to differentiate between apes and the imaginary "ape-men."

Bipedalism has further been discredited as an important factor in defining hominids anyhow. In Anthropology Today the editors wrote: "Because there is no evidence from the Pliocene or earlier regarding the emergence of bipedalism among hominids, at present the definitions of hominidae that depend on the presence of these characteristics is unsatisfactory."(Anthro. Today, pp.166)

John Napier wrote: "The ischium of Australopithecus is longer than mans; this almost certainly kept the early hominid from striding in the manner of Homo sapiens. Instead the gait was a kind of dog-trot." ( The Antiquity of Human Walking, Sci. Am., April, 1967)

So even if Australopithecus did walk at times, it was not in the striding manner as modern humans. At least one distinguished anthropologist has flatly stated that Australopithecus is not at all ancestral to man. The noted Mary Leakey said in April of 1979 concerning both types of Astralopithecines: "But the two forms of Australopithecines, gracile and robust, represent in my opinion, evolutionary dead ends."⁽⁸²⁾ 

Finally we have "Lucy",  Australopithecus afarensis, (no relation to Ricky Ricardopithecus) discovered by Donald Johanson in 1974. He wrote a book named after her and "Lucy" was the star of a few documentary specials. It would be in keeping with scholastic thoroughness to consider statements made on Lucy by some of the leading paleoanthropologists of this century.

Ernst Mayr said of Lucy: "That was the most idiotic thing, it just shows that Johanson doesn't know what  it's all about. . . Africanus and Afarensis quite likely were geographic races of the same species." ⁽⁸³⁾

Richard Leakey said that Lucy's skull was so incomplete that nearly all of it was "imagination made of plaster of Paris."⁽⁸⁴⁾ Still, from this meager amount of evidence, Leakey was confident enough to proclaim: "Lucy may be considered a late Ramapithecus." ⁽⁸⁵⁾

C. Loring Brace stated: "To consider Lucy a Ramapithecus is laughable." ⁽⁸⁶⁾

Lord Solly Zuckerman, one of the most eminent anatomists of the twentieth century, pioneered a scientific application of metric measurements to fossils (this should have been accepted practice all along with paleontologists) instead of the often spectacular (and embarrassing) subjective judgements pronounced by field workers with no scientific tools at hand. It was Zuckerman's considered opinion that all classes of Australopithecines, from the Taung child all the way to Lucy, were nothing more than apes, virtually identical to the pigmy chimpanzee, known as the Bonobo. So Lucy wasn't so unique after all. Oxnard along with others have said the same thing, Australopithecines were simply apes that walked upright at times.

Predictably, Zuckerman's method of using exact scientific analysis in the fossil field hasn't won too many supporters among paleontologists. And why should it? Evolutionists are having more fun spinning their stories than a barrel of monkeys! Zuckerman wrote, with more than a touch of irony: "It is something of a record for an active team of research workers whose strength has seldom been below four, never to have produced an acceptable finding in 15 years of assiduous study."⁽⁸⁷⁾

Dr. Greg Kirby, Senior Lecturer in Population Biology at Flinders University said, "...I don't want to pour too much scorn on paleontologists, but if you were to spend your life picking up bones and finding little fragments of head and little fragments of jaw, there's a very strong desire there to exaggerate the importance of those fragments..." ⁽⁸⁸⁾

What of the ancestry of chimpanzees, gorillas, baboons, monkeys and orangutans? The present day apes just show up out of nowhere in the fossil record, sort of like Pliocene party crashers, fully formed, already distinct and popping bananas into their mouths, and man, of course, does not show up yet except as fully man, which will be shown.

When the old world monkeys and apes suddenly appeared, with no evidence for the evolution of either of them, Howells described the situation with the anthropoids: "Of these higher forms there are no early (Eocene) fossils . . When we find them in the Middle Tertiary they are already separated into the present three lines; the New World monkeys, the Old World monkeys, and the apes. Man, of course, is not yet distinct from the last of these."⁽⁸⁹⁾

What were the immediate ancestors of New world monkeys? Did they give rise to human beings? For the origin of monkeys in the New World, Howells wrote: "For the New World Monkeys there are no significant fossils. But the opinion of most people, though vague, is that these monkeys do not take a place in human ancestry, that the higher Primates of the Eastern and Western Hemispheres descended separately from the unidentified ancestor of all of them." ⁽⁹⁰⁾

So we have found that none of these early relatives of man were relatives at all. In fact, the Biblical story of Adam and Eve created in a perfect world in all it's primaeval grandeur is a much more fascinating (and scientific) story than the fantastic claim that man descended from some rodent scurrying around dodging dinosaur feet. Based on recent biochemical analysis of the mitochondrial DNA in human cells and calculations of population genetics, scientists have discovered that all modern humans come from one single female, and they have called her "Eve." (The Search For Eve, By Brown, 1990).

We have traveled now through millions of evolutionary years in our search for human ancestors and have found no evidence of any genuine transitional links between man and any lower animal.

With no ape men having shown up at all, we are now about to enter the final era, the Pleistocene, encompassing roughly the last million years, where evolutionists are still furtively searching for some lost clue to support their theory, as we shall proceed to find out the true story of ancient man in the next issue of The Darwin Papers.

1. Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man,Chapter Six, On the Affinities and Genealogy of Man:Rank of Man in the Natural System, Sixth Edition, edited under Encyclopedia Britannica, Great Books of the Western World, Vol.49, Darwin, William Benton Publishers, 1952, pp.335-336. Darwin further stated this belief on pp.337, "We have seen that man appears to have diverged from the catarhine [African and far eastern monkeys] or Old World division of the Simiadae [monkeys and apes], after these had diverged from the New World division."

It will be demonstrated throughout this entire chapter that there is absolutely no evidence at all for this supposition. Darwin also refers to man's descent from monkeys on pp.586-588, as well as pp.591, under his General Summary and Conclusions, " . . . We thus learn that man is descended from a hairy tailed quadruped . . .amongst the Qradrumana, as surely as the still more ancient progenitor of the Old and New World monkeys . . ." pp.591.

Before Darwin was even born, Jean-Babtiste Pierre de Lamarck told virtually the identical theory that Darwin was credited with, repeated by the present day evolutionary myth-makers. Lamarck wrote: "If some race of quadrumanous animals (apes and monkeys), especially one of the most perfect of them, were to lose by force of circumstances the habit of climbing trees and grasping the branches with its feet in the same way as with its hands . . .and if the individuals of this race were forced for a series of generations to use their feet only for walking and to give up using their hands like feet, there is no doubt . . . that these quadrumanous animals would at length by transformed into bimanous (bipedal) animals. .obtaining mastery over others through the higher perfection of its faculties (intelligence)."

This is the classic evolutionary story, expressed years before Darwin's time, and repeated today, almost verbatim, by modern evolutionists. Nothing new has been added since Lamarck's time.

While it is true that in many fields of study we do use certain built in axioms to establish a field of evidence, and from there we develop postulates and hence theorems, it is not scientifically honest to use the conclusion as the basis for the conclusion. For instance, it would not be scientifically honest to use a theorem as the basis for the proof of that same theorem. The axioms that we begin with must also be applicable in a variety of theorems, and the science must be built from the ground up. In evolutionary theory, they have built their house beginning with the ceiling, then the walls, then the foundation, which they have still never actually established.

Evolutionists have used the conclusion that evolution has occurred as the basis for the proof of their conclusion that evolution has occurred.

To use an example, let us say that we have reached the conclusion that person A had murdered person B. Perhaps there were no eyewitnesses, as in the case for evolution occurring. Then what if we used the conclusion that person A had murdered person B as the basis of proof used to arrive at the conclusion!?

Well, this is precisely what evolutionists have done in their arguments, and they have the hubris to accuse creationists of using dishonest tactics. And then they have constructed all types of scenarios to justify their conclusions.

Again, to resort back to our analogy, we could say that since person B, Mr. Jones, was shot at from close range, then person A, Mr. Smith, must have been standing in the same room using a small caliber weapon. Since Mr. Jones was shot in the back, then Mr. Smith must have been standing behind Mr. Jones when it happened. Since the television was left on and there were two half filled cups left near two recliner chairs with two plates of unfinished food on them next to each chair, then we could conclude that Mr.Jones and Mr. Smith were having a meal together while watching television and had some sort of disagreement.

So! More evidence against Mr. Smith! We could go on in this manner accumulating all kinds of evidence for the death of Mr. Jones, all the while implicating Mr. Smith simply because we have concluded beforehand that it was he who did the murder, without looking for other suspects, and with no actual evidence that it was really Mr. Smith who was guilty of the crime!

Now we go to trial, and the prosecutor looks the jury in the eye and says, "Since Mr. Smith has murdered Mr. Jones, as we know because Mr. Jones was shot in the back so Mr. Smith must have been standing behind Mr. Jones when he committed the dastardly deed, you must certainly find him guilty!"

This is what evolutionists have done with their data. They have already concluded that evolution is an established fact, and then they have used that conclusion and worked it into the evidence for their proof.

However , let us go one step further, let us give the evolutionists the benefit of a doubt and bring in a forensic pathologist. Now, if he has fresh body, then we can look for fingerprint evidence on nearby clothing and personal articles. We can determine the cause of death, whether it was strangulation, gunshot, or poison. We can determine the date and time of death. We can tell what the general health of Mr. Jones had been up until his recent demise. We may even determine what he had recently to eat.

But let us push the time of death back say, six months to a year, and put the body somewhere out in the wilderness. All that we have left are some bones for forensic evidence. We are not sure how the person died. We have no evidence to help us determine whether the person was strangled, poisoned, shot or drowned.
Then the case is a little bit more difficult to solve.

So we look for relatives or friends of the deceased to find out a little bit more about them. But what if the death occurred twenty or thirty years ago? Then many of these people might have passed on as well, and the evidence to determine the cause of death is much harder to find. We might never find out who the dead person was in the first place. If the death occurred 100 years ago or more the mystery might forever remain unsolved.

Now, let us push the cause of death back five million years! What do we know of the person? Who were his relatives? How did he die? How did he live? Was he ancestral to man? Who would know?

And yet from this fragmentary evidence evolutionists have come up with an entire fantasy story that men descended from apes, and that we have a common ancestory with chimpanzees. And they have sold that story to the public through their propaganda organs, through the media, educational institutions, and museums. Evolution has been inculcated into us from the very start as the one and only possibility of human origins, so the facts must always agree with the predetermined conclusion. 

2. (ibid) pp.336

3. Darwin, Descent, Chapter Six: On the Birthplace and Antiquity of Man, pp.336-337, Benton Edition.

One problem with the evolutionary scenario is that evolutionists will take any common trait among humans and other primates and conclude that this is evidence of evolution. Apes scratch their heads. Humans do also!
Proof positive that humans and apes have a common ancestor! And since rats scratch and birds and reptiles and all other sorts of animals scratch, then we all must share a common ancestor.

And then we all have five digits on our appendages. So we must have a common ancestor. With this logic, since we all have two eyes and two ears then we must have a common ancestor. Since we all have skin then we must have a common ancestor. Since we all drink water and breathe air, then we all must have a common ancestor.

That must mean that lizards are more closely related to humans than at least one other species of mammal, guinea pigs, for guinea pigs only have three digits on their back paws, and four on their front. So guinea pigs would not have the same common ancestor that humans and reptiles do in evolutionist logic. Birds have three digits on their legs, or rear appendages (if wings are to be considered their front appendage), thus birds and guinea pigs share a closer common ancestor than guinea pigs and humans, using the five digit rule for common ancestry.

The problem with this type of logic, or illogic, is that it first assumes common ancestry for all animals as the basis for these similarities, and then uses that same assumption as the proof. This is like a dog chasing his tail. Design is written out of the picture from the get go before any of the evidence is gathered.
And as far as the actual evidence, what has been demonstrated is that the chain of infinitesimal missing links that Darwin claimed were absolutely necessary for his theory of evolution to be true have never been found. Species remain distinct, in living forms and in extinct fossil forms. The real evidence for evolution is missing. The genuine evidence, of the sudden appearance in the fossil record of different species, with no interconnecting links, suggests, in fact demonstrates that species were specially created; the real evidence points to a Creator, not descent from a common ancestor.
Genuine valid science, based on solid research, based on evidence instead of the wild speculation of the evolutionists, backs creationism. 

Then there is the example of learned behaviour. Tool making is a good example. Humans use tools. So do some groups of chimpanzees in order to crack nuts. Well, this certainly shows that chimpanzees can think, and even learn this behaviour from their parents. But learned behaviour does not necessarily mean there is an evolutionary tie between humans and apes. There are other species that demonstrate learned behaviour also. Lions have to learn to hunt from their parents. Birds have to be taught certain survival skills from their parents. Some birds have even learned to use tools themselves. Otters make wonderful nests and it is possible that the young learn some of these skills from their parents. It is not only primates that demonstrate learned behaviour, so this is no indication of common ancestry among humans and apes.
Apart from some simple tool making skills, do apes really demonstrate significant signs of intelligence in their natural state that sets them apart from other species of animals supposedly lower down on the evolutionary ladder than they are? Different species of rodents have a highly developed social structure. A wolf pack demonstrates remarkable cooperation during hunting and they often have a well developed social structure the equal of any ape group. Most of the time apes spend their time browsing around for food like other animals do in the wild. There is nothing that sets them apart in their behaviour significantly from any other animal group that would show them to have any close ties to humans in some scheme of common descent.

God has made different animal species and endowed each of them with a particular wisdom for their mode of life. He has endowed various mammals with varying degrees of intelligence, each according to their capacity to understand their surroundings, cooperate with each other, care for each other, plan (as in hunting expeditions and moving to a new area of the forest and choosing a good tree to make a nest in) and He has given them the capacity for emotion also. When my wife's pet rat comes up to her on the bed to kiss her face, this is no mere evolutionary survival skill. The rat is expressing gratitude and love for my wife, she feels like she is part of a "family", as do dogs and other pets.   

4. William K. Gregory, "Hesperopithecus Apparently Not an Ape nor a Man,"Science, Vol.66, No.1720, Dec. 16,1927.

5. See Joseph S. Weiner, The Piltdown Forgery, Oxford Press, 1955.

6. Donald Johanson, Lucy: the Beginnings of Mankind, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1981, pp.30.

7. William Howells, Mankind So Far, pp.165-166, 1949.

8. Anthropology Today, 1971, Communications Research Machines Inc., De. Mar, Ca. 92014.

9. Lewis R. and Sally R. Binford, Tools and Human Behavior, Scientific American, April, 1969.

10. Sherwood L. Washburn, Scientific American, September 1960, Tools and Human Evolution.

11. Philip L. Stein, Physical Anthropology (1982), pp.327.

12. Howells, Mankind, pp.107. Some may object that my references, particularly Howells, are somewhat dated. My answer is that all of my sources, Howells included, are from well after Darwin's day, and many of them are over 100 years after he wrote his infamous Origin, and at least 80 years after his Descent of Man After nearly a century and a half Darwin is still held up as the icon of evolutionary thought, and none of my references, besides my references to Darwin himself, are anywhere near that old. Also, even though the names of some of the specimens have changed over the years and evolutionists are constantly revising their dates and throwing out old ancestors and coming up with new ones, some of the old standards, like aging movie stars, are still wheeled out and presented in textbooks and documentaries, even though most have been generally discredited over the years; in addition the general theory and arguments currently being promoted in evolutionary biology texts and in museums around the world are the same as they were in Darwin's time; i.e. variation can lead to transformation of one species into another (fish turning into frogs turning into reptiles turning into warm, furry mammals turning into people), so the "facts" (this word must be read with a qualifier: there are no facts, only pseudo-facts used by evolutionists to keep up the charade of evolution) haven't changed much over the years. Also, Howells was practically the dean of twentieth century anthropologists, and his opinions still carry weight.

13. Howells, Mankind, pp.82-83.

14. Philip L. Stein, Physical Anthropology, pp.149-152.

15. Howells, Mankind, pp.107.

16. Darwin, Great Books of the Western World (G.B.O.W.W.), pp.591.

17. Bourne, Geoffrey H., Primate Odyssey, G.P. Putnam's Sons, New York, 1974, pp.24.

18. (ibid) pp.60

19. Simons, Elwyn L., The Early Relatives of Man, Scientific American, July, 1964.

20. (ibid)

21. Stein, Philip L., Physical Anthropology, pp.329-330.

22. Howells, Mankind, pp.84-85.

23. Howells, Mankind, pp.85-86.

24. Howells, Mankind, pp.93-94.

25. Elwyn L. Simons, The Early Relatives of Man, Scientific American, July, 1964.

26. (ibid).

27. (ibid).

28. Simons, Early Relatives, (ibid).

29. John E. Pfeiffer, The Emergence of Man, Harper and Rowe Publishers, New York, Evanston, and London, 1969, pp.41

30. Simons, National Geographic, The Early Relatives of Man, November, 1985.

31. Michael Brown, The Search For Eve, Harper and Row, 1990

32. (Ibid)

33. (ibid), pp.123.

34. Howells, Mankind, pp. 98

35. (ibid), pp. 98-99.

36. Elwyn L. Simons, The Early Relatives of Man, Scientific American, July, 1964.

37. (ibid), pp.100

38. Howells, Mankind, pp. 98.

39. Howells, Mankind, pp.127-128.

40. Simons, Early Relatives, (1964).

41. (ibid)

42. Elwyn L. Simons, Ramapithecus, Scientific American, May 1977.

43. Simons, Early Relatives of Man, Sci. Am., 1964.

44. Brown, Michael, The Search For Eve, Harper and Rowe, 1990,

pp.326-327.

45. Simons, Early Relatives.

46. Simons, Early Relatives.

47. (ibid).

48. Pilbeam, The Evolution of Man, pp.101-102.

49. Donald Johanson and Maitland Edey, Lucy: The Beginnings Of Humankind, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1981, pp.362.

50. (ibid), pp.366-367.

51. John E. Pfeiffer, The Emergence of Man, Harper and Rowe, New York, 1969, pp.54.

52. Robert B. Eckhardt, Population Genetics and Human Origins, Scientific American, January, 1972, pp.101.

53. Robert B. Eckhardt, Pop. Gen., Sci. Am., 1972.

54. Michael Brown, The Search For Eve, pp.51

55. Roger Lewin, Bones of Contention, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1987, pp.102-104, 118-119.

56. (ibid)

57. Kenneth F. Weaver, The Search For Our Ancestors, National Geographic, November, 1985, pp.581-582.

58. Elwyn L. Simons, Early Relatives, Sci. Am., 1964.

59. Howells, Mankind.

60. Donald Johanson and Maitland Edey, Lucy: The Beginnings Of Humankind, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1981, pp.40.

61. Michael Brown, Lucy, pp.18.

62. Anthropology Today, Communications Research Machines, Inc., Del Mar, Ca., 92014, 1971, pp.161.

63. Weaver, Nat'. Geo., November, 1985, pp.575, 599.

64. For the recent age of Taung see T.C. Partridge, "Geomorphological Dating of Cave Openings at Makapansgat, Sterkfontein, Swartkrans and Taung," Nature, 246 (9 Nov., 1973, pp.75-79; K.W. Butzer, "Paleoecology of South African australopithecines: Taung Revisited," Current Anthropology, 15, 1974, pp.367-382. See Mary Leakey, Footprints in the Ashes of Time, National Geographic, April, 1979.

65. Sherwood L. Washburn, Tools and Human Evolution, Scientific American, September 1960.

66. Sally R. And Lewis R. Binford, Stone Tools and Human Behavior, Scientific American, April, 1969.

67. Lawrence H. Keeley, The Function of Paleolithic Flint Tools, Scientific American, November 1977.

68. Sherwood L. Washburn, Tools and Human Evolution, (note 72).

69. (ibid)

70. (ibid)

71. Alan Walker and Richard Leakey, The Hominids of East Turkana, Sci.Am., August, 1978.

72. Philip L. Stein and Bruce Rowe, Phys. Anthro., pp.307-312.

73. (ibid)

74. (ibid)

75. C. Loring Brace, Biological Parameters and Pleistocene Hominid Lifeways, Primate Ecology and Human Origins, I.S. Bernstein and E.O. Smith Eds., N.Y., Garland Press, 1979.

76. Walker and Leakey, The Hominids of East Turkana, Sci.Am., August, 1978.

77. (ibid)

78. (ibid).

79. Mary Leakey, Footprints In The Ashes Of Time, Nat'l. Geo., 1979, pp.453.

80. From a quote of Richard Leakey from Michael Brown's The Search For Eve, Harper and Row, 1990, pp. 142.

81. National Geographic, March, 1992, Apes and Humans; Bonobo's: Chimpanzees with a Difference.

82. Mary D. Leakey, Footprints In The Ashes Of Time, Nat'l. Geo., Apr. 1979, pp.456.

83. Ernst Mayr, A History of American Physical Anthropology, 1930-1980, New York, Academic Press, 1982, pp.231.

84. Richard Leakey, The Weekend Australian, 7-8 May, 1983, Magazine, pp.3.

85. Johanson, Lucy, pp.279.

86. (ibid)

87. "Myths and Methods in Anatomy," Journal of the Royal College of Surgeons, Edinburgh, vol., ll, pp.87-114, 92.

88. Greg Kirby, Senior Lecturer at Flinders University in Population Biology, from a lecture to the Biology Teachers Association in South Australia, 1976.

89. Howells, pp. 94.

90. Howells, Mankind, pp. 95-96.