Lucy is No Longer in the Sky with Diamonds
In the Genesis creation account, the Bible describes that all land-dwelling creatures were created on Day 6, with man being the pinnacle of God’s creation. In chapter 2 of that same book, Moses describes the creation of man and woman in detail, informing readers “and the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being” (Genesis 2:7). In verse 20 of that same chapter we find Adam giving names to “all cattle, to the birds of the air, to every beast of the field,” indicating that he possessed the intelligence to name them and understand instructions from God. The Darwinian Theory describes man evolving from some primordial soup, initially carrying a club and living in a cave with not much intelligence. These two theories of origins could not be more diametrically opposed.
The evidence that Lucy was human, is not missing. It doesn’t exist.
So which is correct?
Scientific knowledge regarding the origin and antiquity of man is primarily based on fossil discoveries made by anthropologists, such as the world-famous Leakey family. Scientists would uncover fossilized bone fragments and then speculate as to what features the original creature possessed and precisely where it fit on the evolutionary tree of life. Each new discovery was heralded as a major scientific contribution—no matter how fragmented the fossil or how few remains were actually discovered. But as more and more fossils were unearthed, many scientists took delight in designating their finds as entirely new species, providing the scientist with the privilege of designating a new scientific name. While being able to name a new “species” of hominid was beneficial to one’s career, the real advantage came in announcing the discovery of the oldest upright-walking hominid fossil. The race was on to find the “missing link” that led back to a common ancestor that humans allegedly shared with the apes.
On November 30, 1974, Donald Johansson and graduate student Tom Gray loaded up in a Land Rover and headed out to plot an area of Hadar, Ethiopia, known as Locality 162. There they unearthed a fossilized skeleton that was nearly 40% complete. Dr. Johansson named his discovery Australopithecus afarensis meaning “the southern ape from Ethiopia’s Afar depression in northeastern Ethiopia.” The creature earned the nickname “Lucy” from the Beatles song “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” that was playing in the camp the night of the discovery. While there was a great deal of pomp and circumstance offered by the mainstream media when Lucy was first announced, her star does not shine as brightly today. In fact, having over 20 years to examine the fossils, there are several problems wrong with Lucy. For instance:
A. She has curved fingers and ape-like limb proportions (see Stern and Susman, 1983, J. Phy. Anthrop., 60:280) that point toward her being an ape.
B. She has locking wrists—a trait identified in quadrupeds (see Richmond & Strait, 2000, Nature, 404:382-385). Maggie Fox reported in the March 29, 2000, San Diego Union Tribune: “A chance discovery made by looking at a cast of the bones of ‘Lucy,’ the most famous fossil of Australopithecus afarensis, shows her wrist is stiff, like a chimpanzee’s, Brian Richmond and David Strait of George Washington University in Washington, D.C., reported. This suggests that her ancestors walked on their knuckles” (Fox, “Man’s Early Ancestors Were Knuckle Walkers,” 2000, Quest Section, March 29.).
C. The microwear on the teeth indicate this creature was tree fruit eater (see Johanson and Edey, 1981, p. 358). Alan Walker, a professor of anthropology and biology at Penn State University, believes he might be able to reconstruct ancient diets from paleontological samples. In speaking of Alan Walker’s material, Johanson noted:
Dr. Alan Walker of Johns Hopkins has recently concluded that the polishing effect he finds on the teeth of robust Australopithecines and modern chimpanzees indicates that Australopithecines, like chimps, were fruit eaters…. If they were primarily fruit eaters, as Walker’s examination of their teeth suggests they were, then our picture of them, and of the evolutionary path they took, is wrong (Johanson and Edey, 1981, p. 358).
D. Lucy’s rib cage is conical like an ape’s, not barrel shaped like a human’s (see Leakey and Lewin, 1992, p. 193-194). Peter Schmid, a paleontologist at the Anthropological Institute in Zurich, Switzerland, received a replica of Lucy and noted,
When I started to put the skeleton together, I expected it to look human. Everyone had talked about Lucy being very modern. Very human. So I was surprised by what I saw. I noticed that the ribs were more round in cross section. More like what you see in apes. Human ribs are flatter in cross section. But the shape of the ribcage itself was the biggest surprise of all. The human ribcage is barrel shaped. And I just couldn’t get Lucy’s ribs to fit this kind of shape. But I could get them to make a conical-shaped ribcage, like what you see in apes (Peter Schmid as quoted in Leakey and Lewin, Origins Reconsidered, 1992, p. 193-194).
E. The semicircular canals of Australopithecines resemble an ape’s, not a human’s or a transitional creature’s (see Spoor et al., 1994, Nature, 369:645-648).
F. The pelvis of Lucy is not large enough to give birth, leaving one to wonder if she is really a “he” [“Lucy or Lucifer?”] (see Hausler and Schmid, 1995, J. Human Evol. 29:363-383).
This doesn’t stop textbooks or museums from perpetuating the lie. For instance, at the “Living World” located in the Saint Louis Zoo, they have built a shrine to Charles Darwin. As you walk into the “Introduction to the Animals” hall, you are immediately confronted by a life-size animatronic version of Charles Darwin. The area also features a life-size replica of the alleged Australopithecus afarensis (Lucy) proclaiming: “This life-sized model shows a likely ancient ancestor of the human family.” However, there were never any feet or hand fossils discovered. The question becomes how can they be so sure about what this creature looked like? According to David Menton from Washington University, the statue is “a complete misrepresentation. And I believe they know it is a misrepresentation.” When asked how in good conscience they could display a creature possessing feet and hands without fossilized evidence, Bruce L. Carr, the zoo’s director of education, declared, “Zoo officials have no plans to knuckle under. We cannot be updating every exhibit based on every new piece of evidence. We look at the overall exhibit and the impression it creates. We think the overall impression this exhibit creates is correct” (St. Louis Post Dispatch, July 22, 1996, p. 1). In other words, the impression supports evolution—let’s just forget what the evidence shows. Donald Johanson admitted:
There is no such thing as a total lack of bias. I have it; everybody has it. The fossil hunter in the field has it…. In everybody who is looking for hominids, there is a strong urge to learn more about where the human line started. If you are working back at around three million, as I was, that is very seductive, because you begin to get an idea that that is where Homo did start. You begin straining your eyes to find Homo traits in fossils of that age…. Logical, maybe, but also biased. I was trying to jam evidence of dates into a pattern that would support conclusions about fossils, which, on closer inspection, the fossils themselves would not sustain (Johanson and Edey, 1981, p. 257, 258, emp. added).
He went on to state: “It is hard for me now to admit how tangled in that thicket I was. But the insidious thing about bias is that it does make one deaf to the cries of other evidence” (p. 277).
The evidence clearly demonstrates that Lucy was nothing more than an ape. Entire books have been written about alleged missing links. But what does the evidence really show? One hundred and fifty years ago, Charles Darwin published On the Origins of Species describing the lack of transitional fossils as “the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against my theory,” but explained it by the extreme imperfection of the geological record. He believed that time would prove his theory correct. Grains of sand have indeed passed through the hourglass of time—but those shifting sands have never turned up Darwin’s missing links.
References
Hausler, Martin and Peter Schmid (1995), “Comparison of the Pelvis of Sts 14 and AL 288-1: Implications for Birth and Sexual Dimorphism in Australopithecines,” Journal of Human Evolution, 29:363-383.
Johanson, Donald C. and Tim D. White (1979), “A Systematic Assessment of Early African Hominids,” Science, 203[4378]:321-330, January 26.
Johanson, Donald, Lenora Johanson, and Blake Edgar, (1994) Ancestors: In Search of Human Origins (New York: Villard Books).
Leakey, Richard and Roger Lewin (1992), Origins Reconsidered: In Search of What Makes Us Human (New York: Doubleday).
Richmond, Brian G. and David S. Strait (2000), “Evidence that Humans Evolved From a Knuckle-Walking Ancestor,” Nature, 404:382-385, March 23.
