Monkey in the Middle

February 09, 2016

evolution-with-fade

To many people, the term “cave man” conjures up images of a brutish ape-man, not yet fully evolved into a complete human being. Evolutionists claim that “early man” fossils are evidence that we evolved from apes. Let’s take a closer look at just three popular caveman fossils…

Neanderthals

For the most part, Neanderthals skulls we’ve found have had a slightly bigger cranial capacity than the average person – but no different from some people alive today. Although many evolutionary scientists claim Neanderthals were an evolutionary breakaway from human ancestry, many other scientists now agree that Neanderthals were fully human. We’ve even found evidence that Neanderthals created musical instruments, made tools, buried their dead, and had religious traditions just like modern humans. Yet, most of the public has only seen pictures of the Neanderthal people as ape-like brutes!

The sketch to the right is a drawing of what the artist thought the Neanderthal male may have looked like. When ancient human skulls are found, drawings are often made to make them appear more “ape-like”, and when ape fossils are found, they are made to look more human-like.

Listen to Kendall Park describe the Neanderthals in The African Safari

Cro-Magnon

Complete skeletons of the Cro-Magnon Man have been found. Their cranial capacity was about the same as that of modern man. If Cro-Magnon were alive today and walking down the street in a suit, he would go completely unnoticed.

Cro-Magnons have a high forehead and protruding chin—similar to many modern humans.

Image to the left is a Cro-Magnon skull found in 1868, near Les Eyzies, France —the same region where the famous Lascaux cave paintings were discovered.

Homo Erectus

Many consider the Homo Erectus (literally “upright man”) as the most mysterious group among early humans. When their bones were first discovered in Indonesia, they were given the namePithecanthropus erectus, which introduced the misleading suggestion that this group was actually a hybrid of an ape and a man (in essence, the term means “upright ape men”).

The facial characteristics of this group of people were quite distinctive. As you can see from the picture (right) of the “Turkana Boy” skull, (uncovered in Turkana Lake in East Africa), they had a high brow ridge and receding chin. The rest of the skeleton below the neck closely resembles the bone structure of modern day humans. Further strengthening the case for their humanity is evidence that they buried their dead, crafted hand tools, and migrated and settled on three separate continents.

While evolutionists attempt to pigeonhole this group by labeling them as “less than human cavemen”, the truth is that they are simply another unique variation of the human race that God created in His image. They may have looked different as various people groups do today, but they were really just like us – fully human, born into sin, and in desperate need of a Savior.