Who Are My Ancestors?
Genesis 1:24‑27
Who Are My Ancestors?
God said, “Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: livestock, creatures that move along the ground, and wild animals, each according to its kind.” And it was so. God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good.
Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”
So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.
So God created man in His own image on the sixth day. God created the animals which populate the earth—animals capable of being domesticated, mammals which we tend to associate with the wild and all the crawling creatures. When all were ready, God created man. For the sake of those who are so politically correct that they are ignorant of common language, man in this instance is the race. The race is dependent upon gender, however, and God takes pains to ensure that no one will miss that point. God created man in His own image … male and female He created them. We will deal with this distinction of gender in a later message, but for now we focus on man the race.
Man has always been man. Ramapithecus, Australopithecus, Homo Erectus, Neanderthal, Cro-Magnon—these names each conjure up images of beetle-browed knuckle-walkers, creatures whose chests and backs are covered with coarse hair. We think of tableaux presented in museums around the world of such near-apes tearing raw meat from the bloody limb of some hapless animal or fleshing the hide of a deer which has been killed with sticks and stones. Is the picture accurate? Can such creatures as these be the ancestors of man? What implications do such speculative flights of fancy hold for us as Christians?
Either man has as ancestors creatures best described as ape-like, or man has always been man. Either through aeons man has slowly advanced to the point of rule over the animal kingdom which we enjoy today, or man was created in the image of God. In previous messages I have presented some of the problems which must challenge our minds if the Genesis account is in error. Tonight I simply want to consider the question, Who are my ancestors? I trust that we will be able through this consideration to discover the answer to the question and lay the foundation for an acceptable evangelical theology.
Man's Image — Had we been privileged to meet Adam and Eve would we recognise them as one of us? Or would they have appeared as something other than human? Had we been present a moment after God presented the woman to the man how could we describe the two individuals who discovered one another in that beautiful moment? In a later message I propose to address the issue of what it means to be created in the image of God, but for the moment it is sufficient to say that the image of God must mean something more than simply being an erect biped with a relatively large cranial capacity. Something in man’s character marks him as reflecting the image of the divine.
For over a century palaeontologists have sought and claimed to have discovered the remains of a variety of creatures who are presented as having shared a common ancestry with man. The zeal with which such finds are announced from time-to-time reveals a virtual religious fervour to demonstrate the religion of evolution as true. Anthropologists throughout the past century have presented a surprising number of fossils which upon careful examination have been demonstrated to be either hoaxes or misidentified. Some of the more prominent errors of palaeontological anthropologists include Java Man, Piltdown Man, Nebraska Man and Peking Man.
A Dutch physician by the name of Dubois became convinced that the “missing link” in man’s evolutionary origin would be found in the East Indies. He joined the Dutch army and secured a posting to Java where he began his search. In 1891, along the bank of the Solo River near the village of Trinil he found a skullcap. About a year later and about fifty feet from where he found the skullcap, Dubois found a human femur. He assumed, without any justification, that the skullcap and femur were from the same individual, whom he named Pithecanthropus erectus. About the same time he found two molars which he included with his find. In 1898 he also found a premolar which he included. The collection was commonly known as Java Man and evolutionists estimated the age of the fossils to be 500,000 years old.
When Dubois exhibited his fossils at the International Congress of Zoology at Leyden in 1895, British zoologists declared the remains to be human, German scientists thought them to be those of an ape, and French scholars decided they were something between ape and man. Further studies throughout the 1920s and 30s demonstrated that the remains were those of a large gibbon. Other than his desire to find a “missing link”, there is no evidence that the femur should ever have been associated with the skullcap.
In 1912, Arthur Smith Woodward, Director of the British Museum, and Charles Dawson, a medical doctor, announced the discovery of a mandible and part of a skull in a gravel pit near Piltdown, England. Combining these two remains they created Piltdown Man, Eanthropus Dawsoni, judged to be about 500,000 years old. By 1950, further studies demonstrated the skull portion to be less than a few thousand years old and the jaw to be that of a recently deceased chimpanzee. Upon further critical examination it was discovered that the bones had been treated with iron salts to make them look old and scratch marks were found on the teeth, indicating that they had been filed. In other words, Piltdown Man was a complete fraud. The remains were but a modern ape’s jaw and a human skull doctored to resemble an ape-man. The forgery succeeded in fooling most of the world’s greatest anthropology and palaeontological experts.
In 1922 a tooth was discovered in western Nebraska by a gentleman named Harold Cook. He declared that he had found the remains of an ancient ape-man which he modestly named Hesperopithecus haroldcookii. The tooth was declared by no less an expert than Henry Fairfield Osborn (and several other authorities) to combine the characteristics of Chimpanzee, Pithecanthropus and Man! An illustration of what this creature looked like show an individual remarkably similar to modern man, although somewhat brutish in appearance. Further studies resulted in the revelation in 1927 that Hesperopithecus was neither a man-like ape nor an ape-like man, but the tooth came from an extinct peccary … a pig. As Mark Twain once said, There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjectures out of such trifling investment of facts (Life on the Mississippi, p. 156).
Peking Man was reportedly found in 1928 but the bones disappeared under mysterious circumstances during the Second World War. Despite scientific reports advancing these remains as near-man and thus pre-human, the disappearance of the bones make it impossible to compare the plaster casts with the actual finds. Today, most reputable palaeontologists consider the remains to have been the remains of large monkeys or baboons which were likely eaten by men working in the vicinity of lime pits. Nevertheless, a surprising number of evolutionary texts still include pictures of Peking Man in the lineage of modern man.
All the foregoing examples of the “missing link” were eventually disproved through demonstration that they were either outright hoaxes or through reluctant admission that they represented examples of monkeys or apes. Homo neanderthalensis, however, appears to be man. Despite the characterisation promoted to this day in secondary texts and even in such noteworthy displays as that found in the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, Neanderthal Man is presented as a stooped, brutish, beetle-browed creature of coarsest habits. However scientists now grudgingly concede that these early inhabitants of the Neander Valley of Europe were truly human, no more distinct from modern man than the various tribes representative of this day.
His brain capacity was certainly human. Theodosius Dobzhansky, one of the most recognised evolutionists, has written of Neanderthal: The cranial capacity of the Neanderthal race of Homo sapiens was, on the average, equal to or even greater than that in modern man (“Changing Man,” Science, Vol. 155, January 27, 1967, p. 410). The specimens we have appear to have been stooped, but most anthropologists today are convinced that this is because the specimen recovered suffered from arthritis or from rickets. We know that Neanderthal man raised flowers, fashioned elegant tools, painted pictures and practised some sort of religion, including burial of the dead. There is even evidence that Neanderthal Man or some of his predecessors had a form of writing!
The upstart of more recent palaeontological studies of man reveals that man has always been man. Most anthropologists today conclude that man and apes developed separately. Even those individuals believing in the doctrine of evolution are driven by the evidence to conclude that man and ape share no common ancestry. Some biochemists stubbornly cling to the hope that a common genetic material or a common protein may demonstrate common heritage, but results to date have proven disappointing.
In the study of nature one is struck by the remarkable similarity of form and function throughout all nature. Scientists recognise the unique aspects inherent in each life form. Design is abundantly apparent throughout all of nature. Design, of course, argues strongly in favour of a Master Designer—the Creator. Design is evident in morphology, embryology, molecular structure, and even in behaviour. Simply because scientists describe a creature which was bipedal does not mean that the beast should be classified as man or even as near-man.
Similarities in structure do exist. Evolutionists have taken such similarities as supportive of evolution. However, it is important to remember that the Linnaean classification scheme is arbitrary and manmade. There exists no observed or experimental evidence for ancestral relationships in categories higher than the species level. Any presumed relationships are evolutionary assumption. Classification argues against evolution, in fact, for if an evolutionary continuum existed there would be no gaps. In that event it would be impossible to demark specific categories of life.
Man's Age — Either man has existed on the earth throughout vast ages—though not so great a time as all the rest of the animals—or the earth antedates man by less than six days. Either man is the product of time and chance operating over vast aeons or man is the deliberate and direct result of divine creation. If man shares ancestors in common with other life forms we would expect to see evidence of those intermediate forms, either walking about in the world today or at least in the fossil record. If, on the other hand, man were the product of the mind of an intelligent Creator we would not be surprised to see conservation of form and function over a range of life forms, including the great apes.
If evolutionary palaeontologists are correct, man or man-like creatures have been present in the earth for more than two million years. What is interesting about this statement is that the latest data suggests that man has always been man. This does not mean that anthropologists have ceased looking for creatures intermediate between man and the great apes. However, Leakey’s finds beginning in 1972/73 reveal a creature virtually indistinguishable from modern man. The bones of three individuals which his team found, together with over four hundred hand-made stone tools, have been attributed to the genus Homo and are dated at two and one-half million years before the present time. The brain cases of these remains are reminiscent of modern man. Of course, offspring cannot be older than their parents, and so obviously creatures which were purported to be progenitors of man are not man’s ancestors.
In 1860 and 1863 skulls of modern man were found in Pliocene strata near Castenedolo and near Olmo, both in Italy. The Calaveras skull was found in California in 1886, also in Pliocene deposits. It, too, was a fully developed modern skull. These finds were well documented at the time but have been more-or-less ignored since their first reports. Many other modern skulls have been found in strata where they have no business being found if evolutionary speculations are correct.
I am not convinced of the validity of the various evolutionary dating systems and I will address some of the difficulties in dating a fossil when we consider fossil formation in chapters six through eight of the Book of Genesis. Consequently, though we employ the evolutionists’ own dating systems to demonstrate their fallacies we recognise that man has likely been present essentially unchanged as long as the earth has existed. Consider the following demonstrations pointing to a relatively young age for man.
Take note also of the fact that civilisation arose suddenly and with surprising complexity for those appealing to evolutionary origins. Archaeology recognises the sudden appearance of an advanced Sumerian civilisation without any signs of slow evolution from cavemen. Such facts fit what the Bible has to say concerning mankind. There are little or no historical roots for the first great civilisation. The Sumerian culture brought with it metallurgy, writing, art and the potter’s wheel … in all this is witnessed a highly developed culture which appears suddenly and without precedence.
Genesis four tells of early development of cities and technology and art in the Mesopotamia region. There we read of the development of metallurgy, of domesticated animals and of musical instruments. Genesis six through nine relates how one family survived the judgement of a global flood. We would not be in error to think that these survivors preserved a considerable body of knowledge from the former culture and technology. As the race was re-established in the post-flood world and population began to swell, civilisations could rapidly flower without a long evolutionary delay. Archaeology supports this biblical model for the origin of ancient civilisations.
As an aside of no small consequence, we are no more intelligent than past generations though we are more technologically advanced. We are fortunate to possess the knowledge of past generations. Each generation builds upon the experience of past generations precisely because we possess the ability to communicate both through the written word and orally. Our advanced technology is witness to man as a cultural being. Each successive generation stands upon the shoulders of former generations. Man is the only cultural being, for man alone can bind time, preserving present advances for the future while drawing upon past accomplishments for the present.
Language and the presence of writing also argue for a relatively short period of development for man. In order for man to develop culture and civilisation it is necessary that man be able to communicate. Ancient peoples were highly intelligent, accomplishing marvellous feats of architectural design and engineering without the help of refined instruments and massive power machines such as are available today. This knowledge required communicative skills. What is interesting is that studies of the most ancient languages demonstrate that instead of being simple, the most complex languages are often associated with the most backward cultures. In other words, language, instead of developing slowly over a long period of time, appears suddenly and in the most complex forms. The writing of ancient peoples is likewise precise and complex and witness to an early date for its presence and employment.
An article in the National Post dated Monday, July 26, 1999 bears the title Research ape ‘speaks,’ demands grape. For a number of years scientists have endeavoured to communicate with animals. Among the animals which are studied most diligently are marine mammals (especially porpoises) and the great apes. The animals reviewed in this article are a fourteen-year-old bonobo pygmy chimpanzee, Nyota who is her one-year-old son, and a male bonobo named Kanzi. Each is equipped with a laptop computer and a voice synthesiser programmed with the speech of a research associate at Georgia State University’s Language Research Center in Atlanta.
The director of this research is Professor Sue Savage-Rumbaugh. Arguing against her findings are sceptics who argue that animal-language experiments are motivated by ideological reasons linked with the animal-rights movement. Herbert Terrace, a Columbia University psychologist concluded in a paper published in Science that an ape is incapable of creating a sentence. In the 1920s, experiments by Robert Yerkes established that chimpanzees could not learn speech. Reasons for this lack of speech ranged from their lack of intelligence to a vocal tract different from the human version. The linguist, Noam Chomsky theorised that language is innate and unique to people, and once said that attempting to teach linguistic skills to animals is like trying to teach humans to flap their arms and fly. Despite these obstacles, Professor Savage-Rumbaugh and her husband, Doctor Duane Rumbaugh, have continued their studies for thirty years.
What is interesting about these studies is that essentially all the utterances of the apes are demands for immediate rewards such as food, toys or tickling. The article concludes that Even a pigeon can be taught to push a sequence of four coloured lights to obtain a food reward. It is unthinkable that a chimpanzee could develop a philosophy of life, much less communicate that philosophy. No mammal other than man can imitate the sounds of other animals. We are amused at the sight of a chimpanzee seeking food, but the accomplishment is no more advanced than our dog bringing us his dish when the food supply has been consumed or our cat pushing at the door wishing to go out or come in.
The development of religion is likewise evidence that man has existed but a relatively short time on the earth. The earliest examples of man, by evolutionary standards, possess an apparent religion. The Neanderthals buried their dead and clearly had rituals associated with the transition from the land of the living to the netherworld. The earliest civilisations, such as the Sumerians and the Egyptians, had highly developed religions with precise ethical and moral codes. To account for the development of ethical and moral consciousness by evolutionary means thwarts even the most ardent evolutionist. Animals have no moral or ethical consciousness as we do.
Perhaps we can point to organisation such as found in ant colonies or in prairie dog colonies as examples of animal civilisation. However, these pale in comparison to civilisation such as we know it. Perhaps we can point to chimpanzees taught to communicate their immediate desires, but no serious scholar would think of this as communicating complex ideas. The ability to rationalise, to develop a life ethic or to formulate a moral code, reveal that man has always been man when we allow ourselves to focus on them as evidences of man’s short span on the earth.
Even if man had existed for two and one-half million years, the dinosaurs and the earliest creatures from the Cretaceous Era could not be man’s contemporaries according to evolutionary thinking. However, evidence available suggests that man may have been present at least as long as the most ancient creatures of the sea or land. There is this singular point when considering that man may not have a history of millions, or even of hundreds of thousands years. However, numerous observations have dated man as contemporaneous with dinosaurs.
In the Paluxy River near Glen Rose, Texas human footprints are seen intersecting dinosaur tracks. My family on several occasions enjoyed following these tracks and observing how in some instances human footprints overlapped dinosaur tracks. Among the clearly identified dinosaur tracks in the same riverbed are trachodon, tyrannosaurus and apatosaurus. Confronted by this observation of human footprints found in the same strata and even intersecting dinosaur tracks a prominent palaeontologist in the employ of Southern Methodist University speculated that these were not really human footprints, but the prints of a heretofore-undiscovered five-toed dinosaur.
The creatures which Job described in chapters forty and forty-one of the book which bears his name sound more like dinosaurs than they do any creature living today. In those chapters Job speaks of two creatures in particular—behemoth and leviathan. Some scholars have suggested that behemoth [Job 40:15-24] is actually an elephant. I have seen a number of elephants both in zoos and on videotapes and I cannot say that the tail of an elephant sways like a cedar [Job 40:17]. Perhaps it resembles a sapling … but not a cedar. Job clearly associated this particular creature with a riparian environment and not with a savannah environment [cf. vv. 21-23]. Actually, the creature that Job describes here more closely resembles what we know to be an apatosaurus.
The leviathan [Job 41:1-34] is said by some to be a crocodile. While I agree that a crocodile is a fearsome creature, the creature Job describes is unlike any crocodile I know of. I have witnessed an alligator whose size was fourteen feet in my near presence. Alligators are hunted by man, as witnessed by the availability of alligator shoes and of alligator purses, to say nothing of restaurants which serve alligator throughout Louisiana. The creature which Job describes sounds less liable to inviting people to hunt it. In fact, it sounds more like some fierce plesiosaurus-like creature with which Job was familiar.
Moccasin clad feet pushing down trilobites have been recorded in Utah and bare footprints impressing trilobites are known to exist in Oklahoma. Not only did human footprints appear to have walked in the soft bottom of an inland ocean during a time when trilobites were present, but the individual who walked about in those ancient sea beds were sufficiently advanced to be wearing shoes. Trilobites are supposed to have lived only in deep seas hundreds of millions of years before man appeared on the scene. Certainly such observations should give pause to those who wish to relegate man’s presence on this earth to a time separate from other so-called ancient animals.
There is a last issue to be considered in any effort to establish the age of man. Human population dynamics argue that man has lived on this earth for a relatively short time. I regret that I will only be able to address this issue in a cursory fashion. However, I ask that you indulge me as I engage in a bit of mathematical terpsichore. The average family size today is about 3.6 children and the annual population growth rate is 2 percent. Environmentalists would like to see these figures reduced to 2.1 children and a corresponding growth rate of 0 percent, so that the world population would not increase more than it already is.
According to the evolutionary model, man has been on the earth for at least two million years, whereas creationists would consider man to have been present only a few thousand years, corresponding to the approximately 5,000 years of recorded history. To decide between these ages, assume an initial population of two people (the first parents). No, I’m not speaking of Bill and Hillary or of Al and Tipper, but rather I speak of two individuals who were progenitors of the race following the great Flood. Assume they produce a total of 2c offspring, c boys and c girls, who then unite to form c families. Each of these families also has 2c children, meaning there will be 2c2 children in the second generation. These form c2 families and then 2c3 children in the third generation, and so on. In the nth generation there will be 2cn individuals. If we assume, for simplicity, that only one generation is alive at one time, then the world population at the nth generation will also be 2cn people.
We equate this figure to the actual present world population [2cn = 4.5 x 109]. Assume 125 generations since the first pair (corresponding to about 5000 years with about 40 years per generation, then the average family size must have been). The average family size will compute to be less than 2.5, or 1.25 boys and 1.25 girls per family will produce a population of 4.5 billion in only 5000 years.
On a percentage basis, a calculation yields an average annual population growth rate of about 0.5%. In other words, an average population growth of ½% per year would give the present population in just 5000 years. This is only ¼ (one quarter) the present rate. The evidence is that man has been present for a relatively short period of time. The alternative demands 25000 generations of man with a resulting population of only 4.5 billion. If the population increased at only 0.5% per year and if the average family size were only 2.5 children per family for 25000 generations, the number of people in the present generation would exceed 102100 (a number which is, of course, utterly impossible). There are only 10130 electrons capable of being crammed into the entire universe.
It is true that evolutionists can modify their model by secondary assumptions to create a fit to known population data, but unaltered date with simple assumptions which any scientist would make yield a young age for the population of mankind.
Man's Imagination — Let’s admit the obvious … without divine intervention man could never conceive of a personal, loving God as his Creator. Left to his own devices man has endeavoured to explain his existence without resort to the Creator. Scientists have postulated that man exists as result of interplanetary seeding experiments, that he exists as result of the blind forces of time and chance operating over vast aeons of time, that he exists as a sort of cosmic serendipity because of a universe which possesses personality. Man is desperately wicked and will not, left to his own devices, concede responsibility to the True and Living God. Without divine intervention to renew his soul, man is incapable of submitting to the Creator.
Whatever else may be true, it is evident that because he is created in the image of God, man … even man who refuses to believe the Word of the Creator … is religious. Civilisations have arisen and civilisations have crumbled, all based upon man’s imagination. Until God intervenes man will become increasingly technologically advanced as the cumulative knowledge of the race increases exponentially. As communication becomes more effective the advance of knowledge will increase at an exponential rate. Perhaps that is the intent of the Words Daniel recorded in the book which bears his name. Many will go here and there to increase knowledge [Daniel 12:4b]. Should God delay the return of His Son, there is no question but that wonderful technological advances lie ahead.
Those advances, though superficially promising good for mankind, will prove to be double-edged in their impact on humanity. Every scientific advance either blesses or curses man, depending upon the way in which that advance was used. Microwaves can either bless as they are used to communicate truth, or they curse as they are employed to exercise control over even our thought life. Atomic power can either bless through providing cheap energy for multitudes or curse through contaminating and destroying immense territories. The advances in understanding the human genome will either bless as we correct inborn errors of metabolism or those same advances will curse as they are used to coerce behaviour. Every application of the collective knowledge of all mankind either sets us free or restricts us in the exercise of our freedom.
You see, with the advance of knowledge characteristic of mankind and with the rise and fall of each new civilisation, man will always be revealed as a creature capable of developing an ethic and a moral code. Depending upon man’s underlying philosophy, the ethic developed and the moral code tolerated will either glorify God or it must endeavour to exalt mankind. Having excluded God’s rightful rule over life, ancient man invited divine judgement when it became apparent that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time [Genesis 6:5]. Our first parents fell and as result the native heart yet exhibits an awful tendency to wickedness. In fact, God’s assessment is that every inclination of [man’s] heart is evil from childhood [Genesis 8:21]. The heart is marked by stubborn inclinations demonstrating the residence of evil [cf. Jeremiah 3:21; 7:24]. Consequently, man’s stubbornness and evil leads him to continue his rebellion.
A Creator who makes me in His image would make me a spiritual being capable of knowing Him, would make me a being with a soul capable of feeling deeply both my acceptance and my estrangement, would make me a being with a body capable of enjoying the world fitted for my presence. As a creationist I would endeavour to honour Him through expressing certainty in convictions, through hope in His continued work in days to come, through confidence in His reign in the midst of a stormy world.
If I reject Him as my Creator, however, what is left for me with which I may develop an ethic and a moral code? In education I will be compelled to stress group acceptance instead of personal excellence. I will reject evaluation and eliminate competition as I instead exalt the race. In religion I will worship at the shrine of current science, despite the knowledge that current science constantly changes. I will reject the need for personal redemption since I can hope in redemption of the race given sufficient time. If God is not Creator, then materialism will become my prevailing philosophy as material things assume priority for my life and the acquisition of those “things” becomes the means by which I gauge the effectiveness of my life.
Without the Creator to temper my thoughts I shall become a socialist in politics. Marx dedicated Das Kapital to Charles Darwin, believing that with the postulation of evolution he had the means to demonstrate why communism would succeed capitalism. Socialists believe that man is an economically determined animal whose evil is but a reflection of his poor environment.
If I should reject the Creator as worthy of my worship I will exalt man, accepting his word as the final and highest authority for life and ultimately I will become a racist. Charles Darwin could be considered by skinheads and neonazis as being ahead of his time in openly advocating racist views when he wrote to a friend, The more civilised so-called Caucasian races have beaten the Turkish hollow in the struggle for existence. Looking to the world at no very distant date, what an endless number of the lower races will have been eliminated by the higher civilised races throughout the world. Thomas Huxley, the first great apologist for evolution, wrote, No rational man, cognisant of the facts, believes that the average Negro is the equal, still less the superior of the white man. Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf justified his racist views by appeal to evolutionary dogma, just as Friedrich Nietzsche postulated Superman on the basis of the same evolutionary dogma.
Evolution does not excuse racism, but it is clear that racism throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was justified by appeal to evolutionary dogma. Indeed, if the races evolved, then it follows that some races are superior to others and even a cursory application of thought will reveal that in order to advance the whole of mankind the lesser races need to be removed!
From the Creator we learn to excel in whatever we do so that we may glorify Him. From the Creator we are taught to encourage others and to accept others since they also are created in His image. Knowledge of the Creator leads me to worship Him, both with my actions and with my mind. As one who knows the Creator I am compelled to honour Him through building others up, through honesty, through fairness, through receiving others as made in the image of God – regardless of race or culture.
Either my imagination is submitted to God or my imagination seeks to exalt my own wicked thoughts. Either I am now glorifying Him as Creator of Heaven and earth (and more particularly as my Creator) or I am resisting His will. My ancestors are those who knew God and who worshipped Him as Lord of life. Amen.