Darwin, Then and Now

Posts Tagged ‘Darwin’

This year, 2010, has not been a good year for the “out of Africa” evolutionary theory of human origins. The following is why.

In October 2009, Time Magazine recognized Ardipithecus ramidus, now known as “Ardi,” the number one of “Top 10 Scientific Discoveries” of 2009. The journal Science declared Ardi the “breakthrough of the year.”

Ardi, an nearly complete fossilized female skeleton, was discovered by Timothy Douglas White, an American Paleoanthropologist and Professor of Integrative Biology at the University of California, Berkeley in the arid badlands near the Awash River in Ethiopia in 1994.

Examination and description of Ardi took nearly 15 years before releasing publication. Although it is not known whether Ardi’s offspring actually developed into Homo sapiens, the discovery was expected to be of great significance since Ardi is the oldest known hominid fossil. Ardi had been theorized to be an ancestor to Australopithecus afarensis, more commonly known as Lucy.

John Noble Wilford, science writer for the New York Times reported that David Pilbeam, a professor of human evolution at Harvard University said that the Ardi skeleton represents “a genus plausibly ancestral to Australopithecus [Lucy]” and began ‘to fill in the temporal and structural ‘space’ between the apelike common ancestor and Australopithecus.”

In the excitement, the Discovery Channel produced a series of articles and videos arguing how Ardi, not the chimpanzee, were the common ancestors to humans. The American Association for the Advancement of Science, publisher of the journal Science, developed an educational series in five separate publications on Ardi.

Since Ardi was discovered in east Africa, the finding gained further support for the popular “out of Africa” model first proposed by Charles Darwin. In The Descent of Man, Darwin hypothesized - 

In each great region of the world the living mammals are closely related to the extinct species of the same region. It is, therefore, probable that Africa was formerly inhabited by extinct apes closely allied to the gorilla and chimpanzee; and as these two species are now man’s nearest allies, it is somewhat more probable that our early progenitors lived on the African continent than elsewhere

Almost fifty years after the publication of The Descent of Man, Darwin’s speculations seemed to be supported following the discovery of numerous hominid fossils in several areas of Africa. The “out of Africa” model continued to be the most widely recognized theory since the publication of the Descent of Man—until May 2010.

Svante Pääbo of the Department of Evolutionary Genetics at the Max-Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany published in the journal Science in May 7, 2010, an article on the sequencing of the genome of the Neanderthal man entitled “A Draft Sequence of the Neanderthal Genome”.

According to Gregory Hannon of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in Laurel Hollow, N.Y., Svante Pääbo’s “publication of the full Neanderthal genome is a watershed event, a major historical achievement.” Pääbo noted, “In some of us they live on, a little bit” with on major caveat – not in African descendants.

Mark Henderson, science writer for The Sunday Times, London, explains – “Human genomes from France, China, and Papua New Guinea showed Neanderthal signatures, but not those from West and Southern Africa.” The absence of Neanderthal genetic evidence in Africans has devastated Darwin’s treasured “out of Africa” theory pushing the relevance of Ardi as an ancestor to humans into extinction.

Genetics is not Ardi’s only problem with the “out of Africa” theory—so is the paleontological analysis. Time Magazine, and the journals Nature and Science, after more thoroughly examining the available data, has started slow process of recanting on the role of Ardi as an early ancestor to man.

In the Time article entitled “Ardi: The Human Ancestor Who Wasn’t” now highlight that “Two new articles being published in Science question some of the major conclusions of Ardi’s researchers, including whether this small, strange-looking creature is even a human ancestor at all.”  

The British science journal Nature reports: “Ardi may be more of an ape than human.” In the article, Esteban Sarmiento, a primatologist at the Human Evolution Foundation argues in the article Comment on the Paleobiology and Classification of Ardipithecus ramidus, that the Ardi could not be an evolutionary ancestor to humans:

[White] showed no evidence that Ardi is on the human lineage…. Those characteristics that he posited as relating exclusively to humans also exist in ape and ape fossils that we consider not to be in the human lineage.

With Ardi as the celebutante, the evolution industry, in desperation to connect the dots for a human evolution theory, has once again fallen into another humiliating about-face based on the inescapable scientific evidence.

As the “out of Africa” model undergoes extinction, scientists are beginning to investigate the “multiregional origin of humans” theory in which man is simply “a single, continuous human species”—a theory approaching the recorded biblical account for the origin of man.

Just three years before the publication of The Origin of Species, in 1856, the first Neanderthal fossils were discovered in the Neander Valley limestone quarry located in Germany.  

In The Descent of Man, however, Darwin argued against the concept that the Neanderthals were the ancestors to humans based on the larger size of the Neanderthal skull.

“Nevertheless,” Darwin noted, “it must be admitted that some skulls of very high antiquity, such as the famous one of Neanderthal, are well developed and capacious”—the skull was too large to be a human ancestor.

Darwin was right. The journal Science on May 7, 2010, published an article entitled “A Draft Sequence of the Neandertal Genome,” confirming Darwin’s position that the Neanderthal could not be an ancestor to humans. According to Gregory Hannon of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in Laurel Hollow, N.Y., the “publication of the full Neandertal genome is a watershed event, a major historical achievement.” 

Svante Pääbo of the Department of Evolutionary Genetics at the Max-Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany led the study team. “[Neanderthals] are not totally extinct,” Pääbo said. “In some of us they live on, a little bit.”

John Hawks, assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Wisconsin, told BBC News: “They’re us. We’re them.”

“[T]he really surprising thing for many of us,” noted Professor Chris Stringer, research leader in human origins at London’s Natural History Museum, “is the implication that there has been some interbreeding between Neanderthals and modern humans in the past.”

This interbreeding finding is a monumental discovery since interbreeding is a defining factor for defining a species. Our current modern definition of species was developed by Ernst Mayr—Darwin’s Bulldog of the twentieth century.

In the 1942 book entitled Systematics and the Origin of Species, Ernst Mayr established the Biological Species Concept (BSC): species consist of populations of organisms that can reproduce with one another and are reproductively isolated from other such populations. Since humans and Neanderthals are now known to be isolated reproductive populations, they represent a single species—”They’re us. We’re them.”

Sequencing of the Neanderthal genome is a landmark scientific achievement. The sequencing is a culmination of a four-year investigation led from Germany’s Max Planck Institute.

Use of efficient “high-throughput” technology allowed the numerous DNA sequences to be processed at the same time from the bones of three different Neanderthals found at Vindija Cave in Croatia.

A major obstacle overcome in the study was the retrieval of quality DNA material from remains Neanderthal DNA contaminated with vast quantities of bacterial and fungal DNA. Even, the Neanderthal DNA had broken down into very short segments and had changed chemically. Since the contamination, breaks, and chemical changes were thought to be of a predictable nature, the researchers developed a software program to estimate the original DNA sequence of the Neanderthal genes.

The DNA evidence from the Neanderthal clearly aligns with the biblical account—the Neanderthals are human, descendants of Adam and Eve. Worldwide dispersion after Babel followed by environmental pressures afterward resulted in people groups with different physical characteristics, including humans with “Neanderthal” Characteristics.

Cellular biologist, David DeWitt, noted that the research was an “amazing feat” of science that continues to demonstrate the validity of the biblical record. “Finding Neanderthal DNA in humans was not expected by evolutionists, but it was predicted from a creation standpoint because we have said all along that Neanderthals were fully human: descendants of Adam and Eve just like us”.

Every fossil discovery has a unique story, and the story of the Archaeoraptor is no exception. In November 1999, a feature article in National Geographic titled “Feathers for T. Rex?” played out to be one of the worst debacles in the now storied history of the new fossil discoveries. The article claimed to provide “a true missing link in the complex chain that connects dinosaurs to birds.”

Discovered at Xiasanjiazi in China’s northeastern Liaoning Province, the fossil named Archaeoraptor liaoningensis appeared to have the body of a bird with the teeth and tail of a small, terrestrial dinosaur. The “discovery” seemed to fit the missing link criteria by filling in the gap of the popular reptile/dinosaur-to-bird scheme. The Archaeoraptor was displayed to have a long, bony tail like that of dinosaurs along with the specialized shoulders and chest of birds.

The Associated Press was the first to notice the story, and soon the major news networks were reporting the discovery of the new missing link that looked like a “fierce turkey-sized animal with sharp claws and teeth.”

The celebration was on. Philip Currie of the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Alberta, Canada, weighed in, proclaiming the Archaeoraptor to be the first dinosaur capable of flying. The story had barely broken before questions about the fossil started taking flight, leaving the National Geographic suddenly embroiled in one of the hottest scientific controversies in decades.

The questioning was started by Storrs Olson, the eminent curator of birds at the prestigious Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History. In a letter to the National Geographic Society, Olson stated that the story reached “an all-time low for engaging in sensationalistic, unsubstantiated, tabloid journalism.”

Olson was on target, and the National Geographic found itself in the embarrassing position of having to retract the entire article because, as it turned out, the Archaeoraptor fossil was a fake—a neatly contrived composite of a bird and a dinosaur tail.

In reflecting on the incident, Olson laid blame for the fossil fiasco clearly on “zealous scientists” that have abandoned the scientific method to become “proselytizers of the faith” promoting “scientific hoaxes,” and “the paleontological equivalent of cold fusion.”

Several months later in the March 2000 issue of National Geographic, the magazine published a letter to the editor from Xu Xing, one of the scientists who had first examined and discussed the fossil discovery. The letter stated, “After observing a new, feathered dromaeosaur specimen … [t]hough I do not want to believe it, Archaeoraptor appears to be composed of a dromaeosaur tail and a bird body.”

Seven months later in October 2000, National Geographic published a five-page article by veteran investigative reporter Lewis Simons describing how the hoax evolved. In the article “Archaeoraptor Fossil Trail,” Simons pined on the painful discovery: “An investigative reporter does some digging to unearth the truth behind a case of fossil fraud.”

Simons explained how farmers in China had developed a profitable hobby of selling the fossils they “discovered.” They doctored the fossils to follow basic market economics to increase the value of their “discoveries.” In the excitement, evolutionists were conveniently blinded by their belief in the theory. 

The Archaeoraptor illustrates the problem when the theory becomes more important than the evidence. Tragically, Charles Darwin touted this approach in a letter to John Scott in 1863: “I would suggest to you the advantage … let the theory guide your observations.”

Evolutionists continue in the Darwin tradition—let the theory mask the interpretation of the evidence.

Even in an era with unsurpassed technological advances, fraud in science continues to invade deep into the ranks of esteemed institutions. Storrs Olson, of the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History, in 2000 lamented that there “probably has never been a fossil with a sadder history than this one.”

Proof of the hoax was not long in coming. Later in March 2001, Nature published the results of the fossil investigation. Using high-resolution X-ray computed tomography (CT), the investigators concurred that the fossil was a forgery built in three layers. Timothy Rowe concluded that Archaeoraptor represents two or more species and that it was assembled from at least two, and possibly five, separate specimens. If there is any light at the end of the tunnel, Rowe gave a positive spin in the Nature article on the Archaeoraptor forgery, saying that technology may prevent future forensic fraud.

The Archaeoraptor disaster follows a fraud legacy starting with Haeckel’s embryos that founded Darwin’s “most important” evidence for evolution. 

Darwin had a significant influence on Karl Marx. Struggle and survival are central to Darwin’s theory of evolution. The full title of The Origin is –

On the Origin of Species by means of natural selection and the Survival of the Fittest in the Preservation of Favoured Races.

Darwin’s premise on survival and struggle in nature paralleled Karl Marx premise on class struggle. Marx summarized the importance of “struggle” in the first line of chapter one of The Communist Manifesto, published in 1848 -

“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.”

Karl Heinrich Marx was born in Germany on May 5, 1818. In 1843, Marx moved to France, but ordered to leave by the French authorities after participating in an assassination attempt on Frederick William IV, King of Prussia in 1845. After a time in Belgium and Prussia, Marx and his new comrade, Friedrich Engels, finally settled in London, England in 1849.

By the time Marx had moved to London in 1849, Darwin had already moved his young family from London to the Down seven years earlier. Even though Down is located just sixteen miles from London, ironically they never met even though Darwin greatly influenced the works of Marx and Engels.

Marx and Engels immediately recognized the significance of Darwin’s theory. Within weeks of the publication of The Origin of Species in November 1859, Engels wrote to Marx -

“Darwin, by the way, whom I’m reading just now, is absolutely splendid. There was one aspect of teleology that had yet to be demolished, and that has now been done…. One does, of course, have to put up with the crude English method.”

Marx wrote back to Engels on December 19, 1860 -

“This is the book which contains the basis in natural history for our view.”

The Origin of Species became the natural cause basis for Marx’s emerging class struggle movement. In a letter to comrade Ferdinand Lassalle, on January 16, 1861, Marx wrote -

“Darwin’s book is very important and serves me as a basis in natural science for the class struggle in history.”

Marx inscribed “sincere admirer” in Darwin’s copy of Marx’s first volume of Das Kapital in 1867. The importance of the theory of evolution for Communism was critical. In Das Kapital, Marx wrote –

“Darwin has interested us in the history of Nature’s Technology, i.e., in the formation of the organs of plants and animals, which organs serve as instruments of production for sustaining life. Does not the history of the productive organs of man, of organs that are the material basis of all social organisation, deserve equal attention?”

To acknowledge Darwin’s influence, Marx asked to dedicate Das Kapital to Darwin. However, Darwin graciously replied -

“Dear sir; I thank you for the honor that you have done me by sending me your great work on Capital and I heartily wish that I was more worthy to receive it, but understanding more of the deep and important subject of political economy. Though our studies have been so different, I believe that we both earnestly desire the extension of knowledge and that this in the long run is sure to add to the happiness of Mankind. I remain, Dear Sir, Yours faithfully, Charles Darwin.”

At Karl Marx’s funeral in Highgate Cemetery in London, Engels spoke at Marx’s graveside March 1883 –

“Just as Darwin discovered the law of evolution in organic nature, so Marx discovered the law of evolution in human history”

The American researcher Conway Zirckle explains why the founders of Communism immediately accepted Darwin’s theory -

“Marx and Engels accepted evolution almost immediately after Darwin published The Origin of Species. Evolution, of course, was just what the founders of communism needed to explain how mankind could have come into being without the intervention of any supernatural force, and consequently it could be used to bolster the foundations of their materialistic philosophy.”

Darwin had an undeniable and profound influence on the works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in the development of Communism. Although not intended by Darwin, the effect of the theory of evolution emerged as the single most significant social engineering movement of the twentieth century.

Speculations run wild on what the twentieth century would have looked like without the theory of evolution and Karl Marx. What’s your speculation?

Charles Darwin was born on February 12, 1809. The Parish Church of St. Chad’s Register of Christenings and Burials gives the following entry on 15 November 1809 “Darwin Cha^s. Rob^t. Son of Dr. Rob^t. & M^rs. Susannah his wife/born Feb^r. 12 ^th.”

St. Chad’s was a parish of the Church of England. Darwin’s religious heritage, however, was largely rooted in Unitarianism. Darwin’s father, Robert Waring Darwin, and mother, Susannah, only maintained cultural and social ties with the Church of England. Of their six children, only the two sons, Charles and Erasmus, were baptized in the Church of England.

As a young boy, Charles Darwin was taught at home by his mother assisted by Rev. George Case, pastor of the Unitarian Chapel on High Street (see picture). After Susannah’s death, at the age of eight Darwin entered the Shrewsbury Grammar School with affiliations to the chapel.

Darwin’s mother, Susannah, was the grand-daughter of Josiah Wedgwood who was one of the founder members of the Unitarian movement. Free-thinking was the cornerstone of the movement. The Unitarians rejected the validity of the Bible, specifically the concept of the trinity, and the basic tenet of Christianity: Jesus is the son of God.

Charles Darwin’s grandfather Erasmus, from his father’s side, was a also a free-thinker. Erasmus published the book entitled Zoönomia that foreshadowed The Origin of Species.

In Zoönomia, Erasmus espoused the basic tenets of evolution: “Would it be too bold to imagine that all warm-blooded animals have arisen from one living filament, which the great First Cause endued with animality… possessing the faculty of continuing to improve by its own inherent activity, and of delivering down these improvements by generation to its posterity, world without end?”

What Darwin’s father, Robert Darwin, thought about God remains a mystery. There is no record of his father regularly accompanying the family to the Unitarian Chapel or the Church of England.

Eventually, a memorial was placed in the Unitarian Chapel on High Street bearing the following inscription:—”To the memory of Charles Eobert Darwin, author of the ‘Origin of Species,’ born in Shrewsbury. February 12th, 1809. In early life a member of and constant worshipper in this Church. Died April 19th,1882.”

A one point, Darwin stated – “I did not then in the least doubt the strict and literal truth of every word in the Bible, I soon persuaded myself that our Creed must be fully accepted.”

How Darwin arrived at that point?