Stop the Presses! Human Evolution Falsified!

Human bones found in Morocco undermine almost everything that has been taught about human evolution since Darwin. But is that news? Happens every year, doesn’t it?

This news is so hot, we have to get the word out now and wait for a fuller analysis later. Evolutionary paleoanthropology is in big trouble, if a new find in Morocco is as important as the news outlets are making it out to be. Announced in Nature this week, the discoverers are dating bones from five individuals at over 300,000 Darwin Years old – over 100,000 years older than when they thought modern humans first began to emerge. And it was found in northern Africa – not at Olduvai Gorge or in some South African cave where most of the attention has been focused. Added to that, the discoverers found stone tools and chemical evidence of cooking, and are saying these people probably lived all over Africa at the same time!

numerous features of the face, jaw and teeth were almost indistinguishable from those of modern-day humans

A modern human skull this old mangles the evolutionary timetable about the emergence of Homo erectus, Homo naledi, Neanderthals and most of the other pop icons of human evolution, squeezing evolutionists like a vise into an untenable position. Overstated? Look at what reporters are saying:

• Our species may be 150,000 years older than we thought (New Scientist). Despite its early date, the skull shows a face “that the researchers say is virtually indistinguishable from H. sapiens.”
• Modern humans evolved 100,000 years earlier than we thought – and not just in east Africa (The Conversation). “Taken together, these methods indicate that Homo Sapiens – modern humans – lived in the far northwestern corner of the African continent much earlier than previously known,” says Matthew Skinner, part of the team publishing the find.
• Scientists now believe modern humans emerged at least 100,000 years earlier than previously thought (BBC News). The video clip also indicates that modern humans were living all over Africa at the time.
• Oldest Fossils of Our Species Push Back Origin of Modern Humans (Live Science). Charles Q. Choi reports, “In one study, computer models and hundreds of 3D X-ray measurements of the fossils suggested that numerous features of the face, jaw and teeth were almost indistinguishable from those of modern-day humans. Their faces were those ‘of people you could cross on the street today,’ Hublin told Live Science.”
• In Photos: Oldest Homo Sapiens Fossils Ever Found (Live Science). Jeanna Brynner displays 10 photos of the discovery site and the bones.
• 300,000-year-old skulls that look shockingly like ours could rewrite the human origin story (Business Insider). “These dates were a big wow,” Hublin said on a recent call with reporters.
• Ancient Fossils from Morocco Mess Up Modern Human Origins (Scientific American). Kate Wong says, “In a way, far from tidily solving the puzzle of our origins, the Jebel Irhoud discoveries add to mounting evidence that the dawning of our kind was a very complicated affair.”

The discovery and analysis was published in Nature in two papers:

• Jean-Jacques Hublin et al, “New fossils from Jebel Irhoud, Morocco and the pan-African origin of Homo sapiens,” Nature 546, 289–292, (08 June 2017) doi:10.1038/nature22336.
• Richter et al, “The age of the hominin fossils from Jebel Irhoud, Morocco, and the origins of the Middle Stone Age,” Nature 5 46, 293–296 (08 June 2017) doi:10.1038/nature22335.

In the same issue, two commentaries discuss the implications:

• Ewen Callaway, “Oldest Homo sapiens fossil claim rewrites our species’ history,” Nature. “Remains from Morocco dated to 315,000 years ago push back our species’ origins by 100,000 years — and suggest we didn’t evolve only in East Africa.”
• Chris Stringer and Julia Galway-Witham, “Paleoanthropology: On the Origin of Our Species,” Nature. “The discovery in Morocco of the earliest known H. sapiens fossils might revise our ideas about human evolution in Africa.”

The articles give clues as to how hardcore evolutionists will attempt to rescue Darwin from this discovery. They will attempt to find a mosaic of primitive and modern features in the skulls and bones. They will claim that only some modern human attributes evolved that far back; others had a ways to go (for instance, the face is modern, but they have an “elongated skull shape” as if that matters). And they will continue to assume that the brains of these people—not available for testing—were not fully modern yet.

The web of belief about human evolution is too strong to break under any conceivable falsifying evidence. With Darwin Flubber in their explanatory toolkit, evolutionists have flexibility to stretch and shrink parts of the web of belief without giving it up. It’s happened before – many times. Almost every year, some new bone or skull has the press telling us, ‘everything you know is wrong’ about human evolution. Yet the story goes on.

If these people (yes, let’s call them people) were really using tools and cooking food, they were not primitive. If these people had spread out all over Africa, they were not numbskulls. Consider the absurdity of thinking that people with those skills, and with anatomically modern skeletons, walking upright and probably communicating with language, just sat there slowly evolving but never launching civilization for another 290,000 years! It beggars credibility to imagine such a thing. That is 30 times all of modern history, in which Homo sapiens went from straw huts to the moon. In all that time, not a single one of them ever thought of building a house, planting a farm and riding a horse? Not a single bright young person invented the wheel? Look— they controlled fire, built tools, migrated long distances, and were probably better hunters than most of us. How can anyone fall for such a stupid story? The Genesis account makes a lot more sense: people acting like people always do, right from the beginning.

We have to start emphasizing this point more, and pushing back on the Darwin Party propaganda machine that refuses to take falsification for an answer. They call themselves Brights and imagine themselves smarter (see ENST) than “religious people” (their dismissive label for all Darwin skeptics). Well, I’ve had it.  I am angry. I’ve been covering this charade for 16 years now. Year after year, these know-nothings tell us that everything they previously believed is wrong. But do they repent and apologize? No; they just replace the old myth with a new myth. All that Java Man stuff was wrong. All that Nebraska Man stuff was wrong. Piltdown Man was a pure hoax. All those National Geographic covers from the 1960s are forgotten news. All the Lucy stuff of the 1970s is old hat. Skull 1470, Nutcracker Man, Handy Man, nobody talks about them any more. The myths from the 80s, 90s, and early 2000 stories were all wrong: from Orrorin to Ida to Homo whatever. Now, this announcement takes the cake, sweeping away all the 2016 stories into the dustbin.

If we don’t get together and call their bluff as the perennial confabulators they are, and put some shame into their faces, we have nobody to blame but ourselves for the continuance of the Darwin myth. Maybe my idea of calling these people ‘historical racists’ will help. They think they are intellectually superior to dead human beings who can’t defend themselves. But they turn around and believe that their rationality is the result of glorified monkey convictions! Such self-refuting nonsense should rule them unfit for rational discussion. The Darwin Party is guilty of fake science. Take the offense for once, and drum these know-nothings out of academia and the media.

Update 6/09/17: Todd Wood on his blog downplays the importance of this fossil for creationism, saying that “they don’t really require any major shift in our understanding of the origin of humanity.” This is primarily because he considers all the Homo fossils as true humans, including Homo erectus and Neanderthals, which date back even further in the evolutionary timeline. In his post, though, he doesn’t address the absurdity of the evolutionist story that fully modern humans failed to civilize for a third of a million years. That’s what, in my opinion, needs outrage by all people with common sense, creationist or not.