Lucy Worshiped Like a Religious Icon
The adulation given to the
‘Lucy’ bones overlooks
big problems with the fossil
by Jerry Bergman, PhD
When visiting churches in Europe, one soon is introduced to the sacred bones of the ancient saints. This adulation of sacred bones is mocked by many secularists and condemned by many Protestant sects. The focus of one reference written by a leading atheist in 2008 was the foolishness and ignorance of worshiping icons, including the many bone fragments.[1]
Not only religion, but Science also has its own sacred bone icons. A leading icon of Science in our age is the collection of bone fragments of ‘Lucy’—Australopithecus afarensis—the supposed early ancestor of modern man. In paleoanthropologist Bernard Woods’ words, Lucy is paleoanthropology’s superstar.[2] One example of her icon status is that her bones are securely protected
Inside a specially constructed safe at the National Museum of Ethiopia in Addis Ababa [where] sit the fragile remains of the world’s most celebrated human ancestor. She was once a hardy survivor in an unforgiving environment, but now her partial skeleton receives round-the-clock protection in a temperature-controlled setting.[3]
The reasons for her worldwide fame and its importance were explained by Bower as follows:
On the 50th anniversary of her partial skeleton’s discovery, Lucy commands much more name recognition than other fossils from humankind’s evolutionary family, known as hominids or, increasingly, hominins. A look back at Lucy’s story reveals how she has remained atop the hominid A list. In this case, geologic good fortune, skilled scientific scrutiny, and an inspired musical reference helped to turn an ancient relative into a household name.[4]
One of the most honored ways a human can receive acknowledgment is to be featured on a nation’s postage stamps. A Facebook website on illustrations of human evolution on stamps has 3.4 thousand members.6
A few examples of Lucy on postage stamps. From Wikimedia commons, Paleophilatelie.eu.
These stamps have resulted in the exposure of over 1 billion persons to Darwin and human evolution. These stamps also illustrate that Lucy’s fame is worldwide: “her evolutionary stature and cross-cultural appeal are huge. Today, half a century after the discovery of her partial skeleton, people everywhere know Lucy.”7 Her adulation is so great that she is prominently featured on postage stamps from Camaros, Cambodia, Central Africa Republic, Cuba, Djibouti, Ethiopia, France, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Mozambique, Niger, North Korea, Palau, Suisse, Tchad, Togo, Uzbekistan, and other countries. One example of the adulation of her bone fragments include the following precedent by an American President:
When the former president Barack Obama visited the museum to view the bones of Lucy, below a picture of the smiling ex-president was the following caption: “Lucy is so renowned that then-President Barack Obama viewed the bones during a trip to Ethiopia in 2015. Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn stands to Obama’s left.[5]
Pictures of Darwin have also been pictured on over 100 postage stamps since 1935. Sixty countries have now published postage stamps picturing him, many depicting pictures of human evolution alongside of Darwin.5
Problems in the Credibility of Lucy
One would think that this important discovery, honored as the most famous evolutionary icon ever discovered, would be close to beyond reproach. Given that Lucy was dated as having lived 3.2 million years ago, she would have required extensive digging to reach this early part of the fossil record. Actually, the find literally involved a couple of young guys strolling around in the desert who just happened to notice a bone sticking out of the ground. Specifically,
Paleoanthropologist Donald Johanson and graduate student Tom Gray spent the morning of November 24, 1974, mapping and surveying possible fossil-bearing spots in a desolate region of Ethiopia. Walking back to their Land Rover through a gully at a site known as Hadar, Johanson noticed a forearm bone sticking out of the ground. A closer look confirmed that the bone came from a hominid.[6]
The other bone fragments were soon uncovered, also without much digging. So far Hadar, where they were digging, has yielded about 90 percent of the nearly 600 fossil bone fragments attributed to the Lucy species. Johanson’s logical conclusion is that they were found near where she died not too long ago in the area where they found her:
Johanson and Gray gingerly removed several more skeletal pieces from loose soil nearby. After two more weeks, the researchers and their colleagues had uncovered several hundred bone fragments — a big haul considering finding one ancient hominid skullcap or partial jaw can require weeks or months of careful excavation.[7]
The theory about how she got where they found her involves postulating a massive flood that carried her body far away from where she died
into a sandy channel where a lake quickly formed. The burial under moist lake sediment kept her fossilized bones in relatively good shape. And the fossils were near enough to the surface that, much later, after the lake had dried up, they began to emerge from eroding, sandy sediment.[8]
Fully ape: artwork of Lucy, Smithsonian Museum (DFC)
In fact, long term dry conditions are required for bone preservation, especially one 3.2 million years old, not watery environments. The “remains of biological organisms typically experience higher rates of decomposition in areas with high relative humidity…. Only a very small percentage of all living organisms become part of the fossil record.”[9] If the water theory is true, preservation in the universal solvent called water, even for a fraction of 3.2 million years, is out of the question. Water will break down almost all known materials, even plastics, although it may take hundreds of years.[10]
Furthermore, the warmer the water, such as exists in the Hadar region of East Africa, the shorter the time required to break down the bones.[11] Other questions the articles extolling Lucy that were covered include such basic events as how she died:
Scientists continue to debate how Lucy died and whether scavenging by hyenas and other animals, trampling or other factors explain her skeleton’s missing pieces. But what remained popped out just enough from Hadar’s surface to get the fossil party started.[12]
One revealing admission was Lucy’s “partial skeleton revealed enough anatomy to reshape debates about hominid evolution without supplying easy answers. Five decades later, those disputes continue.”[13] The fact that one partial skeleton has revolutionized paleoanthropology is evidence of how much of what paleoanthropologists assume is true was based on very fragmentary evidence. Even the central question, the most important question, which is “did she walk upright?”[14] is debated:
scientific onlookers disagree about whether Lucy’s long-extinct species mixed tree climbing with walking… Scientists have argued for more than 30 years about whether A. afarensis was built mainly for walking or possessed physical attributes suitable for ascending trees as well. Shoulder blades of a fossil child discovered in 2000 in Dikika, Ethiopia, indicate that Lucy’s crew could indeed scale trees beginning early in life.[15]
Lucy Lived with Modern Animals
Another problem was all around Lucy were numerous modern animals. The discoverer, Donald Johanson, writes: the rugged landscape where Lucy was found was “chock-full of mammal fossils that erode out of the hillsides over time.”[16] Much more needs to be revealed about these modern mammals, which includes rodents, elephants, rhinos, hippos, monkeys, horses, antelopes, and pigs, most of which were modern animals very similar to those living today.
Even some leading paleontologists have expressed major reservations about Lucy. Professor Bernard Wood listed reasons for his concerns about the significance of Lucy including that although she is “one of the most complete early-hominin fossils in terms of the number of bones preserved, even if the quality of their preservation leaves something to be desired.”[17] In his American Scientist article, Wood added that there is
reason to think that A. afarensis is a good candidate to be an ancestor of modern humans, but I’m not yet convinced. The good news is that we have pieces of nearly all of Lucy’s six long bones; the bad news is that the missing parts make estimating the maximum length of each limb and its segments (the arm/forearm and thigh/leg) a scientific guessing game.”[18]
Conclusions
Lucy, although widely regarded as one of the most important pieces of evidence for human evolution from some putative apelike creature, an enormous amount of debate exists even about the core issues. Could she walk upright most of the time or only in short leaps such as some primates do today. How human was she? Or was she a normal ape, as claimed by some including the creation scientists at Answers in Genesis? If this is the star case evolutionists have for evolution than all of the other claimed examples present even worse cases. If Lucy was given a D- as her grade in support of evolution, that means all of the other fossils touted in support of evolution would have a failing grade of F.
Of the many examples of claims links between Lucy and modern humans, Lucy is the number one icon. All the rest are generally considered less supported possibilities. From Wikimedia Commons.
Postscript
An article in a Journal The Conversation written by John Gowlett after my article was submitted attempts to trace the evolution of humans from non-humans to modern humans. He illustrates the twists and turns of the story, a story that includes attempts to explain this history based on speculation. Here is one example of the degree of speculation in his article (see the italicized words in the following quote). He says that the human
large brain is energetically expensive, it must have had evolutionary drivers. One of the most appealing is the “social brain hypothesis”, whose core idea is that in some environments, ecological survival favoured larger groups. We know from regular stone tool transport distances of 5-10 km, and occasional ones of 20-30km, that hominins were ranging much further than apes even 2 million years ago. The social management of such groups is very demanding, and may have been a spur towards developing larger brains. The acceleration in change that is such a feature of modern life seems to have started around half a million years ago.[a]
Ed. note: Gowlett’s article is less a scientific presentation than a restatement of evolutionary dogma. In the quote above, Gowlett shows that his belief in the creative power of evolution drives his speculations. We have large, powerful brains, he says; therefore natural selection must have created them! The perhapsimaybecouldness index in his article is off the charts. To see how ridiculous it is to believe that the human brain is a product of mutations and unguided processes (the Stuff Happens Law), watch this Illustra Media video, “Three Pounds of Wonder.“
[a] Gowlett, J. 2024. The whole story of human evolution – from ancient apes via Lucy to us – in one long read. The Conversation. November 25. https://theconversation.com/the-whole-story-of-human-evolution-from-ancient-apes-via-lucy-to-us-in-one-long-read-243960
Recommended: Watch Dr Carl Werner relate to David Rives what he heard leading supporters of Lucy say about the knee joint that supposedly proved Lucy walked upright.
References
[1] Joshi, S.T., Icons of Unbelief: Atheists, Agnostics, and Secularists, Greenwood Publishing Group, Westport, CT, 2008..
[2] Wood, B., “Paleoanthropology’s superstar,” American Scientist 112(6):326-327, November-December 2024.
[3] Bower, B., “Fossil superstar: Discovered 50 years ago, Lucy remains an evolutionary icon,” Science News 206(8):19-22, p. 19, 2024.
[4] Bower, 2024, p. 19; ref.3, emphasis added.
[5] Bower, 2024, p. 22; ref. 3.
[6] Bower, 2024, p. 19; ref. 3.
[7] Bower, 2024, p. 19; ref. 3.
[8] Bower, 2024, p. 19; ref. 3.
[9] Santucci, V., and Kenworthy, J., “Monitoring in situ paleontological resources” in Young, R., and Norby, L., Geological Monitoring, Geological Society of America, Boulder, CO, pp. 189–204, 2009.
[10] Harrison, R.M., and Hester, R.E., Plastics and the Environment, Royal Society of Chemistry. London, UK, 2018.
[11] Ashworth, H., “How long does it take for a body to decompose at sea?,” Science Focus, https://www.sciencefocus.com/the-human-body/how-long-does-it-take-for-a-body-to-decompose-at-sea#:~:text=Putrefaction%20and%20scavenging%20creatures%20will,the%20acidity%20of%20the%20water, 2023.
[12] Bower, 2024, p. 19; ref. 3.
[13] Bower, 2024, p. 19; ref. 3.
[14] Johanson, D., and White, T.D., “A systematic assessment of early African hominids,” Science 203:321, doi: 10.1126/science.10438, 26 January 1979.
[15] Bower, B., “Shoulder fossil may put Lucy’s kind up a tree. Contested analysis portrays ancient hominid as frequent climber,” Science News 1 December 2012.
[16] Johanson, D., and Haile-Selassie, Y. “How the famous Lucy fossil revolutionized the study of human origins. Half a century after its discovery, this iconic fossil remains central to our understanding of human origins.” Scientific American, November 2024.
[17] Wood, 2024; ref. 2.
[18] Wood, 2024; ref. 2.
Dr. Jerry Bergman has taught biology, genetics, chemistry, biochemistry, anthropology, geology, and microbiology for over 40 years at several colleges and universities including Bowling Green State University, Medical College of Ohio where he was a research associate in experimental pathology, and The University of Toledo. He is a graduate of the Medical College of Ohio, Wayne State University in Detroit, the University of Toledo, and Bowling Green State University. He has over 1,900 publications in 14 languages and 40 books and monographs. His books and textbooks that include chapters that he authored are in over 1,800 college libraries in 27 countries. So far over 80,000 copies of the 60 books and monographs that he has authored or co-authored are in print. For more articles by Dr Bergman, see his Author Profile.
Note: CEH will be off for the Thanksgiving Holiday tomorrow, November 28.