Did Humans Walk With Their Alleged Ancestors?
Recent digs in the ‘cradle of mankind’
cast serious doubt on the evolutionary
‘March of Progress’ we’ve all been taught
How the Increase in Fossils Has Undermined Human Evolution
New Field Research Supports this Conclusion
by Jerry Bergman, PhD
For almost a century, when only a few fossils existed, seemingly convincing arguments for human evolution were common. However, as more fossils were discovered, those arguments began to lose their force, resulting in the rejection of many of the most persuasive arguments—arguments once universally heralded as proof of human evolution. New findings published in late July 2025 make the story of human evolution even more dubious.
One reason early claims about human evolution have lost credibility is that they were often based on a single fossil. This is problematic because a lone specimen—whether classified as a human ancestor or a transitional form—could be an atypical example of its kind. To draw reliable conclusions about a species, a broader collection of fossils is needed.
Consider Neanderthal man. In 1856, the first fossils identified as Neanderthal remains were discovered in Germany’s Neander Valley, giving them their name. Until recently, illustrations of Neanderthals were frequently presented as supposed evidence for human evolution. However, these reconstructions were often based on limited evidence and shaped by evolutionary assumptions. Here is one such illustration of Neanderthals that was used to “prove” human evolution in many textbooks and scientific journals.
One such illustration of Neanderthals that was used to “prove” human evolution in many textbooks and scientific journals is shown here. From Scientific American, May 1923, p. 302.
The above graphic published in 1923 was used by The American Museum of Natural History to illustrate human evolution.
The first picture in the American Museum of Natural History illustration pictured above was Java Man. The evidence for Java Man consists only of a single femur and a skullcap shown below.
Top and side view of Java Man skullcap.
The bones called “Java Man” were discovered in 1891 by Eugène Dubois near the village of Trinil in Java, Indonesia. As more similar fossils were discovered, Java Man was rejected as a “missing link” by paleontologists.
The second picture in the diagram, Piltdown Man, is a well-known hoax that fooled paleoanthropologists for 50 years. A huge embarrassment to science, it has been quietly dropped from the story of human evolution.
Neanderthal man is the third picture from the left. However, as more Neanderthal fossils were discovered and studied, it became clear that they were fully human—simply another distinct human people group. Below, a modern picture of Neanderthals based on actual fossils is compared to a modern Caucasian. Clearly they are both recognizable as fully human despite differences in body build.
Cro-Magnon Man
The final figure in the American Museum of Natural History illustration above depicts Cro-Magnon Man. The first Cro-Magnon fossils were discovered in 1868 at a rock shelter called Abri de Cro-Magnon in Les Eyzies, France. Initially, Cro-Magnon Man was considered part of the evolutionary progression to modern humans due to certain “ape-like” features. These included a robust build, broader faces, more prominent brow ridges, and larger teeth than those found in most living human populations. However, as with Java Man and Neanderthal Man, the discovery of additional fossils has led to the recognition that Cro-Magnon was a fully modern human—simply another human population with distinct physical traits.
The final image in the American Museum of Natural History illustration—the familiar progression from ape to modern human pictured below—is by far the most widely recognized depiction of human evolution. It has become one of the most powerful and enduring icons of evolutionary theory. This popular depiction, though, has been increasingly challenged and largely rejected in light of numerous new fossil discoveries.[1]
The result of accumulating fossil evidence is the revised depiction shown below—a tree that illustrates not a linear progression, but four distinct primate families. This grouping, emphasizing diversity rather than evolutionary sequence, is often referred to as the “bush” or “cluster” model.
A New Discovery Reported in 2025
New fossils found this year further challenge the progression theory while providing support for the cluster based view of human origins.[2] The fossils were found in Drimolen, South Africa— an area officially known as the Cradle of Humankind.
This 470-square-kilometer land area is home to the largest known concentration of human ancestral remains anywhere in the world. A climate-controlled vault at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) in Johannesburg houses 3500 hominin fossils collected over the past century from this area. Given the record of fossil finds in East Africa, some evolutionary paleoanthropologists now speculate that the Drimolen region may be the setting where most evolutionary transitions occurred, including the transition from Australopithecus to modern humans.
The paleontologists’ work site at Drimolen. From Ann Gibbons, 2025.
Details of the Find
The exploration team was headed by University of Toulouse paleoanthropologist José Braga, a leading expert in this field.[3] It began as a result of digging in rock locations that had once formed the floor of a cave. The team first located a well-preserved hominin tooth, specifically a molar. Soon after, a piece of a baby’s upper jaw was found, which proved to be a perfect fit for the previously found molar.
A year later, Braga’s team uncovered another baby’s jawbone, which was from a very different species: a baby Paranthropus robustus (Paranthropus means “beside man”), a short, robust hominin with massive molars and jaws.[4] The specimen’s identity was judged to be an early member of our own genus, Homo, but see footnote.
Then, a few meters away in other sediments, they found a third hominin genus, Australopithecus, which they labeled as upright-walking apes with brains slightly larger than chimps.
Watch and share the Short Reel about this article! Click to view.
In conclusion, so far the team has found “three kinds of hominins, including a species that was our direct ancestor, living in the same swampy valley…. the fossils’ close proximity, in the same cave or within a short walk, suggests these creatures might have met, or at least been aware of one another. …. They were both on this landscape for such an extensive period of time, there’s no way they didn’t interact with each other.”[5]
As of this date, this site has now yielded fossils from at least ten juveniles and nine adults, which evolutionists speculate lived roughly two million years ago, “opening a window on the diversity of ancient hominins.”[6]
University of Copenhagen biologist Enrico Cappellini deciphered the amino acid sequences in the tooth enamel from four P. robustus individuals from one site. The enamelin protein varied by one amino acid in the individuals evaluated, suggesting it was yet another subspecies of Paranthropus. Gibbons added:
Multiple genera also appear nine kilometers away at Drimolen, where Baker, Herries, and students at their annual field school are excavating. The students discovered pieces that fit together to form a skullcap of a juvenile member of H. erectus (“erect man”), a direct ancestor of our species. Just 10 centimeters away in the very same layer, the team found teeth of P. robustus. “They were alongside each other,” Herries says. They have since found the most complete cranium of P. robustus known and many other hominin fossils, plus more than 100 bone tools, though they can’t be sure who made them.[7]
Interpretations and Problems
Assuming the descriptions in this report were accurate, they concluded that our own genus Homo was hobnobbing with our putative ape ancestor, Australopithecus. This is a conclusion that creationists would also accept. However, this interpretation creates a big problem for evolutionists. Why are fossils of creatures that were claimed to be evolutionary human ancestors (Australopithecus) found near fossils of modern humans? This should not be!
Attempting to defuse the obvious and problematic implications of the Drimolen find, paleoanthropologist Zeresenay Alemseged of the University of Chicago opined that “Just because I find you and an Egyptian in the same layer doesn’t mean you saw each other.”[8]
The Drimolen team itself admits the common dating problem, writing that
only precise dating can prove the hominins actually overlapped. Researchers have struggled to date many South African cave sites, where the stratigraphy is notoriously complex, because cave roofs collapse and animals or groundwater disturb layers. At Drimolen, he concludes the fossils date to between 1.95 million and 2.04 million years ago. Those dates make H. erectus fossils at Drimolen the world’s oldest…The dating does leave wiggle room of tens of thousands of years. At Kromdraai and Drimolen, for example, the dates can’t resolve whether the fossils of Homo and Paranthropus were deposited “within a week or 90,000 years.”
This problem was further elucidated by paleoanthropologist Gary Schwartz of Arizona State University, who wrote: “One of our biggest questions is how the heck do we have three different hominins all living within what we can comfortably say would be the average daily range of one chimpanzee group?”[9] Simply put, this find is the opposite of what evolutionary theory predicts. Evolutionary theory requires that human ancestors existed many thousands or millions of years before modern humans. Therefore, if evolution were true, the fossil record should reflect a clear, time-separated progression of human and pre-human species, but that is not what we find.
Summary
Rather than an evolutionary progression from ape to man, fossil discoveries at the Cradle of Humankind—particularly at Drimolen—reveal that a variety of both claimed ape ancestors of humans and actual humans lived close to the same time and in the same location. This makes it difficult to see how scientists can claim these fossils are “missing links” of human evolution. In fact, the coexistence of apes and modern humans in the same region is not unique to the past—it still occurs today. As Gibbons concluded, the coexistence of different apes and humans is “beyond dispute,” noting that “one genus—ours—persisted and the others eventually died out.”[10]
Would this be a more accurate caption? “Three men take their pet apes for a walk.”
References
[1] Bergman, Jerry. “The Ape-to-Human Progression: The Most Common Icon is a Fraud.” Journal of Creation 23(3):16-20, 2009; Bergman, Jerry. “New Monotreme Fossils Fail to Support Evolution. Diversity discovered, but not an evolutionary progression as Darwinism requires.” https://crev.info/2024/06/monotreme-evolution/, 26 June 2024; Bergman, Jerry. “Time to Unlearn the Evolutionary March of Human Progress. New discovery adds more evidence against the human evolution progression.” https://crev.info/2024/12/time-to-unlearn-the-evolutionary-march-of-human-progress/, 4 December 2024.
[2] Gibbons, Ann. “The Riddle of Coexistence.” Science https://www.science.org/content/article/three-ancient-human-relatives-once-shared-same-valley-did-they-meet-and-compete, 24 July 2025.
[3] Braga, J., and J. Moggi-Cecchi. “Infant craniofacial diversity in Early Pleistocene Homo.” Nature Communications 16(4796) . https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-59734-x, 2025.
[4] Note: This label is controversial. “Paranthropus is a genus of extinct hominin which contains two widely accepted species: P. robustus and P. boisei. However, the validity of Paranthropus is contested, and it is sometimes considered to be synonymous with Australopithecus.” Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paranthropus.
[5] Gibbons, 2025.
[6] Gibbons, 2025.
[7] Gibbons, 2025.
[8] Gibbons, 2025.
[9] Gibbons, 2025.
[10] Gibbons, 2025.
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.