"No 'Missing Link' Between Animals and Humans"
The as-yet-unsuccessful search for the "missing link" between ape-men
and modern human beings is well known. However, what is less widely known
is that there is another important "missing link" that cannot be found:
the animal that formed the alleged link between Old World monkeys and the
early ape that was supposed to be the ancestor of all ape-men, cave-men,
and full-fledged human beings. This link between the animal kingdom and
man has never been found. For a long time, an African ape named Proconsul
africanus was touted as the connection between monkeys and the branch
of apes that eventually would give way to mankind, a branch known as the
hominids. Paleontologist Louis S. B. Leakey, one of the foremost fossil-hunters
of the twentieth century and a champion of evolution, wrote of this ape:
An especially important creature was Proconsul africanus. This,
many authorities once concluded, gave us an indication of the common stock
for apes and men. We have good forelimb bones for it, and in 1948 on Rusinga
Island Mary [Leakey] discovered a skull, the first nearly complete specimen
ever found. Its canine teeth suggest an ape’s, while its forehead reminds
us of our own. It seems to me, however, to be neither an ancestral ape,
nor yet an ancestor of man, but a side branch with characteristics of both
stocks (L. Leakey 166).
Another candidate for the "missing link" between humankind and the animal
kingdom was Aegyptopithecus, "Egyptian Ape." Although this ape is
being promoted by evolutionist Dr. Elwyn Simons of Duke University as "the
oldest creature we know that is in the direct ancestry of man" (Weaver
581), the gap between this creature and the ape-man into which it allegedly
evolved (Australopithecus) is too gigantic to be gapped, and intermediate
ancestors between Aegyptopithecus and our supposed ape-like ancestors
have all disappointed, as National Geographic points out:
A gulf of mystery separates Aegyptopithecus at 33 million years
[ago] and Australopithecus at four million. Candidates for intermediate
ancestors that have been proposed at one time or another include two from
Kenya known as Proconsul and Kenyapithecus; two from India,
Pakistan, China, and Kenya called Ramapithecus and Sivapithecus;
and two from Europe called Rudapithecus and Dryopithecus.
These apelike creatures lived at various times between about 8 and 20 million
years ago.
Despite much debate and speculation, none of these primates has been
finally accepted as a human progenitor. Until more fossils — and more
complete specimens — are found, the long geologic epoch known as the Miocene
(24 million to 5 million years ago) will remain a largely veiled chapter
in hominid evolution (Ibid. 581-582 [emphasis added]).
Evolutionists have admitted that the remains of the ape which supposedly
linked man with animal will never be found. This creature, which is reputed
to form the common stock for apes and hominids (humans), is a phantom about
which evolutionists know nothing. Louis Leakey’s daughter-in-law Meave
Leakey, head of the paleontology department of the National Museums of
Kenya, admits:
Hominids and African apes share a common ancestor. No one knows what
that animal looked like....We do not know why they became bipedal.... (M.
Leakey 42)
National Geographic similarly commented:
Two obvious questions: Who were the ancestors before four million
years ago? And what was it that induced the first hominids to forsake an
arboreal [tree-dwelling] existence and become terrestrial? The answers
are eagerly sought, but they are still clouded by sketchy evidence and
controversy (Weaver 579).
The "common ancestor" of apes and men can never be found, admit evolutionists.
The Dallas Morning News, reporting on an ape fossil (Ankarapithecus
meteai) which is believed to be our ancestor, remarked:
The actual common ancestors of humans and apes are thought to have
lived in Africa at the time that Ankarapithecus meteai occupied
Turkey. But fossils of those creatures may never be found, [Harvard anthropologist]
Dr. [David] Pilbeam said. Fossil-preserving rocks of the proper age simply
aren’t exposed on the ground surface anywhere in Africa (Crenson 8D).
Even Dr. Simons, who touted Aegyptopithecus as the common ancestor
of apes and man, refers to the fossil proofs of the first ape as "these
bare damaged evidences" (Weaver 563). Despite this overt lack of proof
for one of the most vital, elemental steps on the alleged ladder of human
evolution, supporters of Darwin’s theory continue to present it as incontrovertible
truth to an unsuspecting public.
References:
Crenson, Matt. "Fossil face of ape may provide clues on human origins,"
Dallas Morning News, 29 July 1996.
Leakey, Louis S. B. Animals of East Africa (Washington, DC: The
National Geographic Society, 1973).
Leakey, Meave. "The Dawn of Humans: The Farthest Horizon," National
Geographic 188, no. 3 (1995).
Weaver, Kenneth F. "Stones, Bones, and Early Man: The Search for Our
Ancestors," National Geographic 168, no. 5 (1985).
Gerard Wakefield holds his master’s degree in anthropology and archaeology
from Harvard University. He is the author of the e-book: The Bible Encounters Modern Science,
available at: www.1stbooks.com.
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