Where does “prehistoric man” fit into the Bible’s history?

The Bible says that God created man in His own image. Where does “prehistoric man” enter the picture? Did this kind of person roam the Earth before God created Adam and Eve?

The idea that there were “prehistoric men” before Adam and Eve comes from those who do not understand the nature of the evidence. These creatures are often creations of men and not of God.

Fortunately many Christian teachers have been instructed by creationists who are better trained than they in this kind of evidence. Few Bible-believing teachers offer this explanation anymore. That there was an earlier race of creatures is mainly held by theistic evolutionists today. They often teach that it was out of this population of hominids that God chose two to be the first humans.

The conclusion that such a race existed is unsatisfactory, as far as the Bible goes. It is also scientifically unacceptable. Scripture teaches that sin came into the world by Adam and that it was sin that resulted in death. St. Paul makes clear that this state of affairs extends to the entire creation. To say that there was an earlier race of hominids living and dying before Adam’s creation attacks the redemptive work of the Second Adam. This is because Scripture ties the first and the Second Adams together.

If an earlier race existed, so did death, and so did sin. If Scripture is wrong on the source of sin and its result in death, how do we know it is right in the other things it says about our salvation?

Genesis, taken as literal history, is the perfect basis for St. Paul’s words about the first and Second Adam. Genesis mentions neither an earlier race, nor an earlier world. This silence offers no comfort for the “Christian evolutionist.” Genesis clearly says that six days after the universe appeared, creatures that were completely and fully human walked the Earth.

Further, Genesis rules out the claim that man was formed from earlier species of animals. Genesis says that man was created from the dust of the earth.

Scriptures’ history and message of salvation from sin and its consequences leave no room for an earlier race of hominids. So what about the “scientific evidence”?

There are no scientific facts that compel us to accept the existence of “prehistoric man.” Are all the “hominids” that populate the various textbooks and popular science magazines real creatures? Some of them were made by God and some were made up by men.

One of the biggest frauds is” Lucy.” The scientific literature says she was about three or so feet tall with a head about the size of a baseball. Yet she has been depicted in some popular modern science magazines as being similar in height to a modern woman. Likewise, she has been pictured as appearing nearly human, with a head perhaps only slightly smaller than ours. These fraudulent depictions were successful in convincing people that man evolved from something ape-like. Lucy is “reconstructed” from bones found at two different sites in the Hadar/Afar region of Africa. One site is called 162, the other is site 333. The sites, from which one “individual” has been built, are not even at the same geological level! Even evolutionists noted in their comments that the bones at site 333 are much like modern humans while the bones from site 162 are not. Other literature shows that the bones of Lucy’s skeleton from site 162 are nearly identical to the pygmy chimp.

What would you find if, in a thousand years, you dug up a couple of cemeteries in the ruins of one of our cities? You’d be likely to run into human skeletons as well as the skeletons of animals we live with. A few bones from a human cemetery and a few from a pet cemetery could provide months of entertainment for the creative mind!

Other creatures, like Neanderthal, have been reclassified as Homo sapiens. Creationists have long said that Neanderthal fell into the presently known genetic range of human beings. Many evolutionists now admit that this is true. They have even done studies showing that very normal human beings have bone structures identical to Neanderthal.

The problem, admit evolutionists, lies in the fact that since Neanderthal was supposed to be primitive, he was “reconstructed” with “primitive” features. It was the reconstruction that created the image! We add that the same is true of “Lucy” and the full pantheon of the “hominids” and “primitive humans.” Almost none of the “reconstructions” found in the popular magazine and textbooks correspond to the creatures in the scientific literature.

Upon this dishonesty is built the impression that these “creatures” were, in fact, real. It’s humbling to realize that the same approach that is used at Disney World to convince Billy that Mickey Mouse is real also convinces him that evolution is truth.

These “evolutionary hominids” are really only dead apes or tinker-toy-like constructions. If they were real, we would expect to find the famed evolutionary progression from more ape-like characteristics to human-like characteristics. Evolutionists claim this progression is there. Just as most used car salesmen won’t tell you everything, neither do most evolutionists. They carefully select characteristics that seem to show evolutionary progression. The problem is, they have no objective way of telling whether a characteristic is “modern” or “primitive.”

Worse, less-dogmatic evolutionists offer their conclusion that there is a lack of progression. For example, a comparison of the talus (foot) bones of man and apes show that creatures like Homo Habilis and the Olduvai finds have little in common with humans. They are more like orangutans than humans.

A study of the cranial capacities also reveals a vast, unfilled gap. Brain complexity seems to go relative to size. This means that evolutionists are claiming that 60-65 percent of man’s 115 brain connections developed in only a few million years! Such a conclusion is too incredible to be accepted.

By every measure there is a gap between humans and hominids and none between apes and hominids. Only one measure has been suggested which claims a close relationship between apes and man. According to Dr. John Gribbin and Dr. Jeremy Cherfas in their book The Monkey Puzzle, there is a 99 percent similarity between humans and apes. However, this work has not been without criticism. Saying that man is 99 percent gorilla is also to say that gorillas are 99 percent man! Even most hard-core evolutionists have trouble with that claim. They would have preferred that Gribbin and Cherfas would have found that there is only a 50-60 percent similarity. That would have fit better with evolutionary theory.

There is absolutely no compelling scientific reason to believe that man is related to any ape-like creature. Many of the claims to the contrary are scientifically unsupported. Even worse, the theology of imagining that man has come from such creatures is disastrous for Christianity.