Human Evolution in Bits

Psalm 8:4
“What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?”

It was the late Stephen J. Gould who popularized the idea of Evolution by Punctuated Equilibrium. This was because he noticed the lack of transitional forms in the fossil record, which is so obvious to those who want to see. Yet, as a committed evolutionist, Gould could not bring himself to the natural corollary of his ideas – that the theory of evolution is just not tenable. So he devised his punctuated equilibrium – a theory unusually based on the non-existence of certain individuals.

Recent studies have suggested a punctuated equilibrium model with regards to human evolution. This is because of finds of neolithic people such as Neanderthals in rock layers thought to be much younger – as much as 3,000 years younger – than existing layers known to contain “modern” human remains.

We have talked about Neanderthals on Creation Moments before and concluded that they were not a separate species of sub-humans, but were, in fact, fully human. However, evolutionists suppose that Neanderthals lived between 30,000 and 300,000 years ago. However, a team of scientists led by the University of Barcelona has suggested that inhabitants of a tribal settlement in Southern Spain would have existed from 26,000 through 37,000 years ago. This would be possible only if evolutionary patterns were proceeding differently in different regions of the world.

It is hard to overstate how controversial an idea this differentiated evolution of humans could be. If humans had evolved at different rates in different parts of the world, we might want to suggest that some people groups are more highly evolved than others. But the Bible maintains that humanity did not evolve, but was all descended from one man and one woman.

We are amazed, Lord, that You would want to put humans like me at the forefront of Your work for Him, but are grateful and thankful. Amen.

Author: Paul F. Taylor

Ref: Elsevier. (2017, November 16). Human evolution was uneven and punctuated: A new study in Heliyon suggests that Neanderthals survived at least 3,000 years longer in Spain than we thought. ScienceDaily. Retrieved November 25, 2017 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/11/171116132657.htm. Image: Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 3.0 Unported.