Neither evolution or creationism have any foundation in scientific fact.  Both are simply guesses of what might have happened and are fundamentally based on ‘faith’.  In simple terms, creationism postulates a supreme being that created all of existence (something from nothing).  Evolution theory postulates that humans are decedents from other life forms (apes) and does not address the question of initial creation.

There is a third alternative for an explanation regarding the advent of humans on planet earth.  It makes no attempt to explain existential questions and simply states that humans were manufactured by extraterrestrials. This was essentially the conclusion of Zecharia Sitchin.  He arrived at this conclusion from his study of ancient Sumerian text.  However, there is no more proof of this explanation than there is for evolution or creationism.  Again it is a faith based concept. 

The credibility of any one of these ‘guesses’ about the advent of humans on planet earth is a wonderful exercise in mental masturbation, but have absolutely no value in terms of explaining the mundane questions regarding your daily life.  Will you be able to pay your rent, purchase food, care for your family, or at a more fundamental level maintain some level of personal freedom?  Is it necessary to understand the reason for your existence in order to experience the beauty of a waterfall, or love of life itself and all it has to offer?  The only reason to search through concepts of ‘human origination’ is that it may provide some clues as to the barriers which prevent you from achieving your full potential: self actualization. 

“Self-actualization is a term that has been used in various psychology theories, often in slightly different ways. The term was originally introduced by the organismic theorist Kurt Goldstein for the motive to realize one's full potential. In his view, it is the organism's master motive, the only real motive: "the tendency to actualize itself as fully as possible is the basic drive...the drive of self-actualization." Carl Rogers similarly wrote of "the curative force in psychotherapy - man's tendency to actualize himself, to become his potentialities...to express and activate all the capacities of the organism." However, the concept was brought most fully to prominence in Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs theory as the final level of psychological development that can be achieved when all basic and mental needs are fulfilled and the "actualization" of the full personal potential takes place.” (Reference)

The barriers to self discovery are so plentiful that it staggers the imagination.  However, the only way to find something is to make a start in searching.  For myself that starting point is the mystery surrounding the fossil discovery of Idaltu (the handsome guy on the left). It is a pivotal point in Paleoanthropology.  Something very odd occurred which does not mesh very well with evolutionary theory.  The Idaltu skulls found at Herto Ethiopia seem to be unrelated to any other prehistoric human fossils yet found. For this reason the Herto skulls were classified as a new subspecies referred to as Homo sapien idaltu rather than Homo sapien sapien. A curious factor of the Herto skulls is that the brain cases were actually larger than that of Homo sapien sapien. This was especially evident in the fossil labeled BOU-VP-16/1. Brain case size has been used by archaeologists as a measure of potential intelligence over the course of evolution. Therefore it might be expected that the subspecies of sapien would have a larger brain case than that of its predecessor homo sapien idaltu and not a smaller one.

What happened?  Did our brain cases get smaller?  Yes they are smaller!   Evolution theory claims we evolved to a greater intelligence from apes.  If this were true than you would expect a continual increase in brain case size.  But that is not what happened.  After Idaltu the brain case size gets downsized which runs counter to the prediction expected by evolution theory. The case of shrinking brain size has been demonstrated by John Hawks,a professor of Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Over the past 20,000 years the human brain case has shrunk by just under 10 percent.

The mystery of the appearance of humans on planet earth is not a simple matter of comparing skulls then estimating their age.  At Herto we have Idaltu around 180,000 years old and claimed to be an ancestor of homo sapien sapien.  The expectation would then be that modern man was not around before his own ancestor.  And yet this seems to be the case in that the skull fossils found at Qesem Cave are 400,000 years old.  Do we then bend the subspecies scale again and call them something other than homo sapien sapien?  You begin to wonder if anything else has been bent to insure a good fit to the latest politically correct theory of human evolution?

Of course none of this is without drama connected to the people who actually find these fossils.  And there is plenty of drama. Prior to 1991 Ethiopia was controlled by a vicious military juanta headed by Mengistu Haile Mariam. With the downfall of the Dreg junta reconstruction lasted well into the mid and late 90’s.It was a time of crisis management created by the atrocities of Merianthe. While the Herto skulls were certainly monumental in terms of archaeological discovery, the attainment of the permits to conduct the research was in itself a miraculous achievement. Those permits had to have been secured during the tail end of political reconstruction in 1994, which was a time of political confusion and bureaucratic constipation.  The drama surrounding Ethiopia has a long history and it is no secret that the US government has played a major role in the reconstruction of Ethiopia.  One can’t help but wonder if those permits were issued because of collusion between scientists and CIA operatives.

At the time of all that political upheaval in Ethiopia, Tim D. White, an American Paleoanthropologist and head of the Herto team, was discovering Ardi , the oldest know ancestor of mankind (4.4 million years ago)in the Awash River in Ethiopia.  White was a busy guy.  While he was making the discovery of Ardi (1994) he was also planning the Herto excavation.   The Herto discovery, by White was made in 1997 but withheld from the public until 2003. In addition the details of the Ardi discovery were not published until 2009. Why the 15 year delay?

White’s claim that Ardi is an ancestor of humans is not well met by other scientists.

[White] showed no evidence that Ardi is on the human lineage," Sarmiento says. "Those characters that he posited as relating exclusively to humans also exist in apes and ape fossils that we consider not to be in the human lineage."

Paleoanthropology seems to be a breeding ground for misrepresentation and sometimes outright fraud.

Extensive historical research has documented the fact that the so-called objective field of human evolution is highly subjective—and bias, fraud, and even forgery are all common (Judson 2004). The best known examples include Piltdown man, which has been proven to be a composite of a human skull and an ape jaw (Bergman 2003) and Hesperopithecus man, which turned out to be a pig’s tooth (Bergman 2006), but many other major examples exist.

The scientists involved in these controversies are often not minor-league players, but include many of those who have dominated the field of paleoanthropology in the twentieth century. The effects of their fraud can be far reaching and may affect entire disciplines (Feder 2006; Kohn 1988). Even well-known modern paleoanthropology leaders, including the Leakey family (Louis, Mary, and Richard), have been involved in much controversy, including accusations of misrepresentation, sloppy work, and poor documentation.

If we look at hominids as machines developed for a specific function it could easily be concluded that much of the fossil history of apes and humans is simply a junk yard of prototypes that failed to perform as expected.  The Afar triangle being the test site for the prototypes.  Was Idaltu too smart for its intended purpose therefore a genetic shift downsizing the brain case was tested in the subspecies sapien?  Of course there would be DNA compatibility just as there is compatibility of car parts across models and makes from different manufactures.

The theory of evolution is nothing more than a feeble attempt to avoid the metaphysical explanations of religion. Where did humans come from? The simplest answer is from a dealership of ‘human bodies’. The answer makes no attempt to explain the origin of existence it simply gives one step in the process of explanations. If asked at a dinner party ‘where do you come from’, you are not likely to answer ‘from the mind of God’. Nor are you likely to begin a discussion of the products generated from the loins of your ancestors. Most likely you will give a geographic location.  In my case it was New Jersey.

Paleoanthropologists make an attempt to demonstrate a lineage between humans and apes. The evidence for this connection is based on guesses regarding similarities of morphology between fossils. And morphology is also used to suggest sequence of evolutionary events. As an example, bi-pedal locomotion is thought to precede increase in brain size. Since brain size in humans appears to be getting smaller does this mean an eventual return to ‘knuckle walker status’? The bottom line: the theory of evolution simply cannot be proved based on fossil finds.

Notes:

Idaltu had a brain case size of 1450 cubic centimeters compared to the 1350 cubic centimeters of modern man.