356 Evolution? The Fossils Say YES!
Yet the idea is still offensive to many in the United States, where many polls show that
a majority of Americans still do not accept that we are related to the apes. Nearly all of this
is driven by strong religious beliefs, of course, plus common misconceptions about apes
(not yet defused by all the documentary footage of amazing chimpanzees on television),
and especially by a determined campaign of creationist misinformation. Still, it is surprising
that more than 150 years after Darwin’s book was published, we still cannot come to terms
with overwhelming evidence from both biology and the fossil record. My colleagues in the
anthropology departments all over the country face this all the time. More than any other
group of scientists, they are under attack. They have had to waste a lot of time undoing cre-
ationist mischief and clarifying ape and human evolution for the general public when they
could be doing real research, discovering something new and useful instead.
Whatever one’s personal religious beliefs about humans and their “specialness,” as sci-
entists we must stick to objective evidence and testable hypotheses. Many different religious
beliefs have held many different concepts of humanity and its relation to God or the gods,
but that cannot concern us here in a work of science. As discussed in chapter 1, science can-
not and should not deal with the supernatural or with untestable hypotheses. Science can-
not and should not deal with issues of the soul or other concepts that are important in the
religious perspective but cannot be dealt with in a scientific fashion. This is not to say that
the soul does not exist (science cannot decide one way or the other) or that humans don’t
have some special element of God in them (again, not a scientific question). As long as we
are talking about scientific evidence for any hypothesis (whether it is the evolution of rhinos
or of humans), we have to stick by the rules of science and exclude supernatural hypotheses
because they cannot be tested in a scientific manner. Of course, everyone is entitled to their
own personal beliefs, but they are not entitled to impose them on others or to call their ideas
scientific when they are clearly not.
And that is where we run into the most outrageous lies and distortions broadcast by the
creationists. They are pretty bad at misleading people about the evolution of other animals,
but when it comes to discussing the human fossil record, they hit rock bottom. To a creation-
ist, every human fossil has to be discredited somehow because it goes against their very
innermost beliefs to acknowledge the existence of these fossils. The hominin fossil record
has improved enormously over the past several decades. We can spread out the impres-
sive array of hominin fossils that connect us to the apes and to all of the rest of the animal
kingdom (fig. 15.2) just to get a sense of the quality of the human evolutionary record. If
these were any other fossils other than hominins, most people would be duly impressed
and agree that the case was well established. Simply because they are our relatives, the
stakes are much higher, and ideas and specimens are attacked that much more vigorously
by creationists.
Unfortunately, some anthropologists are unduly naïve and create all sorts of opportuni-
ties for misunderstanding and for creationist distortions. The study of human fossils is one
of the most crowded and contentious of any scientific field I’ve ever seen. Although the
human fossil record is now quite impressive and includes thousands of specimens (fig. 15.2),
there are also thousands of physical anthropologists who must “publish or perish,” and
who need to make a career somehow. Most of the best fossils are typically studied by those
who have the funding and the access to the key sites in Africa and elsewhere, so the rest of
the profession has to make their careers whatever way they can. Consequently, every idea
and every specimen in hominin paleontology is challenged and restudied and reinterpreted