Is Lucy not our ancestor after all?

According to the Jerusalem Post, anthropologists at Tel Aviv University claim that Australopithecus afarensis, the first known specimen of which was “Lucy,” the famous skeleton discovered in 1974 by American anthropologist Donald Johanson (though Johanson is pointedly and strangely not mentioned in the article, which is why I mention him here), cannot be an ancestor of Homo sapiens. Previously, Homo sapiens and Australopithecus robustus were thought to be descended, though on different lines, from Australopithecus afarensis. But now it appears that Australopithecus robustus and Australopithecus afarensis have in common a distinctive jaw feature that Homo sapiens does not have.

However, I must be stupid, because I don’t understand how this proves that Lucy’s species were not our ancestors. Lucy also didn’t pass on to us her chimpanzee-sized brain. The argument presented in the Jerusalem Post piece seems incoherent and contradictory to me. If anyone can make sense of it, let me know.

Note: While I raise the above questions within the conventional terms of the discussion about evolution, in which we think of ourselves as being “descended” from earlier life forms, I happen to reject totally the Darwinian theory of evolution (see a fuller discussion of this here). Darwinism says that new life forms come into existence from a common ancestor as a result of random mutations and natural selection. In my view this is a fantastical hypothesis manifestly contradicted by what we know about reality. My position on evolution is that we must stick with what we know. We know that more complex and higher life-forms have appeared successively on earth over time, which, by the way, is the proper, generic, non-Darwinian meaning of the word evolution. Thus the Australopithecines with their chimp-sized skulls were followed by Homo habilis with his larger skull and his tool-making abilities, who was followed by Homo erectus with his yet larger skull but still no forehead, who was followed by Homo sapiens with his high-arched and symmetrical skull, which to me—just so you know where I’m coming from on this, though I don’t insist that you agree with me—looks as though it were designed as a temple for God. We know there are morphological and genetic similarities among these various hominid forms, just as there are genetic similarities between Homo sapiens and fruit flies. But we do not know how these distinct life forms came into existence and succeeded one another. And people who claim to know this—i.e., the entire official modern Western world—are deceiving themselves.

If you haven’t read anything on the subject and want to pick up something quick, see the chapters on evolution in Ann Coulter’s Godless, the most ruthless, merciless, devastating (and funny) demolition of the Darwinian orthodoxy ever put on paper.

- end of initial entry -

Ken Hecthman writes from Canada:

Here’s an answer within the conventional terms of the discussion:

You’re not stupid—the Jerusalem Post is assuming you know (or have the time to look up) a fairly obscure archeological fact. There existed another species in Africa 2.5 million years ago (overlapping, but somewhat earlier than Australopithecus robustus) called Homo habilis. We believe Homo habilis is our direct ancestor, among other reasons, because it has a similarly-shaped jaw and similarly sized head to ours.

The Israeli scientists are saying Lucy’s species, which disappeared 2.9 million years ago, is too different from our known ancestor of 2.5 million years ago and too similar to its known descendant of 2 million years ago to be the common ancestor of both.

Are they right? Who knows. A lot of this stuff is best-guess. Not that long ago (before we found Habilis fossils) the best-guess was that Australopithecus Robustus was our ancestor.

LA replies:

Thanks for Mr. Hechtman for this clarification. I particularly appreciate his first sentence. :-)

However, if Lucy’s folk were not our ancestors after all, then what happens to the fascinating theory, which resulted from the discovery of Lucy, that it was upright posture, rather than a larger brain, that signaled the turn toward what ultimately became Homo sapiens?

Posted by Lawrence Auster at May 07, 2007 03:36 PM | Send