Time magazine's March 14 cover story reported a new debate among anthropologists. At issue (again) is the origin of modern humans. Did we arise from one bipedal primate species in Africa or from several different bipedal primate species spread throughout Asia, Europe, and Africa?1
The findings of a research team led by Carl Swisher and Garniss Curtis of the Institute of Human Origins, Berkeley, Calif., have prompted this debate. The team uncovered some two-million-year-old skull fragments of the homo erectus species at two sites on the island of Java, Indonesia. Though the fragments are small and somewhat questionable both in their identification and dating (which may be off by a factor of two), this discovery, coupled with another by other researchers in China, represent a challenge to existing theory.
In China, an approximately 200,000-year-old skull of a hominid species that appears anatomically similar to modern man has been unearthed. These two finds together have given rise to a new hypothesis that modern man evolved from different isolated species.2
The new hypothesis is being met with serious skepticism from within the ranks. How could two or more separate species evolve into a single, world-encompassing species? The time scales seem far too short. Moreover, it is hard to imagine how such primitive (judging from the lack of any evidence for civilization) and underpopulated (judging from the paucity of fossils) species could have traveled so far and so fast from their supposed African roots.
Of course, none of the new or old data is difficult to fit with a model of time-separated special creations.
The idea of a continuous descent from the australopithecines of three and four million years ago to homo habilis and homo erectus of about one (or even two) million years ago to modern man today has always had its problems, and it seems less plausible all the time. Given the tiny populations of many of these ancient species, the environmental catastrophes they faced, and the shortage of fossil and tool evidence, it seems more likely that such species simply went extinct. Again, the data fits the scenario of time-separated special creations.
If you're wondering if the existence of these early hominid species somehow conflicts with the biblical record, remember that evidence for spirit expression (e.g., worship) is relatively recent, dating back only 8,000 to 24,000 years ago. Accurate placement and description of the bipedal primates God created before Adam and Eve, except to say that they were included among the mammalian species, must wait for the accumulation of much more data from careful research. Like other disciplines of science, anthropology has a long way to go.
References:
1. Lemonick, Michael, "How Man Began: Fossil Bones from the Dawn of Humanity Are Rewriting the Story of Evolution," Time, March 14, 1994, pp. 80-87.
2. Bower, Bruce, "Asian Hominids Make a Much Earlier Entrance," Science News, 145 (1994), p. 150.