Monday 15 July 2013

“The Popular Image of Human Evolution Is an Illusion,” Famous Evolutionist Says

Paleoanthropologist Bernard Wood acknowledges that this scenario is an illusion. Image courtesy of José-Manuel Benito Álvarez, Wikipedia.





Joel Kontinen

Darwinian evolution needs imagination and illusions, otherwise if could not be marketed as aggressively as it has been. But at times some evolutionists manage to be quite frank about the credibility of their evidence.

Just over a decade ago, Bernard Wood, a well-known paleoanthropologist at George Washington University, wrote in New Scientist:

There is a popular image of human evolution that you’ll find all over the place, from the backs of cereal packets to advertisements for expensive scientific equipment. On the left of the picture there’s an ape—stocky, jutting jaw, hunched in the knuckle-walking position. On the right, a man—graceful, high forehead, striding purposefully into the future. Between the two is a succession of figures that become ever more like humans, as the shoulders start to pull back, the torso slims down, the arms retract, the legs extend, the cranium expands and the chin recedes. Our progress from ape to human looks so smooth, so tidy. It’s such a beguiling image that even the experts are loath to let it go. But it is an illusion.”

What about the facts? They’re still missing – 150 years after Darwin.


Source:

Wood, Bernard. 2002. Who are we? New Scientist 176 (2366): 44–47. (26 October).