Smithsonian Ape Man Myths (with Brodie Leitch) Part II

Goin’ Ape: RSR hosts Fred Williams & Doug McBurney welcome RSR’s resident “ape-man” expert Brodie Leitch back for more analysis of exhibits from the evolutionists premier temple of “ape to man” evolutionary tales the “Hall of Human Origins.”

*Loco-Motion: The evolutionary mechanisms of “competition” and “survival of the fittest”, (that generations of American government school teachers have flogged) is not apparent in the fossil record, even to evolutionists and train aficionados like Brendan M. Lynch.

*Stupid is as Stupid Does: Hear about a bit more fun Fred had with ChatGPT with an inquiry as to whether “human evolution is stupid.” 

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*Don’t Trade Genesis! Doug and Fred ask Brodie his best advice for equipping young people to resist evolutionary dogma. His advice? Follow the advice of the Late Great Bob Enyart, never trade Genesis for what the evolutionists lack! (An actual theory of human origins).

*Licks for the Leakeys: Hear how Doug was “flogged” but good in 8th grade science class, (mostly for acting up), but tangentially, for laughing out loud about assertions regarding human evolution that Mary Leakey herself would later admit were “nonsense.” CORRECTION – the most feared paddler at Doug’s government school was actually Mr. Witcher in science class and not Mr. French who belted it out in Auto-Mechanics class, (just in case any old class-mates are keeping track).

*One of These Days…. One of These Days, Lucy… Brodie and RSR pursue an edifying and eye-opening evaluation of more of the evidence for a supposed human ancestor called Australopithecus Afarensis in the “scientific” journals, (but named Lucy in the schoolhouse).

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*The Laetoli Footprints: The Smithsonian claims that Laetoli contains “the oldest documented bipedal footprint trails” (which supposedly belong to afarensis) but in 2005, an article from “Scientific American” reported that: “The prints show that whoever made them had a humanlike foot arch, and the reconstructed A. afarensis foot exhibits just such an arch... The problem, Harcourt-Smith and Hilton say, is that the reconstruction is actually based on a patchwork of bones from 3.2-million-year-old afarensis and 1.8-million-year-old Homo habilis. And one of the bones used to determine whether the foot was in fact arched--the so-called navicular--is from H. habilis, not A. afarensis.”

Along with the fact that the Laetoli footprints probably don’t even belong to afarensis, they aren’t the “oldest documented bipedal footprints”.

“Science daily” reported in 2017 that: “Newly discovered human-like footprints from Crete may put the established narrative of early human evolution to the test. The footprints are approximately 5.7 million years old and were made at a time when previous research puts our ancestors in Africa -- with ape-like feet.” This, while nearly annihilating the classic “out of Africa” story, is only one of the many discoveries squeezing evolution.

The Smithsonian (like many evolutionists) claims that Afarensis “stood on two legs and regularly walked upright”, but in the same article, pose the questions: “Did Au. afarensis usually walk upright like modern humans, or did they spend more time climbing trees like other living African apes?” and “We know Au. afarensis were capable of walking upright on two legs, but they would have walked differently than modern humans do today; so, what did their bipedal locomotion look like?” Evolutionists J. T. Stern Jr., and R. L. Susman, partially answered those questions when they wrote in the “American Journal of Physical Anthropology”“The fact that the anterior portion of the iliac blade faces laterally in humans but not in Chimpanzees is obvious. The marked resemblance of AL 288-1 (Lucy) to the chimpanzee is equally obvious… It suggests to us that the mechanism of lateral pelvic balance during bipedalism was closer to that in apes than in humans.” With evolutionists William Harcourt-Smith and Charles Hilton concluding“afarensis almost certainly did not walk like us or, by extension, like the hominids at Laetoli.

While “afarensis” being occasionally bipedal wouldn’t prove that they were human ancestors, (after all, lots of animals are bipedal and apes occasionally walking upright is nothing special) the hypothesis that afarensis was bipedal isn’t worth much thought because there are so many Problems with ‘Lucy’ as an Upright Walker.

Some evolutionists have recognized the issues with “afarensis” as a human ancestor. Algis Vincent Kuliukas wrote in the journal “Advances in Anthropology”: “The general shape of the pelvis of Australopithecus afarensis is confirmed to be fundamentally different from both Homo and extant great apes, and not intermediate between them.” With Britannica defining Australopithecus” (not just afarensis) as a “group of extinct primates closely related to, if not actually ancestors of, modern human beings”. Which means that the scientists writing for Brittanica are also not convinced that the “most famous human ancestor”, is actually a human ancestor.