THE ARTICLES 'OUT OF AFRICA AGAIN… AGAIN?' AND 'THE MULTIREGIONAL EVOLUTION OF HUMANS'

These articles concerned an aspect of the human evolution scenarios which is the subject of fierce debate amongst evolutionists.

The article 'Out of Africa' was written by Ian Tattersall, curator in the Department of Anthropology of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. In his article he produced the scenario whereby modern man emerged in Africa and replaced other humans by spreading from there to Asia and Europe.

In the second article, Alan Thorne and Milford Wolpoff, prominent exponents of the 'multiregional evolution theory,' suggested that all human beings in the present day live in the place where their ancestors lived.

Despite putting forward differing views regarding the spread of human beings through the world, these articles were actually based on the same foundations. The authors accept the theory of evolution unquestioningly, and repeat the dogma that human beings evolved from ape-like creatures. No evidence was offered in support of these views. All that happened was that fictitious scenarios concerning certain variations of Australopithecus, an extinct species of ape, and Homo erectus, a true human being, were put forward again. (For the invalidity of these scenarios, see Darwinism Refuted by Harun Yahya, Goodword Publishers, 2003; http://www.darwinismrefuted.com)

However, these articles in the pages of Scientific American contain important scientific errors. That is because although the fossil record on which they depend is, as Tattersall admits, 'admittedly imperfect,' neither article contains any reference to 'uncertainty' regarding evolution. Scenarios based on an imperfect fossil record are naturally dubious. Yet the authors deliberately conceal this and portray evolution as if were a scientific fact; since they are bound by materialist dogma they accept evolution right from the start and interpret fossils, albeit few in number, in the light of their own preconceptions. Scientific American has thus given its readers not a consistent theory based on scientific foundations, but rather a blindly-believed in fairy tale.

In fact, the fossil record contains nothing which has been shown to be the ancestor of human beings. Richard C. Lewontin, Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology and Professor of Biology at Harvard University, describes this situation by saying:

'When we consider the remote past, before the origin of the actual species Homo sapiens, we are faced with a fragmentary and disconnected fossil record. Despite the excited and optimistic claims that have been made by some paleontologists, no fossil hominid species can be established as our direct ancestor…'

We call on Scientific American to abandon its portrayal of speculative claims as scientific fact and its blind support of the theory of evolution.

'The Recent African Genesis of Humans'

This article dealt with the thesis known as 'Mitochondrial Eve.' Written by Rebecca L. Cann and Allan C. Wilson, the article maintained that all human beings alive today are descended from a single woman who lived in Africa some 200,000 years ago.

However, the claims made in the article have no scientific validity to them, because the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) analyses on which the assumptions are based are erroneous.

This method, widely used among evolutionary geneticists, as a so-called scientific method employed in researching so-called evolutionary history. One important assumption of this method is that mitochondrial DNA is handed down from generation to generation in the female line only. The fact is though, that concrete evidence has emerged in recent years that this is not always the case: because mitochondrial DNA can sometimes partially be acquired from the father.

The increasing evidence that mitochondrial DNA can be passed on by the father has led researchers to question the validity of their analyses and warn their colleagues. Philip Awadalla, Adam Eyre-Walker and John Maynard Smith have issued the following warning in an article published in Science magazine:

'Many inferences about the pattern and tempo of human evolution and mtDNA evolution have been based on the assumption of clonal inheritance. These inferences will now have to be reconsidered.'

Another article concerning this report in the same issue of the magazine contained the following comment:

'Such recombination could be a blow for researchers who have used mtDNA to trace human evolutionary history and migrations. They have assumed that the myDNA descends only through the mother, so they could draw a single evolutionary tree of maternal descent-all the way back to an African 'mitochondrial Eve,' for example. But 'with recombination there is no single tree' notes Harpending. Instead, different parts of the molecule have different histories. Thus 'there's not one woman to whom we can trace our mitochondria' says Eyre-Walker.

Another blow to the mitochondrial Eve thesis came in an article published in the August 2002 edition of the New England Journal of Medicine. Published above the names of Marianne Schwartz and John Vissing, the paper, titled 'Paternal Inheritance of Mitochondrial DNA,' reported that a 28-year-old patient had received 90% of his mtDNA from his father.

The British New Scientist news service stressed the effect of this discovery on estimates based on mtDNA analyses, as below:

Evolutionary biologists often date the divergence of species by the differences in genetic sequences in mitochondrial DNA. Even if paternal DNA is inherited very rarely, it could invalidate many of their findings.

It is an evident scientific fact that the assumption that mtDNA is transmitted only through the mother has been demolished. This means that all the evolutionist assumptions based on mtDNA sequences are invalid.

So why is it that Scientific American still makes room in its pages for these outdated theses? Why is the Mitochondrial Eve theses still published despite having no validity? Scientific American's attitude is of course not a scientific one. In fact, it is totally psychological. One indication that it is more psychologically-based comes from an interesting character, the influential evolutionist John Maynard Smith.

Maynard Smith is one of those researchers who has offered results along the lines of those discussed above, that mtDNA is not transmitted solely through the mother.

The June 14, 2003, issue of New Scientist, which carried out an interview with him, contained the following words:

'But despite his huge influence, all the honours, citations and textbook references, Maynard Smith is still challenging the status quo. In 1999, he and his colleagues published evidence that mitochondrial DNA undergoes recombination - mitochondria from your father and mother can swap genetic material. It may sound obscure, but if they are right it casts doubt on all the research that uses mtDNA as a molecular clock to unravel evolutionary history, including the dating of our oldest common ancestor, 'Mitochondrial Eve.'

Maynard Smith is frustrated but not surprised that the establishment chooses to ignore his findings.'

'The establishment.' That is indeed the problem. These people play a key role in research, or rather assumptions, into the origin of living things. They use mtDNA analyses as a kind of jumping board. These people take mtDNA from every living thing they choose and find examples of nucleotide sequences. They then use every kind of DNA they collect in order to speculate about so-called evolutionary ancestors and engage in media propaganda. This is an international Darwinist team. These peoples' continuous 'common ancestor' studies are an effective vehicle of Darwinist propaganda. Now, however, as we have seen above, it has been scientifically proven that this vehicle is based on invalid assumptions. Yet evolutionary geneticists ignore this. The psychological factor behind Scientific American's unscientific attitude has finally been revealed: Scientific American's devotion to Darwinism stems not from the fact that the theory of evolution is a powerful theory backed up by scientific proof, but rather from a blind devotion to materialist dogma. The 'mitochondrial Eve' article demonstrates that Scientific American refuses to abandon that blind devotion, no matter what the scientific findings reveal.

An Accurate Assessment about Palaeontology

Another important piece of information in the article 'The Recent African Genesis of Humans' in Scientific American was an accurate assessment on the subject of the methods used in palaeontology. The authors of the article offered the following assessment of evolutionist palaeontologists, despite the scientific nature of the analytical methods in their own evaluations being erroneous:

'Fossils cannot, in principle, be interpreted objectively: the physical characteristics by which they are classified necessarily reflect the models the paleontologists wish to test. If one classifies, say, a pelvis as human because it supported an upright posture, then one is presupposing that bipedalism distinguished early hominids from apes. Such reasoning tends to circularity. The paleontologist's perspective therefore contains a built-in bias that limits its power of observation.'

This criticism is justified, and portraying extinct species of ape as hominid (human-like) reveals the error in the tendency to adapt them to evolutionist scenarios. We call on evolutionist palaeontologists not to fall into the trap of circular reasoning and on evolutionist geneticists to cease producing theories based on mtDNA analyses. That is because neither approach is scientific, and both are prejudiced.

When they look objectively at the scientific facts, they too will see that the origin of life lies in 'intelligent design.'