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Evolutionary theory proposes a process in which, over several billion years, all life on earth developed from the elemental stuff that comprised the planet as it came into being. Paleontologists--and other evolutionary biologists--have documented, and continue to document, the details that provide support for this theory. I have made clear how I view the mechanisms through which this process achieved its purpose, so we don't need to revisit the details here. These mechanisms may be important in helping us understand the big picture the theory describes, but they are just the preliminaries to the main event to come. That is, for all but a small fraction of those billions of years, evolution was simply laying the groundwork for the ultimate fulfillment of God's plan; the emergence of mankind. ..... The emergence of humanity is the culmination of the "six-day" creation metaphor described in the first chapter of Genesis. So we first need to return to that metaphor and see what potential problems need to be addressed before we begin to merge the biblical account of that event with what creation itself tells us about what happened.
..... The emphasis in this description is that humanity is created uniquely in "the image of God." It is this image that identifies humankind as "set apart" from all the rest of the created order. Human beings were created to be different, and it is the nature of that difference I would like to pursue as we consider what natural history has to tell us about the creation of the first humans. ..... Unquestionably, in their confrontation with evolutionary theory, one of the toughest pills for literal creationists to swallow is the suggestion that "humanity evolved from monkeys." Did we? The answer is yes...and no. Biologically, we are, indeed, the evolutionary descendants of lower forms of life. We are the end result of a developmental process that has been in progress for several billion years. That process refined us into creatures with a multitude of marvelous physical characteristics and capabilities. But, as marvelous a product of God's handiwork as we are, our physical identity is not what sets us apart from the rest of creation. We are unique because, out of all of creation, we were chosen to be the bearers of his image. So, the emergence of mankind is a story that cannot be told solely from either the biblical account or the fossil record. We need both; and together they tell a very spectacular narrative of how we came to be. ..... Because the biblical account of human origins does not distinguish between the creation of physical attributes and the acquisition of the Image of God, it is usually assumed that these two aspects of human identity were originally acquired simultaneously. However, it is now apparent from research in paleoanthropology (the study of human origins) that acquisition of the physical attributes that distinguish modern humans from other creatures occurred very slowly over an extended period of time--several millions of years. Thus, unless we want to assume that acquisition of the Image of God evolved in concert with the biological characters that define the human race--which I find totally unacceptable--then we have to assume that The Creator invested his image in the crown jewel of his creation at some specific and identifiable time in evolutionary history. To pinpoint that time, we need to trace the final stages of the evolutionary process by which our species came into being. Specifically, we will look at evidence for the development of the capacity for cognition in our early human (hominid) ancestors. As a measure of their development of cognitive capacity we will use their ability to make and use stone tools, as that is the only reliable expression of advancing cognition that we can follow consistently over time from the fossil record. ..... A detailed lesson in human evolution is unnecessary to support the interpretations I will be offering from the fossil record, so I will provide a summary of evidence for the progress of hominid development and leave the more curious readers to research the details in the references from which I have obtained most of the information (citations 1 through 5 in the reference list). ..... Currently, the best estimate of the time when the first hominid emerged on the evolutionary scene is about five to seven million years ago. No hominid remains from that long ago have yet been identified, but from characteristics of the earliest that have been discovered--particularly their degree of similarity to the great apes from which they are presumed to have descended--paleoanthropologists consider that to be a reasonable estimate. However, it should not be assumed that this emergence was a dramatic change from what had come before. It was simply the most recent transition in a gradual evolution of primate species that had been in progress for some 30 million years. (Note: In the classification of animals, the primates include all species of apes, monkeys, their close relatives...and, of course, humans and their immediate ancestors.) ..... That evolutionary process was not a neat, linear operation in which each emerging species gave rise to a new and more perfect model. The record indicates that there were many dead ends, as some resultant species were poorly adapted for survival and soon died off. Thus, the generally accepted line of evolutionary succession is the best guess so far as to how to trace the development of the human race from among the various species represented in the fossil record. ..... The earliest hominids were bipedal and walked upright, but their survival behavior probably was only marginally different from that of the great apes. Their development progressed very slowly over several million years. During those years, the fossil record indicates a gradual acquisition of slightly more human-like characteristics, but little evidence of substantial change in patterns of behavior. The best known fossil find from this period was a fairly complete female skeleton, estimated to be about 3.2 million years old and assigned to the hominid species Australopithecus afarensis. Her discoverer, Donald Johanson (see Johanson et al; 1994), named her "Lucy." However, even after millions of years of hominid development, Lucy retained many ape-like characteristics and the record shows no evidence that she--or her contemporaries--were any more than marginally more cognitively endowed than her simian ancestors. Certainly they demonstrated no ability to make and utilize stone tools. ..... The first stone tools appeared about a million years later, tentatively considered to be the work of the first known representative of our own genus, Homo. Then, over the next two and a half million years, tool-making technology progressed slowly but steadily, as new and more cognitively capable species arose in our developing family tree. The earliest tools were simple fragments of smashed quartz pebbles. Then, as the millennia passed and hominid technological capability increased, the tools slowly became more sophisticated, through a progression of ever-more useful hand axes, ultimately to crudely-fashioned prismatic stone blades. In these evolving hominid species, the biological changes that accompanied their increasing technological skills were significant, but not dramatic. On average, they slowly increased in body size and their brains became larger. However, most other anatomical changes were subtle and of little apparent value to their long-term survival. ..... Most significant to this discussion is the observation that, until very recent times, there is no convincing evidence of symbolic behavior in any of these developing species. Symbolic behavior would typically be indicated in the fossil record through such discoveries as objects of art and ritualistic burials. Certainly, any species that we intend to credit with possessing the Image of God must show clear evidence of these kinds of behaviors. ..... So, we see a picture of an emerging line of pre-human animal species that have left evidence of very slowly increasing intelligence and technological skill, but no indication of any behaviors that would otherwise qualify them to be identified as "human." In addition, until very recent times, they had not yet developed the anatomical structures that would make them capable of language. The presence of these structures can be interpreted from the anatomy of fossil skulls, and it would be unthinkable that any creature could bear the Image of God without having the structural capacity for speech. In fact, such structures did not definitively appear in the fossil record until after the emergence of the last Homo species--Homo sapiens--about 100 thousand years ago. ..... So, we need to be on the lookout for a time in the last 100 thousand years when the paleoanthropological record identifies a sudden and precipitous increase in the capacity of the emergent species for cognition. In fact, such a time has been identified. The phenomenon observed to have occurred at that time is often referred to by researchers in the field as a "cognitive explosion," a sudden change in the capacity of the emergent human species (modern Homo sapiens) to think, to create, to perceive and to reason. Paleoanthropologists Tattersall and Schwartz (2000) describe it this way,
..... The idea that the acquisition of God's image--the human soul--is accompanied by highly advanced human capacity for cognition is not particularly new. However, the suggestion that this quality was originally granted to humans by God at a specifically identifiable instant in recent evolutionary history is a bit more radical and requires some further discussion.
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