Africa is the Cradle of Humanity?

Last week, a CNN special showed presenter Errol Barnett’s explorations into the roots of humankind. He traveled to Africa where he found some of the “oldest fossils in the world,” three million years old! These Australopithicus skulls are supposed to be of a hominid—half ape, half human. Eventually, the whole skeleton was found. Mr. Barnett comments to Dr. Ron Clark about how amazing it is that the enamel on the teeth is so shiny and complete. Dr. Clark responds that yes, the teeth are “beautifully preserved.” This particular skeleton has been nicknamed “Little Foot” and he’s not supposed to be a direct ancestor to humans. It’s interesting that this skeleton has a “grasping hand for climbing trees” and “walked upright.”

Then, Mr. Barnett travels to Cape Town, South Africa where he talks with Professor Christopher Henshilwood who is very excited about having found small shells with holes in them that he dates at 75,000 years old. He says they were used as beads. He can tell this by evidence that they were strung on a cord of some kind. He also found some tools that had been made by heating the stone used, which he also dated as 75,000 years old.

Errol Barnett later gets his own DNA tested. (His father is Jamaican and his mother is British.) He is, therefore, not surprised to find out he has some African roots as well as European. He seems impressed to find out that his mothers’ ancestors must have come from the Dordogne region of France 20,000 years ago, arriving there through northern Europe from the East.

Mr. Barnett concludes his presentation with statements that skin colors are adaptations to climates, that different languages evolved, and that all human beings came from 10,000 original Sub-Saharan African homo sapiens. They were dispersed all over the earth from there. (CNN International, May 2013)

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The “Hobbit People’s” remains were discovered in a cave on Flores Island in Indonesia. These “people” stood around three feet tall and had heads the size of grapefruits. At first, the discoverers thought they had found children’s skulls, but later, it was decided they were fully grown little people. They were dated at around 12,000 years ago. These skeletons had long arms, indicating that these “people” spent most of their time in trees. Their brains were the size of a chimpanzee’s. (BBC, October 2004)

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Let’s look at just these few archaeological findings and see how they add up. We ask some logical questions:

• Could “Little Foot” and the “Hobbit People” possibly have been apes?
• Is it reasonable to believe that a skeleton three million years old would conserve a perfect finish and the enamel on all its teeth?
• How is the dating done? (3 million, 75,000, 12,000, 10,000, 20,000) Where do these numbers come from?
• If everyone evolved from Africa, how were Errol Barnett’s ancestors—and all other Europeans—in the East before 20,000 years ago, when his ancestors supposedly were already in the Dordogne region of France?

Here are some possible logical answers to those questions:*

• “Little Foot” and the “Hobbit People” could indeed have been apes (or primates). Many apes frequently walk upright, including chimpanzees, gorillas, gibbons, macaques (Encyclopedia Britannica), bonobos, orangutans and siamangs (wicki-answers.com). This answer fits with their long arms, grasping hands, small heads, small body sizes, and small brains.
• I don’t believe, based on the Bible’s dates that anything on the earth could be three million years old. I believe the skeleton with the shiny enamel teeth is much more recent than those who found it think it is. Biblically, it has to be post Flood, which would automatically date it as after 2347 BC.
• I think that very smart people with a background in evolutionary thought pull numbers out of a hat to support their evolutionary worldview. I believe these thousands of years can have no basis in fact. For one thing, these dates predate the Universal Flood, which we know to have taken place approximately 2348 BC. Also, they are not scientific, as the scientific method demands observation. No one was anywhere to observe anything that many years ago.
• Errol Barnett’s ancient ancestors did indeed come from the East some time after the Tower of Babel. All of his family—Africans, Jamaicans, French, and British—migrated after the dispersion, after the building of the Tower of Babel was halted (2242 BC), from the Plain of Shinar. (Many believe the Plain of Shinar was in the area of Babylon. Some think it might have been in Turkey. Whichever, the dispersion was from the east, be it Iraq or Turkey.) All of everyone’s ancestors originally came from that part of the world.

Early people did wear beads and did make tools by heating. As early as Genesis 4, there were workers in brass and iron. (Tubalcain was an instructor of those who worked with these metals.) God created human beings intelligent, innovative, and gave them the ability to reason and create.

There never was a half man, half monkey non-ancestor hominid. God created the first man and woman fully human. All humans descended from them. The human race, in its entirety, descended from Noah’s family after the Flood. The cradle of civilization is in Iraq, or maybe Turkey. (I tend to go with the most probable, according to experts, with the region around Babylon.) All people in all the other continents originally came from this part of the world.

The Bible is clear about the Origin of Man, the Universal Flood, and the subsequent history of mankind. Never does it indicate that we came from half man, half ape beings or that people evolved. Never in the Bible is it taught that man was once primitive and then he became more complex.

We don’t find this in the fossil record either. Even the evolutionists claim that the only “missing link” they have found is not a direct ancestor of man!

I personally find it requires less faith to believe the Bible’s account of a mighty God’s creation of the world, animals, plants, and man as the culmination of creation—with a soul, in the image of God—than to believe that man evolved from apes through mutations and chance.

Observable science never finds any living thing that is changing from less to more. It doesn’t happen, and it never did.

And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness:

and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea,

and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth,

and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

So God created man in his own image, 
in the image of God created he him;

male and female created he them. And God blessed them,

and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply,

and replenish the earth, and subdue it . . . . (Genesis 1:26-28a)

*My own deductions. They are based on simple logic and the evidence presented, as well as a biblical worldview. The dates for the Flood and the Tower of Babel are from James Ussher’s calculations. The Bible background of man’s creation, the universal flood, the Tower of Babel, the dispersion of people groups, and the beginning of different languages is Genesis 1-11.