11. Lucy the Knuckle Walker

In 1973, Donald Johanson discovered what he believed to be man’s oldest ancestor near Hadar, Ethiopia. The find is one of the most complete fossils ever found as far as the remains of “missing links.” It comprises of some skull fragments, a jawbone, a scapula, ribs, vertebrae, upper and lower arms, a hip, a few hand bones, a femur, and a lower leg bone which adds up to 40% of a complete skeleton. Please note that there were no portions of the feet found. He ran straight to the media and claimed it to be a bipedal, female missing link from three and a half million years ago which he named Australopithecus afarensis which has been nicknamed “Lucy.” In 1974, fifty four fossilized human footprints were found over an eighty foot stretch of ground by Mary Leakey (Louis Leakey’s wife) in Tanzania over 1200 miles away. These footprints were made in ash which got wet from a possible rain which made it like cement. The footprints were radioactive dated to be three and half million years ago which puts it in the same time frame as Lucy’s skeleton which is 1200 miles away. So, the story according to evolutionists goes as follows: Lucy was a young female missing link who resembled an ape-chimp-human who could walk upright which is evidenced by the footprints (which are 1200 miles away). Donald Johanson went forward into stardom in the evolutionary circles for his discovery and wrote many theories claiming that “our ancestors walked erect close to three and half million years ago – long before they developed big brains that had once been thought to be the hallmark of humanity.” Some of the foundations of his claim depend on the fact that Lucy walked upright, and that she is an intermediary link between man and ape. But, if the foundation is not upon the solid Rock, it will not withstand the Truth.

Of Feet and Footprints.

We previously covered the huge margins in error when it comes to radioactive dating. You can basically conjure any date you are looking for to tie in any loose ends for a theory. In addition, note that the spewing of volcanoes destroys any attempt to radioactive date anything by contaminating the sample with different kinds of elements which are from under the earth and subjected to tremendous heat and pressure. Something one-thousand years old will turn into something that is millions of years old. On another note, those footprints which are supposed to be Lucy’s, they are 1200 miles away! They are 1200 miles away! Think about the probability of finding perfectly fossilized footprints undisturbed for 3.5 million years and contributing them to a skeleton which has no feet found 1200 miles away! Lucy must have had a car too! With there conveniently being no feet found in the skeleton, it’s truly hard to conclude that Lucy is a bipedal walker rather than a knuckle-walker. In the absence of firm data, they make use of their imaginations. On this matter, the footprints and her footless skeleton have no firm ground to stand upon. Yet, evolutionists pass it off as scientific evidence and our kids are required to memorize it and study it. With that being said about the feet, we’ll next examine the hip.

Lucy’s Hips

There are key differences between the human hip and that of an ape or chimpanzee. The human hip is designed to allow us to stand upright and for our legs to move and swing to allow our bipedal locomotion. For chimps and apes, their hips are designed more for tree climbing, and when they stand upon the ground, they are often bowlegged, standing on the sides of their feet, and having to use the knuckles in their hands to assist with their walking. Lucy undeniably has chimp hips, but don’t tell her or Donald Johanson that, it’s a kind of a sensitive subject to them. This fact perplexed the faith of evolutionists. They refused to believe that Lucy had chimp hips which did not allow her to walk upright and to make those footprints 1200 miles away! Their solution to this problem can be viewed on the 1994 PBS/Nova series entitled “In Search of Human Origins: Episode One.” In this first episode, you can see a leading evolutionary scientist, Dr. Owen Lovejoy, struggle and wrestle with this issue. He finally makes a plaster cast of the hip and introduces a power saw! Dr. Lovejoy remarked, “The perfect fit (of the fossil in its original condition) was an illusion to make it resemble a chimp.” With the power saw, he fashioned the hip with three cuts to make it resemble a human hip. When he brought the cut pieces together, all kinds of light showed through this new “fit” and claimed that this was how the hip should have been and a deer must have stepped and crushed the hip over the course of time. The narrator of the show remarks that Dr. Lovejoy’s efforts were “brilliant” and that “it was a tricky job.” The problem is not science; the problem is science which is devoid of the Truth. So, in reality, Lucy’s hips are from a chimpanzee and she could not have walked on two feet alone.

And, to make matters worse, she is a he! Donald Johanson, her discoverer, stated that she has small pelvis because her offspring would have had small chimpanzee-sized heads rather than large human ones. Peter Schmid, evolutionary paleontologist at the Anthropological Institute in Zurich, Switzerland, studied the dimensions of her pelvis and came to very different conclusions. He and his colleague, Hausler, stated that a female of that species “would have had a pelvis with a larger sagittal diameter and a less protruding sacral promontorium.” They even continue on to say that the “laterally oriented iliac blades of AL 288-1 (Lucy) would produce more favorable insertion sites for the climbing muscles in more heavily built males.” In other words, her hips can’t pass a kid, but they are built more like that of a male chimp.

Lucy the Knuckle-Walker

Some of the final bits of evidence which suggest Lucy was a knuckle-walker rather than bipedal exist in the wrists. Brian Richmond and David Strait of the George Washington University in Washington, D.C. made a remarkable true discovery about Lucy while studying papers on primate physiology at the Smithsonian Institute, National Museum of Natural History. They discovered that knuckle-walking primates have a locking mechanism in their wrists in order to stabilize the wrist joint so they can use it. In an interview, Dr. Richmond stated, “I walked over to the cabinet, pulled out Lucy, and – shazam! – she had the morphology that was classic for knuckle walkers.” So, her wrist, in diameter and structure were designed to make her a knuckle-walker. Her arms were long and her scapula (shoulder blade) is also designed for tree-swinging unlike a human’s.

Other Examinations

Peter Schmid, the paleontologist from Switzerland, also stated:

“When I put the skeleton together, I expected it to look human. Everyone had talked about Lucy as being very modern, very human, so I was surprised by what I saw. I noticed that the ribs were more round in cross-section, more like what you see in apes. Human ribs are flatter in cross-section. But the shape of the rib cage itself was the biggest surprise of all. The human rib cage is barrel shaped, and I just couldn’t get Lucy’s ribs to fit this kind of shape. But I could get them to make a conical shaped rib cage, like what you see in apes.”

In that quote, you can see the frustrations of Peter Schmid, who is an evolutionist, where a trained eye meets to discern between the hype and reality. Like most evolutionary discoveries, Lucy was introduced to the media first where pressure and head-nodding make it into the story that it is today while trained, honest criticism are considered second hand (much like global warming . . . hmmmm).

Evolutionist, Professor Charles Oxnard of the University of Western Australia used an objective “un-biased” computerized analysis of many of the bones of the so called homonids such as Lucy. The conclusion was that they were a unique group of extinct creatures who are not intermediary links between apes and humans. In other words, evolutionists have been getting excited over an extinct species of chimpanzee that does not walk upright and is not a missing link.

In Conclusion

Science is not evil. Man is evil. Scripture proclaims that all knowledge leads to the Truth. But, when that knowledge becomes distorted, hype / fame / fortune get in the way, and an honest examination of the evidence gets disregarded, then the Truth is ignored. And it is upon those shaky foundations that evolution is built upon. Some of the best sources on the problems of evolution are evolutionary scientists as they rip apart each others’ discoveries in their own pursuit of fame, fortune, and the oldest link. They are to be pitied for their obsession.

The best we can do is to pray and inform those will listen (who have an ear to hear), and allow the Truth to set them free from all the make-believe that is taught in schools today. Lucy is considered one of the biggest finds in evolution, and as you can see, upon a thorough scientific examination of the evidence, the story gets turned upside-down. But, that is what we, the Children of God, are to do. We take in the world, with all of its erroneous beliefs, and we turn it upside-down so it can sit right-side-up.