Evolutionary theory debunked

[RuudVanNistelrooy]

Another dubious claim about [i]naledi[/i] is that it intentionally buried its dead — a testimony to its supposedly human-like intellect. Burying dead in the cave where it was found would require shimmying through a steep, narrow crevice while dragging a body a long distance in the dark — a physically challenging task for any hominin of any level of intelligence. For many reasons, multiple scientists — including two of Berger’s colleagues at the University of Witwatersrand — dispute the intentional burial hypothesis.31 Alison Brooks of George Washington University observed that claims of intentional burial are “so far out there that they really need a higher standard of proof.”32

But the deathblow to claims for [i]Homo naledi[/i] as an ancestral or transitional fossil is its age. When first published, [i]naledi[/i]‘s promoters suggested, on the basis of evolutionary considerations rather than geological evidence, that it lived 2–3 million years ago. But at that time the fossils hadn’t been dated geologically. Carol Ward of the University of Missouri warned, “Without dates, the fossils reveal almost nothing about hominin evolution.”33 This didn’t stop paleoanthropologists from speculating, predicting that [i]naledi[/i] lived 2–3 million years ago and “represents an intermediate between [i]Australopithecus[/i] and [i]Homo erectus[/i].”34 In 2017, [i]Homo naledi[/i]‘s remains were dated to the “surprisingly” and “startlingly young” age of 236,000–335,000 years35 — an order of magnitude younger than the age predicted by evolutionary considerations, and far too young to be ancestral to our species. Anthropologist James Kidder candidly admitted, “Nearly everyone in the scientific community thought that the date of the [i]Homo naledi [/i]fossils, when calculated, would fall within the same general time period as other primitive early [i]Homo[/i] remains. We were wrong.”36

Many cautioned against the hype over [i]naledi[/i],37 and its trajectory resembles other hominins for which hyped claims of transitional or ancestral status eventually failed. When evaluating media claims of the newest human ancestor, a dose of healthy skepticism is warranted.