The fossil trail has revealed creatures that seem to resemble apes, but have some human-like features. These members of the ape family that scientists call “hominids” are clearly not human, but evolutionists believe they eventually became us.
Most hominids had small, ape-like brains and no capacity for language. Then, suddenly in the fossil record, man appears with several unique features, including an enlarged brain capacity. Why are there no clear-cut links between hominids without language capacity and Homo sapiens?
The ability to speak distinguishes man from all apes and hominids. Although human beings have both the hardware and the software for language, hominids didn’t. They didn’t even come close.
According to noted evolutionist Ernst Mayr, humans have the ability to conceptualize, resulting in the development of art, literature, mathematics, and science. Hominids and all other animals lack this unique human quality, and are only able to communicate by giving and receiving signals.¹
But even if man suddenly developed the ability to speak, what evolutionary advantage brought about the change? This presents a huge problem for those who argue against a designer.
As he traces the history of our species, evolutionist Steve Olson spells out the problem. “Of course, language could not have come from nowhere. To speak, early humans needed particular vocal and neural mechanisms. But here a notorious problem arises. Any adaptations produced by evolution are useful only in the present, not in some vaguely defined future.”²
In other words, for human speech to work, the brain structure, the tongue, the larynx, the vocal cords, and many other parts all need to be fully developed.
Some biologists have speculated that a mutation occurred allowing an individual to talk. But, according to Olson, such explanations “have always been suspect.” In reality, science cannot explain why we are the only creatures with the ability to speak.
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¹Ernst Mayr, What Evolution Is (New York: Basic Books, 2001), 253.
²Steve Olson, Mapping Human History: Genes, Race, and Our Common Origins (New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 2002), 87.
The above article was excerpted from “Are Humans the Result of Evolution?” on our sister site, Y-Origins.com. Click here to read the entire article.
