Forbidden Archeology: The Hidden History of the Human Race

This idea links the origin of humans directly with the succession in time of mammalian species, and it would be seen today as implicitly evolutionary. However, Lyell (1863, p. 499) proposed withholding final judgement regarding human evolution until a great many fossils confirming modern humanity’s link with Dryopithecus were discovered: “At some future day, when many hundred species of extinct quadrumana [primates] may have been brought to light, the naturalist may speculate with advantage on this subject.”

Still, Lyell clearly felt we should not let the lack of such evidence prejudice us against the idea of evolution. “The opponents of the theory of transmutation sometimes argue,” he wrote, “that, if there had been a passage by variation from the lower Primates to Man, the geologist ought ere to this have detected some fossil remains of the intermediate links of the chain” (Lyell 1863, p. 435). But Lyell went on to suggest that “what we have said respecting the absence of gradational forms between the recent and Pliocene mammalia . . . may serve to show the weakness in the present state of science of any argument based on such negative evidence, especially in the case of man, since we have not yet searched those pages of the great book of nature, in which alone we have any right to expect to find records of the missing links alluded to” (1863, pp. 435–436). He believed the proper paleontological pages were to be found in Africa and the East Indies. It is there, he felt that “the discovery, in a fossil state, of extinct forms allied to the human, could be looked for” (Lyell 1863, p. 498).

Lyell’s approach was reasonable, since he advocated withholding judgement until enough evidence was gathered. However, while rejecting arguments based on a lack of evidence, he was perhaps implicitly assuming that the discovery of semihuman forms would confirm modern humanity’s descent from those forms. This is an error (and a perennial one), for the presence of a semihuman form does not preclude the contemporary or prior existence of fully human forms.

1.5 Darwin speaks

We have now seen that Huxley, Haeckel, and Lyell all wrote major works dealing with the question of human origins and that they did so before Darwin, who had deliberately held back from treating the question in The Origin of Species. Finally, in 1871 Darwin came out with his own book, Descent of Man. explaining his delay, Darwin (1871, p. 389) wrote: “during many years I collected notes on the origin or descent of man, without any intention of publishing on the subject, but rather with the determination not to publish, as I thought that I should thus only add to the prejudices against my views. It seemed to me sufficient to indicate, in the first edition of my ‘Origin of Species,’ that by this work ‘light would be thrown on the origin of man and his history;’ and this implies that man must be included with other organic beings in any general conclusion respecting his manner of appearance on this earth.”

In Descent of Man, Darwin was remarkably explicit in denying any special status for the human species. “We thus learn that man is descended from a hairy, tailed quadruped, probably arboreal in its habits, and an inhabitant of the Old World. . . . The higher mammals are probably derived from an ancient marsupial animal, and this through a long series of diversified forms, from some amphibianlike creature, and this again from some fish-like animal. In the dim obscurity of the past we can see that the early progenitor of all the vertebrata must have been an aquatic animal. . . . More like the larvae of the existing marine Ascidians than any other known form” (Darwin 1871, p. 911). It was a bold statement, yet one lacking the most convincing kind of proof—fossils of species transitional between the ancient dryopithecine apes and modern humans.

The absence of evidence of possible transitional forms may not provide a proper disproof of evolution, but one can argue that such forms are required in order to positively prove the theory. Yet aside from the Neanderthal skulls and a few other little-reported finds of modern morphology, there were no discoveries of hominid fossil remains. This fact soon became ammunition to those who were revolted by Darwin’s suggestion that humans had apelike ancestors. Where, they asked, were the fossils to prove it?

1.6 The Incompleteness of the Fossil Record