Forbidden Archeology: The Hidden History of the Human Race

Where does all this leave us regarding our understanding of Australopithecus afarensis? Johanson and White and their supporters say A. afarensis, a terrestrial biped, was ancestral to A. africanus and the robust australopithecines, a line that finished in extinction. They also said A. afarensis was ancestral to the line leading from Homo habilis to Homo sapiens. Others say A. afarensis was a variety of A. africanus, which gave rise to the Homo line. Still others take a two-species approach. Tardieu (1981), studying the postcranial evidence, particularly the femurs, concluded that the larger individuals at Hadar represented the Homo line and the smaller individuals, like Lucy, something else. Y. Coppens, from studies of the dental evidence, reached a similar conclusion (Weaver 1985, pp. 592, 595). Richard Leakey also took the multiple-species approach, claiming that Lucy was a surviving Ramapithecus whereas the larger Hadar specimens represented the Homo line. Olson, studying features of the cranial anatomy, concluded that the larger Hadar individuals were like Australopithecus robustus, whereas Lucy was the first species in the Homo line (Herbert 1983, pp. 10–11). Susman felt the large and small Hadar types represented a single, partly arboreal species. Stern originally agreed with this, but later adopted a two-species view, as a result of his studies of the finger anatomy. Finally, Oxnard and others believed A. afarensis to be an apelike arboreal creature with no direct relation to the human line.

This brief review does not, however, exhaust the various opinions about the phylogenetic status of A. afarensis. “For Ferguson (1983, 1984) the Hadar sample contains three different taxa: Sivapithecus sp., Australopithecus africanus, and Homo antiquus (new species),” noted Groves (1989, p. 262). Groves himself (1989, p. 263), in his comprehensive taxonomic survey of the hominids, said: “Certainly the post-cranial data are absolutely clear, and split the Hadar sample into two divisions.” Groves (1989, p. 263) classified one Hadar group as early Homo and the other as an unnamed new hominid genus. Under the species designation Australopithecus afarensis, he kept only the Laetoli jaws. So Groves, like Ferguson, found three species instead of one in the A. afarensis fossils of Johanson and White.

Within the scientific community there is as of yet no unanimous picture of what the australopithecines, including A. afarensis, were really like, both in terms of their morphology and their phylogenetic relation with modern humans. The field is still wide open and full of conflicting views.

Nevertheless, we find the argument for a substantial component of arboreality in the locomotor behavior of A. afarensis more credible than that for exclusive terrestrial bipedalism. There also appears to be good reason to suppose the Hadar hominid fossils represent more than one species. Furthermore, we favor the view, espoused by Louis and Richard Leakey, that no australopithecine, including A. afarensis, warrants being labeled a human ancestor.

Just as today we find true humans coexisting with various categories of apes, some more humanlike than others, the same was true in the past, as far back as our research can carry us. In fact, an objective review of the evidence yields signs of anatomically modern human beings tens of millions of years ago, a fact distinctly incompatible with any current evolutionary model.

11.10 The Laetoli Footprints

The Laetoli site is located in northern Tanzania, about 30 miles south of Olduvai Gorge. Laetoli is the Masai word for red lily. The area was first explored by the Leakeys in 1935. Later, Mary Leakey returned to Laetoli and discovered some hominid jaws, which she regarded as early Homo.

One day in 1979, Dr. Andrew Hill of the Kenya National Museum and several other members of Mary Leakey’s expedition were playing around, throwing pieces of elephant dung at each other. In the course of this sport, Hill noticed some marks on the ground. They proved to be fossil footprints of animals. Subsequently, Peter Jones and Philip Leakey, the youngest son of Louis and Mary Leakey, discovered among the footprints some that appeared to have been made by hominids. The prints had been impressed in layers of volcanic ash, dated by Garniss Curtis, using the potassium-argon method, at from 3.6 to 3.8 million years old.