MoAW Weekly Spotlight - Lucy - The Story of Human Origins

February 26, 2021

Spotlight:

LUCY - The Story of Human Origins

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From Where Do We Come? (Excerpt)

A Children’s Poem about Human Origins

by Kendall Vanderslice

“Australopithecus afarensis is my name,

The skeleton Lucy gained all of my fame.

I walked on two feet, and my brain was quite small.

I stood erect at about 4 feet tall.

My buddy Paranthropus came soon after me.

With really big teeth, his flat face is key.

He had a thick bone running down his head,

The 'sagittal crest' is how it is said.”

At 2.4 million years, we find the genus Homo.

Habilis is the oldest of which we know.

As time goes on, some stone tools appear,

And the brain grows bigger, could culture be near?

Erectus and later the Heidelbergensis

Then finally our friend, Mr. Neandertalensis.

Each species gets closer to what we see today,

But not one of them stayed around to play.

It’s not until the Upper Paleolithic

That we see any hominins we might deem terrific.

This means it was 40,000 years ago

That people like us wandered to and fro.

But still, this is older than YEC thinks true,

A problem appears, oh what do we do?

How do we believe that the Bible is right,

And also avoid the scientific fight?

Divine evolution is good middle ground,

But some implications just aren’t very sound.

Were Adam and Eve real people or fake?

And what about all of the fruit that they ate?

What is sin? When did it begin?

What about soul? Are we separate or whole?

The answer just isn’t as simple as this,

Too many questions deny such bliss.

Photograph by Steven Salisbury

Order Primates,

Family Hominidae

Australopithecus afarensis

Middle Pliocene, Ethiopia

The genealogy of humankind emerges with the line of australopithecine hominids, which appears to have begun between 4 and 5 million years ago with the appearance of Australopithecus anamensis (“Southern Ape of the Lake”) and its earliest descendants, the well-documented Australopithecus afarensis (“Southern Ape of Afar”). Presumably descended from a divergent group of Miocene apes such as Kenyapithecus, these early species of gracile australopiths are the most primitive known. Among the oldest and most complete remains of an erect-walking ancestral hominid ever found, this amazing afarensis skeleton is dated at about 3.2 million years. Known throughout the world as “Lucy” (from a Beatles song), it was discovered in Radar, Ethiopia in 1974 by Donald Johanson and Tom Gray.

Lucy was 3-and-a-half feet tall and about 25 years old when she died. Though her scarcely worn wisdom teeth had only recently erupted, she was already showing signs of bone disease on her spine. Whether she accidentally drowned or quietly laid down in the sand and died, her remains were deposited in the shore of an ancient lake and covered over by sediment until eventually exposed by rain.

Lucy herself had an apelike face with a low forehead, resembling far more her recent arboreal, chimp-like ancestors than her distant Homo descendants. With slimmer hips and narrower birth canals, females apparently gave birth to infants with far smaller heads and brains. Possessing smaller canines than their quadrupedal ancestors, they presumably foraged in family groups for fruits and seeds along the vanished lakes and streams of Ethiopia and Tanzania, possibly sleeping in high tree branches to avoid predators.

A controversy arose over the naming of the species because the closer in time the separate species of hominids are to their original common ancestor, the more they look alike, making it difficult to distinguish between them. Close to the ancestor of the gorilla and even closer to that of the chimpanzee, afarensis was among the earliest of the divergent line that led to Homo; in fact, the origin of the human race can be traced directly back to this ancient tribe of gracile australopiths. Ranging from 3 to 5 feet in height and weighing from 60 to 90 pounds, afarensis had long arms with slightly curved finger and toe bones, suggesting at least a partially arboreal life.

Disappearing by 2.5 million years ago, this hominid species gave rise to all of the subsequently varied tribes of Australopithecus and Homo. Courtesy of the Institute of Human Origins. National Museum of Ethiopia.

"Evolution explains our biological evolution, but human beings are unique creatures...And that uniqueness of being human, language, art, culture, our dependency on culture for survival, comes from the combination of traditional biological evolution." -Donald Johanson.

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