Page 782 - Atlas of Creation Volume 1

Homo Habilis: The Ape that was Presented as Human

The great similarity between the skeletal and cranial structures of australopithecines and chimpanzees,
and the refutation of the claim that these creatures walked upright, have caused great difficulty for evolution-
ist paleoanthropologists. The reason is that, according to the imaginary evolution scheme, Homo erectus comes
after Australopithecus. As the genus name Homo (meaning "man") implies, Homo erectus is a human species and

its skeleton is straight. Its cranial capacity is twice as large as that of Australopithecus. A direct transition from
Australopithecus, which is a chimpanzee-like ape, to Homo erectus, which has a skeleton no different from
today’s man's, is out of the question even according to evolutionist theory. Therefore, "links"-that is, "transi-

tional forms"-are needed. The concept of Homo habilis arose from this necessity.
The classification of Homo habilis was put forward in the 1960s by the Leakeys, a family of "fossil hunters".
According to the Leakeys, this new species, which they classified as Homo habilis, had a relatively large cranial
capacity, the ability to walk upright and to use stone and wooden tools. Therefore, it could have been the an-
cestor of man.

New fossils of the same species unearthed in the late 1980s, were to completely change this view. Some re-
searchers, such as Bernard Wood and C. Loring Brace, who relied on those newly-found fossils, stated that
Homo habilis (which means "skillful man", that is, man capable of using tools) should be classified as

Australopithecus habilis, or "skillful southern ape", because Homo habilis had a lot of characteristics in common
with the australopithecine apes. It had long arms, short legs and an ape-like skeletal structure just like
Australopithecus. Its fingers and toes were suitable for climbing. Their jaw was very similar to that of today's
apes. Their 600 cc average cranial capacity is also an indication of the fact that they were apes. In short, Homo
habilis, which was presented as a different species by some evolutionists, was in reality an ape species just like

all the other australopithecines.
Research carried out in the years since Wood and Brace's work has demonstrated that Homo habilis was in-
deed no different from Australopithecus. The skull and skeletal fossil OH62 found by Tim White showed that

this species had a small cranial capacity, as well as long arms and short legs which enabled them to climb trees
just like apes of our day do.
The detailed analyses conducted by American anthropologist Holly Smith in 1994 indicated that Homo ha-
bilis was not Homo, in other words, "human", at all, but rather unequivocally an "ape". Speaking of the analyses
she made on the teeth of Australopithecus, Homo habilis, Homo erectus and Homo neanderthalensis, Smith stated the

following;
Restricting analysis of fossils to specimens satisfying these criteria, patterns of dental development of gracile
australopithecines and Homo Habilis remain classified with African apes. Those of Homo erectus and
Neanderthals are classified with humans. 74

Within the same year, Fred Spoor, Bernard Wood and Frans Zonneveld, all specialists on anatomy, reached
a similar conclusion through a totally different method. This method was based on the comparative analysis of
the semi-circular canals in the inner ear of humans and apes which provided for sustaining balance. Spoor,
Wood and Zonneveld concluded that:

Among the fossil hominids the earliest species to demonstrate the modern human morphology is Homo erectus. In
contrast, the semi-circular canal dimensions in crania from southern Africa attributed to Australopithecus and
Paranthropus resemble those of the extant great apes. 75
Spoor, Wood and Zonneveld also studied a Homo habilis specimen, namely Stw 53, and found out that "Stw

53 relied less on bipedal behavior than the australopithecines." This meant that the H. habilis specimen was
even more ape-like than the Australopithecus species. Thus they concluded that "Stw 53 represents an unlikely
intermediate between the morphologies seen in the australopithecines and H. erectus."
This finding yielded two important results:

1. Fossils referred to as Homo habilis did not actually belong to the genus Homo, i.e. humans, but to that of
Australopithecus, i.e. apes.
2. Both Homo habilis and Australopithecus were creatures that walked stooped forward-that is to say, they
had the skeleton of an ape. They have no relation whatsoever to man.

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