Page 208 - Portents and Features of the Mahdi's Comingl

PORTENTS AND FEATURES OF THE MAHDI'S COMING

class es. Ernst Mayr, one of the twen ti eth cen tu ry's most
impor tant evo lu tion ists, con tends in his book One Long
Argument that "par tic u lar ly his tor i cal [puz zles] such as
the ori gin of life or of Homo sapi ens, are extreme ly dif -
fi cult and may even resist a final, sat is fy ing expla na -
tion." 14
By out lin ing the link chain as Australopithecus >
Homo habi lis > Homo erec tus > Homo sapi ens, evo lu -
tion ists imply that each of these spe cies is one anoth -
er's ances tor. However, recent find ings of pale o an thro -
pol o gists have revealed that Australopithecus, Homo
habi lis, and Homo erec tus lived at dif fer ent parts of the
world at the same time. 15
Moreover, a cer tain seg ment of humans clas si fied
as Homo erec tus have lived up until very mod ern times.
Homo sapi ens nean dar thal en sis and Homo sapi ens
sapi ens (mod ern man) co-exist ed in the same region. 16
This sit u a tion appar ent ly indi cates the inva lid i ty of
the claim that they are ances tors of one anoth er.
Stephen Jay Gould explained this dead lock of the the -
o ry of evo lu tion although he was him self one of the lead -
ing advo cates of evo lu tion in the twen ti eth cen tu ry:
What has become of our lad der if there are three
coex ist ing lin e a ges of hom i nids (A. afri ca nus, the robust
aus tra lop i the ci nes, and H. habi lis), none clear ly derived
from anoth er? Moreover, none of the three dis play any
evo lu tion a ry trends dur ing their ten ure on earth. 17

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