Page 505 - Atlas of Creation Volume 3

Harun Yahya

ONCE, IT WAS BELIEVED THAT THERE WAS

"EMBRYOLOGICAL EVIDENCE FOR EVOLUTION"

n his book The Descent of Man, Charles Darwin explained the proofs he thought he had found to sup-
port his theory of human origins. The only illustration in this book, right in the first chapter, is a
I drawing of two embryos: one of a human being and the other of a dog. In the chapter, "The Evidence
of the Descent of Man from Some Lower Form," Darwin writes:

Embryonic Development: Man is developed from an ovule, about the 125th of an inch in diameter, which dif-
fers in no respect from the ovules of other animals. The embryo itself at a very early period can hardly be dis-
tinguished from that of other members of the vertebrate kingdom. At this period . . . the slits on the sides of
the neck [of human's embryo] still remain. . . 53

After this, he states that his observations indicate that a human embryo closely resembles that of an
ape, a dog or another vertebrate but that, in later stages of development in the womb, a differentiation

occurs. In a letter to his friend, Asa Gray, Darwin considered the evidence from embryology to be "by far
the strongest single class of facts in favor of" his theory. 54
But Darwin was no embryologist. Never once did he investigate embryos
in a comprehensive way. Therefore, in developing his arguments, he

quoted individuals whom he regarded as authorities on this mat-
ter. In his footnotes, one name was particularly noticeable: the
German biologist, Ernst Haeckel, whose book Naturliche
Schopfungsgeschichte (The Natural History of

Creation) contained various drawings of em-
bryos, together with his comments on them.
A short time later, Haeckel was to go down
in history as the original author of evolutionist
interpretation of embryology. He read The

Origin of the Species (1859) with great excitement,
accepted what Darwin wrote, and became a
more avid evolutionist than Darwin himself. To

make his own contribution to the theory, he con-
ducted a series of experiments and published
Naturliche Schopfungsgeschichte in 1868. In it, he
advanced his theory of embryology that was to

win him fame. From the beginning, he proposed
that the embryos of human beings and certain
animals developed in the same way. The draw-
ings of the embryos of a human being, an ape

and a dog on page 242 were proof of this. The
drawings were apparently identical and, accord-
ing to Haeckel, these creatures came from a com-
mon root.
The German biologist Ernst Haeckel was
the founder of Darwinist embryology.

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