Latest Insights on Anthropology
William S. Stoertz
originally August 27, 1998; updated October 10, 1998
As we all know well, when members asked Father when
Adam and Eve, the first human beings lived, Father has many
times said "25 million years ago". Even when questioned about
that, if he had perhaps meant 2.5 million years ago, Father
reemphasized his original figure.
At the same time, if we examine the latest anthropological
findings, we see that they are homing in on a figure of 5 mya
for the first hominids. Here is, in fact, a timeline of the sequence
of events in this line:
Cretaceous period: 146-65 mya.
70 million years ago -- Two varieties of primates exist: the
Strepsherini, a nocturnal beastiary, and the Haplorini, a diurnal
variety, from which the hominids arose.
65 million years ago -- Chicxulub asteroid impact on Yucatan
peninsula. K-T Boundary: extinction of dinosaurs and
beginning of reign of mammals.
Tertiary period: 65-1.64 mya: Paleocene, Eocene, Oligocene,
Miocene and Pliocene epochs. Mammals took over from the
dinosaurs. Continents took on present positions.
Paleocene epoch: 65-56.5 mya: Mammals spread rapidly.
Flying mammals replaced flying reptiles, swimming mammals
replaced swimming reptiles.
60 mya -- Rats, mice, squirrels appear.
60 mya -- Herons, storks appear.
Eocene epoch: 56.5-35.5 mya -- Early forms of mammals
developing.
55 mya -- Rabbits and hares appear.
50 mya -- Primitive monkeys appear.
Oligocene epoch: 35.5-23.5 mya: Modern mammals. Deer, cats,
foxes, bears, dogs.
30 mya -- First old world monkey fossils. Fayum, Egypt.
29-28 million years ago -- Aegyptopithecus, early primate,
found in Egypt.
28 mya -- Koalas appear.
25 mya -- God created Adam and Eve, the first human beings,
as His children. But they disobeyed God's commandment not to
engage in sexual relationship before their maturity, thus falling
and becoming "the worst animals". (True Father, Oct. 31, 1997
et al.) [Note: Father has several times, upon questioning,
reaffirmed that he means 25 million and not 2.5 mya.]
Miocene epoch: 23.5-5.2 mya: Grasslands, hoofed mammals
spread.
20 mya -- Parrots and pigeons appear.
20 mya -- Early ape fossils, Dryopithecinae. Europe, India, East
Africa.
20-12 mya -- Common chimpanzee and hominid line.
14-4.2 million years ago -- Gap in the Hominoid fossil record.
10-4 mya -- Ramapithecus.
6-5.3 mya -- Major climate change dried out the primeval
forests in Africa, forcing primates to forage in the open country.
Pliocene epoch: 5.2-1.64 million years ago.
5-4 million years ago -- Adam and Eve (by estimate of William
Stoertz on Aug. 27, 1998; later updated to 2.5 mya).
5-1.4 million years ago -- Australopithecines. Lake Baringo
jawbone earliest find. They had human-like jaws and teeth; ape-
like (small) skull. Bipedal but still climbed trees. Primarily
vegetarian. Pronounced sexual di-morphism. Only in Africa.
4.4 mya -- Early hominid, Ardipithecus ramidus, discovered in
Ethiopia. Upright posture, semi-pedal locomotion.
at least 4.15 mya -- Humans and chimps diverged. Average of 55
differences between human and chimpanzee mitochondrial DNA,
27 between human and Neanderthal, and an average of 8
differences among contemporary humans.
4.1 [4.2-3.9] mya -- Early hominid, Australopithecus
anamensis, found at Kanapoi and Allia Bay, northern Kenya by
Meave Leakey in 1995.
3.6 mya -- Fully bipedal primate footprints left in wet volcanic
ash on Tanzania's Laetoli plain, discovered by Mary Leakey's
team of paleoanthropologists in 1978.
3.5-3 [3-2.3] mya -- Australopithecus africanus ("Little Foot"),
discovered at Sterkfontein, South Africa, with a humanlike
ankle but an apelike grasping big toe; more bowlegged, apelike
gait than Lucy.
3.3-2.6 mya -- Paranthropus aethiopicus discovered by Alan
Walker in Tanzania in 1985.
3.18 [3.9-3] mya -- Australopithecus afarensis ("Lucy").
Primitive ancestor of modern humans.
2.6 mya -- Earliest known stone tools, older than any Homo
fossils, found at Gona, Ethiopia.
2.6-1.8 million years ago -- Paranthropus robustus.
2.6-1.2 million years ago -- Paranthropus boisei. Bony crest
atop skull; smallest braincase.
2.5 mya -- Bible indicates Adam and Eve lived 6,000 years ago.
Father in Belvedere about 1990 said "25 million years ago",
possibly meaning 2.5 mya.
2.5 million years ago -- Adam and Eve (revised estimate of
William Stoertz on Oct. 10, 1998).
2.5-1.6 mya -- Homo habilis, from Olduvai Gorge and Lake
Turkana, Kenya.
2.4 mya -- First Homo genus found at Uraha, Malawi; and at
Lake Baringo, Kenya.
2.33 mya -- Oldest Homo fossil found together with stone tools
in Hadar, Ethiopia in 1994 by Donald Johanson and Bill
Kimbel.
2.0 to 1.2 mya -- Homo robustus, from Swartkrans, South
Africa.
ca. 1.9 mya -- Three branches of Homo line: Homo habilis,
Homo rudolfensis, and Homo erectus (leading to Homo
sapiens, modern man).
1.8 to 0.4 mya -- Homo erectus.
ca. 1.8 million to 100,000 years ago -- Homo ergaster.
1.7 mya -- End of Tertiary, beginning of Quaternary.
1.64 mya -- End of Tertiary, beginning of Quaternary period.
Quaternary period: 1.64 mya to present. Includes Pleistocene
and Holocene epochs.
Pleistocene epoch: 1.64 mya to 11,000 years ago.
ca. 1.4 mya -- Extinction of last Australopithecus line.
1 mya -- First evidence of controlled fire.
770,000 to 100,000 years ago -- Archaic Homo sapiens,
including Homo heidelbergensis.
690,000 to 550,000 years ago -- Neanderthals split off from
ancestors of modern humans and never reconciled. Determined
from DNA of mitochondrion from fossil arm bone.
ca. 330,000 years ago -- Earliest evidence of shelters.
ca. 300,000 years ago -- Primitive humans lived in northern
Siberia. Handmade stone tools found above Lena River near
Yakutsk.
ca. 300,000-150,000 years ago -- "Mitochondrial Eve",
common woman ancestor who passed her mitochondria down
to all living human beings. By molecular-clock estimates of
mitochondrial DNA.
230,000 to 27,000 years ago -- Neanderthal man.
180,000 years ago -- Ancestors of Neanderthals and Homo
sapiens, with advanced hand-axes.
125,000 years ago -- Earliest evidence of Homo sapiens
(modern humans) in Africa.
100,000 years ago -- Anatomically modern Homo sapiens.
100,000 years ago -- Earliest known burials.
100,000-35,000 years ago -- Neanderthal man, nearly identical
to today's Homo sapiens, except for linebacker build, lack of
chin, and protruding brows. Found from Europe to Central
Asia. Buried their dead with care, looked after sick and lame.
Did not mingle nor interbreed with Cro-Magnons.
ca. 60,000 years ago-(?) -- Cro-Magnon man. Direct ancestors
of modern man.
60,000 years ago -- Earliest firm evidence of humans in
Australia.
40,000 to 10,000 years ago -- Most recent Ice Age.
39,000 years ago -- Earliest evidence of modern humans in
Europe.
ca. 30,000-15,000 B.C. -- Migration of American Indians from
around Lake Baikal across Alaska land bridge.
31,000 years ago -- Earliest known cave paintings.
27,000 years ago -- Last Neanderthals die out.
22,000 years ago -- Finno-Ugaric hunters lived in small
settlements of 10-15 people around Moscow, hunting woolly
mammoths.
22,000 years ago -- Australian aboriginal tools and rock
carvings at Jimnium in Northern Territory. Previously wrongly
dated at 116-176,000 years old. Dr. Richard Roberts dated at
10-22,000 years using thermoluminescence of sand grains and
carbon-14.
20,000 years ago -- Altamira cave and Chauvet cave paintings.
17,000 years ago -- Lascaux cave paintings.
ca. 15,000 B.C. -- First settlements at Jericho.
12,500 years ago -- Archaeological evidence of American
Indians at Monte Verde, near Chilean village of Pelluco.
Charcoal, tent stakes, mastodon tusks, stone flakes, wood lance,
fire drill board. Carbon-14 dating +250 years, ranging from
13,565 to 11,920 years from different sites.
12,000 years ago -- Earliest evidence of humans in Americas.
ca. 10,000 B.C. -- Undisputed evidence of humans living in
Americas, but migration to the new world could have started
much earlier.
12,000 years ago -- Homo sapiens have domesticated dogs in
Kirkuk, Iraq.
Holocene epoch: 11,000 years ago to present. Climate warmed,
humans developed significantly.
ca. 9000 B.C. -- Komsa culture on northern Scandinavian coast
during the last Ice Age, related to Lapps, Komis, and Siberian
tribes.
9,000-8,000 B.C. -- One of the most ancient farming villages in
the world, uncovered by Iraqi archaeologists since 1991 in
Kurdistan. Village of houses of dried bricks.
10,000 years ago -- First permanent human settlements.
10,000 years ago -- Most recent ice age ends.
ca. 8,000 B.C. -- People learn to use fire to cast copper and
harden pottery.
ca. 7,000 B.C. -- Origin of Indo-European race and languages
from Punjab or Afghanistan. "Japheth".
ca. 7,000 B.C. -- "Cheddar Man" from southwest England.
Britons appear to come from a race of hunter-gatherers who
later turned to farming. Mitochondrial DNA extracted from a
molar tooth compared with living British volunteers.
ca. 9,000 ago -- Remains of Western European Caucasoid man
found 1990 in riverbed near Kennewick, Washington.
ca. 5,400 B.C. -- Many farming villages in lower
Tigris/Euphrates Valley.
October 23, 4004 B.C. -- Creation date reckoned by James
Ussher, Anglican Primate of All Ireland, in 17th century.
So, with information like that above, people have variously
placed the first human beings at 5 mya (with Australopithecus),
2.6 mya (the first stone tools), 1.8 mya (Homo erectus), 1 mya
(the first use of fire discovered), 800,000 years ago (archaic
Homo sapiens, including the ancestors of the Neanderthals),
100,000 years ago (the first burials, and other evidence of
culture), or even 50,000 years ago. Yet Father, in contrast to
all the known evidence, said "25 million years ago". At that
time, monkeys had just appeared, and horses and chimpanzees did
not appear until later! Reasonably, considering what is known
scientifically, it would rather seem that Father meant "2.5
million years ago". Since Korean language counts based on the
number 10,000 rather than 1,000 as with Western systems, such a
difference is understandable.
So when I was praying about this, I asked, "What do You
make of that, Heavenly Father?" and I received the answer, "He
said that to challenge you, and to challenge the secular
humanists."
Working on the question some more, I came to a seemingly
inevitable date of 2.5 mya, and, reporting this to God, I felt He
said, "Father wanted you to work hard on it, not just accept it."
I think there are three or four major reasons why Father has
given this date of 25 mya, which seems unreasonably long ago:
1. To challenge us to think more deeply, and to think further
back, as when Father gives us a goal which is higher than our
realistic thinking.
2. In order not to be dominated by the secular humanists,
who would gloat if they thought their opinion was upheld, and
whose materialistic thinking is completely unacceptable to
Heaven.
3. To emphasize how much Heavenly Father was longing to
create His son and daughter as early as possible, since a long
time ago; and in His mind He was looking for how to establish
the true human beings. God commenced the providential period
to establish Adam and Eve, the first true human beings, since as
long as 25 million years ago, even if He did not at once do so
on this earth.
4. To emphasize how long God has been suffering in
heartache and agony since the Fall -- that this was not just
6,000 years, nor even a million years, if we would think that
were small, but much longer.
Modifying my previous conclusions of August 27th, I
realized that the Ramepithecus (10-4 mya) were pretty much out
of the picture, being clearly on the ape side, and not human
ancestors. The Australopithecus (5-1.4 mya), while most likely
on the direct line, were dull and brutish, but could not be
humans -- not even fallen humans. In this way, the identity of
the first humans came right back to 2.5 million years ago with
the first Homo genus. These were crafty, clever, and did many
things. Even being "cavemen", the descendants of Adam and
Eve retained this basic intelligence; just they were using it
against each other as well as dealing with the natural elements
and catching wild beasts. We may suppose that eventually
further, more precise traces of the earliest Homo species will
be found, and we might even locate the remains of Adam and Eve
and their family.
SUMMARY OF DIRECT PHYSICAL LINEAGE OF MODERN PEOPLE
70 mya -- Haplorini, early primate from which the hominids arose.
29-28 mya -- Early primate, Aegyptopithecus, found in Egypt.
20-12 mya -- Common ancestral line of chimpanzees and hominids.
4.4 mya -- Early hominid: Ardipithecus ramidus.
5-1.4 mya -- Hominids: Australopithecus.
3.3-1.8 mya -- Hominids: Paranthropus.
2.5 mya -- ADAM AND EVE.
2.5-1.6 mya -- Homo habilis.
1.8-0.4 mya -- Homo erectus.
770,000 years ago -- Archaic Homo sapiens.
690-550,000 yrs ago -- Ancestors of Neanderthals split from our
own ancestors.
230,000-27,000 years ago -- Neanderthals (Homo sapiens
neanderthalensis).
60,000 years ago -- Cro-Magnon man, our direct ancestors.
40,000-10,000 yrs ago -- Most recent ice age.
10,000 yrs ago -- Beginning of our phase of civilization.
William Stoertz, ITPN, 1998.10.10.
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