Homo erectus lived for over 1.5 million years. How do creationists explain this?

Question

Scientists have identified homo erectus as the ancestor of homo antecessor, who in turn was the ancestor of homo neanderthalis (neanderthals) and homo sapiens. The modern homo sapien sapien derives from homo sapien idaltu, who lived almost 160,000 years ago in Pleistocene Africa.

Homo erectus is the species that first discovered fire and spread to many parts of the earth, leaving an abundant fossil record. It represents one stage in our physical evolution, but stages both before and after homo erectus have been discovered, making a complete fossil record back to ardipithecus kadabba, which lived between 5.8 million to 5.2 million years ago.

I would be interested to know what creationists can offer to explain this. I'm not interested in replies like "This is a lie" or "It's not true 'coz the Bible says so" or anything similar. I actually want to know how creationists explain this in their theory.

BTW, I believe in God AND evolution and that these early humans had eternal souls.

Answer 1

I do not have time to explain it all but for an alternative that some Christains believe examine what is termed "the gap theory," as described in Dake's or Scofield bibles. It basically points out that the earth is over 6000 years old becuase there was a time period of existance before Adam and Eve were created. Thus, a gap existed between genesis 1:1 and genesis 1:2. Keyword search "the gap theory" and you will find critics and supporters of this alternative yet very biblical view of creation.

Answer 2

In order to answer this question, I would need to know a few things. First, what actual, observational and physical proof do you have that homo erectus existed? Second, what method of carbon dating did you use to substantiate a time line of 1.5 million years? Third, are you sure your dating methods were accurate? Fourth, since evolution is a historical science, we can only speculate about homo erectus because evolution forces us to "fill in the gaps" of missing evidence with interpretation. Since we cannot repeat or observe the evolutionary process, what methods of interpretation are you using to support your claim? Answer these four questions and I can tell you how a creationist explains their theory.

Answer 3

I am a Muslim, and our beliefs fit in with scientific evidence. First of all it is well known and agreed upon that bi-pedal human ancestors have existed for a few million years (3.2 million year old human footprints at Latoli in Africa). The conflict among evolutionists is just how modern these bi-pedal human ancestors like Homo erectus were.

My view is that Homo erctus was just a race of ancient humans, who were modern in almost every way. As far as the timeline not fitting with the Biblical acount of the Earth being created a few thousand years ago, we Muslims don't have that problem.

According to Islamic beliefs, God sent more than 124,000 prophets to mankind to guide us to the straight path. The first of these prophets was Adam himself, who taught his offspring to obey God, and be kind to each other. There are other prophets mentioned in the Quran, like Noah, Abraham, Moses, and Jesus. The last and final prophet was Muhammad, who came about 600 years after the second last prophet, Jesus.

Considering there were so many prophets, their life spans, and time elapsed between them, it seems that the human race was established on Earth by God a few million years ago.

The theory of Darwinian evolution, though, has no leg to stand on. See http://www.hyahya.org for more deatils about what Muslims think about human evolution.

Answer 4

Homo erectus are actually Martians. They still exist, but since they've been around longer than humans, their technology is better than ours. They can put themselves out of phase with our dimension so they are completely undetectable by either our biological senses or by technology.

Answer 5

Dude, you don't even need to bring that up to disprove creationism.

Australian Aborigines were isolated from the rest of the world for approx. 45,000 years - more than enough to knock the 6,000 year old Earth theory out of the water.

Oh unless they believe that the Aborigines are people of the devil oooooh.... *sigh*

Answer 6

I like how the gal above dismisses this by saying that "anything before 6000 years ago is hearsay".

Either she is unfamiliar with the evidence or doesn't know what "hearsay" means. Either or both are indicative of a shabby education and the poison of fundamentalist Christianity.

Answer 7

Creationists don`t believe in any homos at all .
Erectus ,Neandretal or just plain homos.

Answer 8

I dunno how God did what He did...He didn't leave me exact directions on how to create a universe and populate it with life.
Which is probably just as well...imagine the mess I could make of such a project!!
Does believing that God could very well have used evolution as a tool make me a bad Christian??

Answer 9

They don't try and explain that which can be ignored completely. Nothing like a good fact to spoil a strong argument, is there?

Answer 10

There is NO proof that anything existed 1.5 million years ago.

At best, scientists agree that carbon dating can't show anything beyond 20 THOUSAND years.
Anything beyond that is known to be conjecture and IS NOT BELIEVED by all scientists.