This should come as no surprise: Humans and apes have different hips.
The human pelvis is rounded, like a basket, to enable us to walk and stand upright with ease. The ape pelvis is tall and narrow, with the upper hip bones appearing like blades, allowing apes to walk on all fours and effortlessly climb and swing in trees.
In the evolutionary story, we evolved from an apelike ancestor who would have had more apelike hips. How, exactly, this massive anatomical feat of evolution supposedly happened has remained a mystery. . . but has it now been solved?
A new study claims to have uncovered “some of the key genetic and developmental shifts that radically resculpted the quadrupedal ape pelvis into a bipedal one.” Using samples from human “embryonic tissues” (it’s unclear how these tissues, some of which were “collected by the Birth Defects Research Laboratory at the University of Washington,” were obtained—I certainly hope no unborn children made in the image of God were killed for this useless research!) and primate museum specimens, “they took CT scans and analyzed histology (the microscopic structure of tissues) to reveal the anatomy of the pelvis during early stages of development.”
They determined that:
Evolution reshaped the human pelvis in two major steps. First, it shifted a growth plate by 90 degrees to make the human ilium wide instead of tall. Later, another shift altered the timeline of embryonic bone formation. . .
In the early stages of development, the human iliac growth plate formed with growth aligned head-to-tail just as it did in other primates. But by day 53, the growth plates in humans evolved to radically shift perpendicularly from the original axis—thus shortening and broadening the hipbone.
So they observed how the pelvis develops in an unborn child and assumed evolution must somehow have radically changed up the developmental process. In other words, this is an interpretation based on evolutionary assumptions.
Shifting an entire pelvis isn’t just moving some bones around!
But think about that—shifting an entire pelvis isn’t just moving some bones around! If the pelvis dramatically changes shape, the muscle attachments must also change, as would the blood vessels, the ligaments and tendons, the nervous system, and so much more! It all must have happened together, or it wouldn’t work. The human body is incredibly complex and integrated, and any “small” change—let alone a radical change like what they are suggesting—has massive ripple effects throughout the whole body.
And, of course, development is controlled by genes. So they assume those must have changed too.
The team identified more than 300 genes at work, including three with outsized roles—SOX9 and PTH1R (controlling the growth plate shift), and RUNX2 (controlling the change in ossification). . .
The authors suggest that these changes began with reorientation of growth plates around the time that our ancestors branched from the African apes, estimated to be between 5 million and 8 million years ago.
So changes to three different genes supposedly drove the “reorientation of growth plates” that somehow magically allowed humans to evolve upright walking.
This is nothing but storytelling! It’s a fairy tale. None of this was observed—what they observed was clear differences between humans and apes. That’s it! They then applied their evolutionary storytelling to the evidence to suggest that they’ve figured out how humans evolved our unique pelvis. But all they really showed with their observations is that apes and humans are different! Essentially, their position is: Because human hips and ape hips are very different, evolution is true, because evolution happened.
Apes and humans are different—radically different—because we’re totally separate kinds with absolutely no relation to one another.
Apes and humans are different—radically different—because we’re totally separate kinds with absolutely no relation to one another. Apes were made as their own kind on day six of creation week. Humans were then made as their own kind—made in the image of God—later that day, man from the dust (not from an “ape-man”) and woman from his side (not from an “ape-woman”).
The Bible gives us the true history of humanity and of apes.
Thanks for stopping by and thanks for praying,
Ken
This item was written with the assistance of AiG’s research team.