This assertion is based on a long-standing evolutionary assumption, usually stated something like this: "Humans are the only creatures that have evolved to the point where they can walk on two feet; therefore, if we can find the fossil of an animal that could walk on two feet, such a creature was our ancestor." However, the assumption that two-footed mobility establishes human kinship is groundless. Gorillas occasionally walk bipedally; Tanzanian chimpanzees are seen standing on two legs when gathering fruit from small trees; Zaire's pygmy chimpanzee walks upright so often that it has been dubbed "a living link." Science News reports of the latter: "Like modern gorillas they tend to be knuckle-walkers on the ground, yet they seem to be natural bipeds, too, frequently walking upright both on the ground and in the trees." So even if a fossil creature did have some limited ability to stand on two feet, it doesn't make it man's ancestor any more than these modern apes.
And man is not the only bipedal creature. Birds are bipedal; so was the T.-rex. Therefore, are they human ancestors? Time refers to "fossil discoveries as far back as Java Man in the 1890s" as validating the relationship between man and ape. But Time does not relate much of what is known about those finds. The Java Man story began with Ernst Haeckel, the German zoologist who has become notorious for using fraudulent drawings of embryos to prove the theory of evolution (See the July issue of WorldNet Magazine). Haeckel was convinced that an ape-man must have existed, and he named it Pithecanthropus alalus: ape-man without speech.
One of Haeckel's students, Eugene Dubois, became determined to find Pithecanthropus. Haeckel believed men might have separated from apes somewhere in Southern Asia. So in 1887, Dubois signed up as a doctor with the Dutch medical corps in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), intending to hunt for fossils during all his spare time. Dubois, it should be noted, had no formal training in geology or paleontology at the time, and his "archaeological team" consisted of prison convicts with two army corporals as supervisors. Years of excavation produced little of significance. Then, in 1891, along Java's Solo River, the laborers dug up a skullcap that appeared rather apelike, with a low forehead and large eyebrow ridges. Dubois initially considered it from a chimpanzee, even though there is no evidence that this ape ever lived in Asia. However, the following year, the diggers unearthed a thigh bone that was clearly human. Dubois, like Piltdown's discoverers, presumed that an apelike bone somewhere near a human bone meant the two belonged to the same creature, constituting Darwin's missing link. Haeckel, who had not even seen the bones, telegraphed Dubois: "From the inventor of Pithecanthropus to his happy discoverer!"
In 1895, Dubois returned to Europe and displayed his fossils. The response from experts was mixed, however. Rudolph Virchow, who had once been Haeckel's professor and is regarded as the father of modern pathology, said: "In my opinion, this creature was an animal, a giant gibbon, in fact. The thigh bone has not the slightest connection with the skull." The circumstances of Dubois' find were unorthodox. He had apparently been absent when the convicts dug up his fossils. Maps and diagrams of the site were not made until after the excavation. Under such conditions, a modern dig would be disregarded. In 1907, an expedition of German scientists from various disciplines, led by Professor M. Lenore Selenka, traveled to Java seeking more clues to man's ancestry in the region of Dubois' discovery. However, no evidence for Pithecanthropus was found. In the stratum of Dubois' find, the scientists found hearths and flora and fauna that looked rather modern. The expedition's report also noted a nearby volcano that caused periodic flooding in the area. Java Man had been found in volcanic sediments. The report observed that the chemical nature of those sediments, not ancient age, probably caused the fossilization of Pithecanthropus. Nevertheless, the Selenka findings and various deficiencies of Dubois' work were largely ignored, and Java Man became one of evolution's undisputed "facts."
Then there was Peking Man, worked on and validated by a number of Piltdown alumni, including Davidson Black, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and Smith. In seeing textbook portrayals of Peking Man, few students learned that the skulls had been found in scattered little fragments, and that the reconstructions were actually composites taken from various individuals. Where fragments were missing, plaster substituted, and the famous final images of Peking Man were the creations of a sculptress named Lucille Swann. Later, all of the Peking Man fossils mysteriously vanished, except for a couple of teeth, preventing Peking Man from being subjected to the kind of checking that doomed Piltdown Man.