Why did early people look so hairy and so small? — Justin of Oceanside, CA

Dear Justin,

As you probably know, some people believe that humans and apes have a common ancestor. This ancestor was small, hairy, and spent most of its time in the trees. Over millions of years, so the story goes, this ape climbed down from the trees, stood upright, grew a bigger brain, learned to talk, and put a man on the Moon.

Over the last hundred years, scientists have found fossils of ancient men and apes. Sometimes they find a little piece of bone, and other times they find an almost complete skeleton. From these bones, they try to make a picture of what the ape or human looked like. Special artists can make a very good guess about the flesh that covered those bones, but coloring and hair come from their imagination. By the time they're finished, a human skeleton can be made to look ape-like, or an ape skeleton can be made to look almost human.

This is what happened to the creature named "Lucy." Her bones belonged to an unusual ape that might have walked upright. Later on, some scientists found human footprints in volcanic ash that seemed to be as old as Lucy's skeleton. So now you often find a picture that shows a hairy, ape-like family walking across this ash. Actually, many scientists believe that Lucy and her kind did not make those footprints because she could not walk like a human.

We have to remember that God created humans (Genesis 1:26-27). The "early people" you see in pictures might not be humans at all. They might be a kind of ape, like Lucy, that died out long ago. Or they might be ancient humans, but artists have given them a lot of hair to make them look more "primitive." However, a careful look at the fossils shows that there is a big gap between apes and humans. Remember, also, that there is a lot of variation. There are tall people and short people, hairy people and not-so-hairy people. But we are not "naked apes." We are a special creation of God.