The idea that human embryos retrace steps of evolution is totally false.
Does the human embryo go through stages of evolution?
Quick-read this article:
The idea that the human embryo retraces the stages of evolution
has been exposed as false for many years. Yet the idea persists.
The human embryo is human from the moment of conception, and
shows no evidence of evolution.
Some people claim that the earliest stage of human life — the embryo — retraces the history of evolution. They claim that as the embryo develops, it shows features of a fish, a reptile, a tail like a monkey, and finishes up with organs like tonsils and the appendix. The appendix and tonsils, they say, are now “useless” but were once useful to creatures that were evolving.
This idea has been totally discredited. Informed medical experts these days admit that this theory, called “embryonic recapitulation,” is incorrect. A leading surgeon in Melbourne, Australia, Dr. Warwick Glover, said that even the textbooks his medical students use show that the idea is false.
German philosopher Ernst Haeckel in the late 1800s was the first to promote the idea that the human embryo retraces the stages of evolution. Sadly, some people still think it's true.
What are the facts?
What were claimed as “gill slits” like those of a fish are actually your throat pouches. The embryo never has gills and they are never slits. They develop into important human organs like the ear canals, thymus, and parathyroid glands.
The so-called “yolk sac of reptiles” is actually the source of your first blood cells. It enables the developing human body to form the bone — which later takes over the function of forming blood. The “tail” like a monkey is in fact the end of your spine, which helps trigger the development of leg muscles and intestinal support.
The tonsils and appendix have been thought in recent years not to be useless after all. Many doctors today are reluctant to take out the appendix, and the tonsils are believed to be disease-fighting organs, particularly in babies.
Discredited long ago
As far back as 1932 Dr. Waldo Shumway from the University of Illinois said that research in experimental embryology “seems to demand that the hypothesis be abandoned.” 1 Distinguished embryologist Professor Gavin de Beer agreed. “The prestige so long enjoyed by the theory of recapitulation”, he said, “has had a great and, while it lasted, regrettable influence on the progress of embryology.” 2
One reason the embryonic recapitulation theory fell into disfavor was because structures appear in an order opposite to what evolutionists assume to have happened. For example, evolutionary scientists believe that our ancestors evolved teeth before tongues. The reality is that children develop their tongues before teeth. Evolutionists believe that our ancestors had a circulatory system without a true heart. But in developing vertebrates the opposite is the case — the heart forms before the rest of the circulatory system.
Keep in mind that from the moment of your conception, your DNA is settled on what color eyes and hair you will have, the shape of your nose, and so on. You are always human, and nothing else, right from the moment you are conceived in your mother's womb.
References
- Shumway, W. 1932, “The Recapitulation Theory,” The Quarterly Review of Biology, 7:1:93, March, p.�98.
- de Beer, G. 1940 (1954), Embryos and Ancestors, rev. ed., Oxford University Press. p.�6.
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