The Evolutionary Cycles Of Creation and Catastrophe: A Case for Intelligent Design

Note: This article has been published in the March' 2012 issue of the Science to Sage Magazine. Abridged versions of this article have also been published on the Graham Hancock website and the Viewzone magazine.

In a previous article titled, “A Day and Night of Brahma And The Cycle of Mass Extinctions”[i], I have pointed out that the ancient Sanskrit texts tell us of a 24 million year cycle of cosmic creation and dissolution, known as the “Day and Night of Brahma”. At the beginning of a “Day of Brahma” (which extends for 12 million years), life forms are brought forth from the unmanifest; and at the end of the Day of Brahma all lifeforms are extinguished. This is followed by a “Night of Brahma” which is of equal duration as the Day of Brahma, when no life forms exist. And when the Night of Brahma is over, the creative process is initiated once again.

Thus, we have a cyclical 24 million year period of cosmic creation and dissolution. Amazingly enough, the same information is reflected in the fossil records, which indicate that every 26 million years there is a mass extinction of species on the earth. Even the dates of the previous extinction events, projected from the information in the Sanskrit text Vishnu Purana, correlates very well with the extinction dates calculated from the fossil data. And, quite incredibly, there is an exact match with the extinction event that wiped out the dinosaurs 65.5 million years ago!

Evolution By Catastrophe

The 26 million year cycle of mass extinction has significant implications for evolutionary biology. As per Darwinism, the evolutionary process is gradual, and life forms evolve slowly through a process of “natural selection”. Yet, a gradual process of evolution through natural selection appears to be markedly absent in paleontological records. In addition, evolution seems to be guided by extraterrestrial factors. The presence of enhanced levels of iridium in the soil layers at the geological boundaries, as well as the discovery of impact craters on the earth that match with the extinction periodicity, have convinced scientists that the extinction events have been triggered by large body impacts from outer space.

David Raup, paleontologist at the University of Chicago, who along with Jack Sepkoski had identified the extinction periodicity in the fossil records, states:

“The implications of periodicity for evolutionary biology are profound. The most obvious is that the evolutionary system is not ‘alone’ in the sense that it is partially dependent upon external influences more profound than the local and regional environmental changes normally considered... With kill rates for species estimated to have been as high as 77% and 96% for the largest extinctions, the biosphere is forced through narrow bottlenecks and the recovery from these events is usually accompanied by fundamental changes in biotic composition. Without these perturbations, the general course of macroevolution could have been very different.”[ii]

He further states that, “the largest mass extinctions produce major restructuring of the biosphere wherein some successful groups are eliminated, allowing previously minor groups to expand and diversify…There is little evidence that extinction is selective in the positive sense argued by Darwin. It has generally been impossible to predict, before the fact, which species will be victims of an extinction event.”[iii]

Raup’s observations that the extinction or survival of a species is a “chance event”, is supported by the studies done by Macquarie University paleobiologist John Alroy. He says,

“Mass extinction fundamentally changes the dynamics. It changes the composition of the biosphere forever. You can’t simply predict the winners and losers from what groups have done before”[iv].

The mass extinction event itself is short lived, very often below the resolving power of geologic record (<10,000 years), and possibly instantaneous. The term “Evolution by Catastrophe” was coined by Rampino in the “Encyclopedia of Planetary Sciences” to describe the evolutionary effect of the cyclical mass extinction events.

Punctuated Equilibrium

Mass extinctions are not the only curious phenomenon in the fossil records which contradicts the principles of Darwinian evolution. In 1972, Harvard paleontologists Steven Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge proposed the theory of Punctuated Equilibrium. Gould and Eldredge stated the fossil record is marked by long periods of “stasis” (extending for millions of years), during which time there is little or no evolutionary change. Most species “appear in the fossil record looking much the same as when they disappear; morphological change is usually limited and directionless.”[v] The long periods of stasis are punctuated by rapid, episodic periods of speciation, occurring within the space of a few thousand years (a geological microsecond).

In any local area, “a species does not arise gradually by the steady transformation of its ancestors; it appears all at once and fully formed”[vi].

Fig 1: Punctuated Equilibrium

For a long time, the absence of transitional forms in the fossil records had been explained away by evolutionists as the “imperfections of the fossil record”. In their famous essay, “Punctuated Equilibria: an alternative to phyletic gradualism” (1972), Gould and Eldredge wrote that,

“Under the influence of phyletic gradualism, the rarity of transitional series remains as our persistent bugbear…Many breaks in the fossil record are real; they express the way in which evolution occurs, not the fragments of an imperfect record.”[vii]

Gould and Eldredge continued to stress that the absence of transitional forms in the fossil records is a reality that should be accepted by paleontologists. In the essay "Evolution's Erratic Pace" (1977) Gould said:

“The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology…Paleontologists have paid an exorbitant price for Darwin's argument. We fancy ourselves as the only true students of life's history, yet to preserve our favored account of evolution by natural selection we view our data as so bad that we never see the very process we profess to study.”[viii] 

In another paper published in the same year titled “The Return of Hopeful Monsters”, Gould wrote:

“All paleontologists know that the fossil record contains precious little in the way of intermediate forms; transitions between major groups are characteristically abrupt.” Although a few examples of gradualism in the fossil history were proposed by others, Gould and Eldredge dismissed these claims arguing “that virtually none of the examples brought forward to refute our model can stand as support for phyletic gradualism.”[ix] 

In the essay, “Is a new and general theory of evolution emerging?” (1980), Gould reiterated the fact that,

“The absence of fossil evidence for intermediary stages between major transitions in organic design, indeed our inability, even in our imagination, to construct functional intermediates in many cases, has been a persistent and nagging problem for gradualistic accounts of evolution.”[x]

It is interesting to note that the absence of “missing links” in the geological records had also concerned Darwin. In the Origin of Species he asks,

“Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against my theory.”[xi]

However, Darwin had supported his gradual theory of evolution by natural selection by claiming that intermediate fossils are not found because the geological record is imperfect:

“The geological record is extremely imperfect and this fact will to a large extent explain why we do not find interminable varieties, connecting together all the extinct and existing forms of life by the finest graduated steps. He who rejects these views on the nature of the geological record will rightly reject my whole theory. ”[xii]

And that is exactly the conclusion that has been reached by paleontologists in recent years. Eldredge and Tattersall wrote the obituary for Darwinism in the book “The Myths of Human Evolution” (1982):

“Darwin's prediction of rampant, albeit gradual, change affecting all lineages through time is refuted. The record is there, and the record speaks for tremendous anatomical conservatism. Change in the manner Darwin expected is just not found in the fossil record.”[xiii]

Gould and Eldredge tried to explain the lack of transitional forms by suggesting that speciation takes place so rapidly in times of environmental stress that, although transitional forms may exist, they can never be found. That is an unacceptable proposition.  For, if we say that the actual event of speciation through intermediate forms can never be detected in the fossil record, then any theory becomes simply an article of faith that can never be verified. How is that any different from creationism?  Besides, such a speculation raises uncomfortable questions for the field of genetics. Too much biological complexity must be built into too few generations. The level of DNA change a species can undergo in a few thousand years is grossly insufficient to justify the morphological jumps found in the fossil records.

Even when evolutionists were speculating that evolution through natural selection takes place gradually over millions of years, due to a steady accumulation of gene mutations, there were serious objections from biologists. French zoologist Pierre-Paul Grasse, the past President of the French Academie des Sciences said that mutations are merely hereditary fluctuations around a median position which do not produce any kind of evolution[xiv]. In the book Evolution of Living Organisms he says that mutations,

"are not complementary to one another, nor are they cumulative in successive generations toward a given direction. They modify what preexists, but they do so in disorder... As soon as some disorder, even slight, appears in an organized being, sickness, then death follows...a single plant, a single animal would require thousands and thousands of lucky, appropriate events. Thus, miracles would become the rule...There is no law against day dreaming, but science must not indulge in it."

Since Punctuated Equilibrium requires millions of such complex gene mutations to occur within a short span of a few thousand years, the need for miracles increases exponentially.

In 1999, writing in Nature, Oxford zoologist Mark Pagel stated, while reviewing a book by Niles Eldredge:

“Paleobiologists…saw in the fossil records rapid bursts of change, new species appearing seemingly out of nowhere and then remaining unchanged for millions of years - patterns hauntingly reminiscent of creation.”[xv]

Evolutionary Cycles of Creation and Catastrophe

Indeed, it is easy to see that the sudden extinction of life forms every 26 million years, brought about by large body impacts from outer space, and the equally abrupt appearance of “fully formed” new species, supports the Vedic accounts of the events that transpire in a Day and Night of Brahma. The paleotological records show that the “mass extinction events” occur during the long periods of stasis separating the abrupt “speciation events”[xvi]. This means that the mass extinction and speciation events take place alternately, like the cyclical destruction and creation events in a Day and Night of Brahma.

Recent evidence also indicates something fascinating: new life forms appear after a gap of roughly 12 million years from the mass extinction event!

In May 2012, scientists from the China University of Geosciences and University of Bristol reported that it took nearly 10 million years before life forms started appearing after the mass extinction event that took place 250 million years ago (http://phys.org/news/2012-05-million-years-recover-mass-extinction.html). During this period of 10 million years following the catastrophic event, conditions on earth were too grim for life to appear. The mass extinction had re-set evolution and fundamentally new, complex life forms appeared.

Needless to say, this finding supports the contention that life forms appear on the earth, after a gap of roughly 12 million years following the dissolution event in a Day and Night of Brahma. Since the mass extinction events occur every 26 million years, we can easily deduce that the speciation events and the mass extinction events take place alternately every 12-13 million years.

Thus, the paleontological records reflect all the assertions of the ancient texts with respect to the large cycles of time known as the Day and Night of Brahma.

Fig 2: The Evolutionary Cycles of Cosmic Creation and Catastrophe as reflected in the fossil records and as specified in the Vedic texts

We find mention of similar episodic creation events in the accounts of the Mesoamericans as well. Their myths tell us that the gods Tepeu and Gucumatz decided to create a race of beings who can worship them. Huracan, the Heart of Heaven, who is the Supreme Deity, did the actual creating while Tepeu and Gucumatz guided the process. First the Earth was created. However, the gods went through many trials and errors before creating humans. First the animals were created; however, with all of their howling and squawking they did not worship their creators and were thus banished forever to the forest. Man was first created of mud, but they just crumbled and dissolved away. Man was next created of wood but he had no soul, and they soon forgot their makers, so the gods turned all of their possessions against them and brought a black resinous rain down on their heads. Finally man was formed of masa or corn dough by even more gods and their work was complete. These mythical accounts seem to describing an episodic process of creation, spanning across many Days and Nights of Brahma.

The Appearance of Modern Man

Another interesting hypothesis that can be derived from the punctuated equilibrium model of evolution is that modern man must have also appeared in a “fully formed” fashion after one of the episodic creation events. Since the most recent creation event took place at the beginning of the current Day of Brahma, nearly 5.5 million years ago, it implies that modern human beings must have been walking the earth for at least 5.5 million years.

Not surprisingly, as per current evolutionary theories, humans and apes have supposedly diverged from their “common ancestor” sometime around 5.5 million years back, and the first hominids i.e. erect-walking humanlike primates, appear in the fossil record in the Pliocene period, nearly 5 million years back.

However, the proposed “common ancestor” of humans and apes has never been found; and, therefore, it raises the possibility that such a common ancestor is purely hypothetical and never really existed. Proponents of evolutionary theory constantly assert that if two species have similar genetic make-up, it indicates that they must have a common ancestor. Thus, since humans and chimpanzee share 98% of their DNA, it necessarily implies that they must have evolved from a common ancestor.  Such a linear mode of thinking is quite surprising. Having worked in the Information Technology industry for more than a decade I know that if two systems share similar functions, it does not mean that they have both evolved from a common predecessor system. It simply indicates that the same code has been used; and if the systems concerned have a modular design, then it indicates a re-use of modules. Modules are essentially self-contained chunks of code that achieve a specific set of functionalities and can therefore be easily re-used across systems. In fact, in theory, an entire system can be built simply by assembling a set of modules and connecting them through their interfaces. There is no reason why such a thought process cannot be applied to the biological systems. In other words, the same genetic information may be re-used across multiple biological organisms in order to create the extraordinary diversity of organisms that we see around us, possibly with the intention of creating a self-sustaining ecosphere. There is no need for common ancestors. And just as complex information systems do not get designed by themselves, the incredible complexity of living organisms, which far surpasses anything that is man-made, suggests the presence of an intelligent force behind creation.

There is, in fact, sufficient fossil evidence to indicate that the first hominids, which appeared around 5 million years ago, were co-existent with “fully formed” anatomically modern humans! This implies that modern humans could not have "evolved" from these hominids. Darwinists, however, have continued to ignore the contradictory evidence and have carefully constructed a sequence of human evolution beginning with the Australopithecus, which supposedly gave rise to Homo habilis (2 million years ago), Homo erectus (1.5 million years ago), Homo sapiens (400,000 years ago) and finally modern man i.e. Homo sapiens sapiens (40,000 years ago).

This entire sequence is based on pure speculation, with a complete disregard for a host of highly anomalous evidences which indicate the presence of anatomically modern humans nearly 5 million years ago.

In the elaborately researched book Forbidden Archaeology: The Hidden History of the Human Race, the authors Thomson and Cremo have provided a wealth of evidence which highlights the extreme antiquity of modern man[xvii].

In 1880, in Castenedolo, Italy, Professor Giuseppe Ragazzoni, a geologist, found fossil bones and complete skeletons of several Homo sapiens sapiens individuals in layers of Pliocene sediments 3 - 4 million years old.

Fig 3: Castenedolo modern skull. Source: The Anderson Institute

Critics said that the bones must have been placed into the Pliocene layers fairly recently by human burial. However, the bones and skeletons that Ragazonni had found were completely enveloped and penetrated by the blue-green clay of the Pliocene strata, which showed no signs of disturbance. Ragazonni said that the bones "were dispersed, as if scattered by the waves of the sea among the shells. The way they were situated allows one to entirely exclude later mixing or disturbance of the strata".

In 1883, Italian scientist Professor G. Sergi also visited the site at Castenedolo. He ruled out human burial, and was convinced that the skeletons were the remains of anatomically modern humans who lived 3 - 4 million years ago (Pliocene period of Tertiary).

Regarding the objections of critics, Sergi said:

"The tendency to reject, by reason of theoretical preconceptions, any discoveries that can demonstrate a human presence in the Tertiary is, I believe, a kind of scientific prejudice...By means of a despotic scientific prejudice, call it what you will, every discovery of human remains in the Pliocene has been discredited."

In 1979, researchers at the Laetoli site, Tanzania, in East Africa, discovered footprints of modern humans in volcanic ash deposits nearly 3.6 - 3.8 million years old.

Mary Leakey, who led the expedition, wrote:

"At least 3.6 million years ago, in Pliocene times, what I believe to be man's direct ancestor, walked fully upright with a bipedal, free-striding gait...the form of his foot was exactly the same as ours."

However, there is no known human ancestor having footprints exactly like that of modern man, which means that the prints could have been left only by a Homo sapien. R.H. Tuttle, a physical anthropologist, stated:

"The shapes of the prints are indistinguishable from those of striding, habitually barefoot humans...because they are so similar to those of Homo sapiens, but their early date would probably deter many palaeonthropologists from accepting this assignment. I suspect that if the prints were undated, or if they had been given younger dates, most experts would probably accept them as having been made by Homo...they are like small barefoot Homo sapiens."

Fig 4: The Laetoli footprints. Source: University of Chicago

In 1965, Bryan Patterson and W. W. Howells found a surprisingly modern humerus (upper arm bone) at Kanapoi, Kenya. Scientists judged the humerus to be over 4 million years old. Henry M. McHenry and Robert S. Corruccini of the University of California said the Kanapoi humerus was “barely distinguishable from modern Homo.” All these anomalous discoveries have been ignored by the mainstream evolutionists because they do not conform to their proposed theoretical models. However, they certainly support the hypothesis that “fully formed” anatomically modern human beings appeared around 5.5 million years ago, at the beginning of the current Day of Brahma.

In addition to human remains, Cremo and Thompson have provided evidences of a number of crude paleoliths and advanced stone implements which have been discovered in very old soil layers, suggesting that tool-using humans or human precursors existed in the Pliocene (2-5 million years ago), the Miocene (5-25 million years ago), and even earlier.

Crude paleoliths were found in the late nineteenth century by Carlos Ribeiro, head of the Geological Survey of Portugal in Miocene layers (5-25 million years ago) . At an international conference of archeologists and anthropologists held in Lisbon, a committee of scientists investigated one of the sites where Ribeiro had found implements. One of the scientists found a stone tool even more advanced than the better of Ribeiro's specimens. Crude paleoliths were also found in Miocene formations at Thenay, France.  S. Laing, an English science writer, noted:

"On the whole, the evidence for these Miocene implements seems to be very conclusive, and the objections to have hardly any other ground than the reluctance to admit the great antiquity of man."

In 1880, J. D. Whitney, the state geologist of California, published a lengthy review of advanced stone tools found in California gold mines. The implements, including spear points and stone mortars and pestles, were found deep in mine shafts, underneath thick, undisturbed layers of lava, in formations that geologists now say are from 9 million to over 55 million years old! W. H. Holmes of the Smithsonian Institution, one of the most vocal nineteenth- century critics of the California finds, wrote:

"Perhaps if Professor Whitney had fully appreciated the story of human evolution as it is understood today, he would have hesitated to announce the conclusions formulated [that humans existed in very ancient times in North America], notwithstanding the imposing array of testimony with which he was confronted."

In other words, if the facts do not agree with the favored theory, then such facts, even an imposing array of them, must be discarded!

Every new discovery pushes the antiquity of man back millions of years. However, the incongruous evidences, as and when they come up, are simply filtered away as anomalies. In L'Anthropologie, 1995, Marylène Pathou-Mathis wrote:

“M. Cremo and R. Thompson have willfully written a provocative work that raises the problem of the influence of the dominant ideas of a time period on scientific research. These ideas can compel the researchers to orient their analyses according to the conceptions that are permitted by the scientific community.”[xviii]

Not surprisingly, a very similar opinion had been voiced by Stephen Gould when he had formulated his theory of punctuated equilibrium:

“I am a strong advocate of the general argument that "truth" as preached by scientists often turns out to be no more than prejudice inspired by prevailing social and political beliefs.”[xix]

In the British Journal for the History of Science, 1995, Tim Murray noted that, “archeology is now in a state of flux, with practitioners debating ‘issues which go to the conceptual core of the discipline.’”[xx]

The discovery of crude paleoliths and advanced stone implements push back the date for the appearance of anatomically modern humans to the period around 55 million years ago, soon after the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. However, we should also remain open to the possibility that these stone implements may have been created by the various human precursors, which were created in the previous Days of Brahma. The Mesoamerican texts describe an episodic process of creation in which multiple “versions” of humans are created before the appearance of modern man. These artifacts could be supporting such mythical accounts.

The Evolutionary Data in Ancient Texts

It is worthwhile, in this context, to take a fresh look at the accounts of creation in the Genesis. As per the Genesis, creation took place in six days and six nights. However, the text specifically mentions that birds and sea-creatures were created on the fifth day while land animals and man are created on the sixth. Therefore, although the entire process of creation took six days and nights, all living creatures are created in only two days and nights.

We can reasonably assume that the creation account in the Genesis describes the events that took place at the beginning of one of the Days of Brahma, possibly the most recent one that began around 5.5 million years ago, since it talks about the creation of man. In this context, it is easy to see that the “day and night” mentioned here does not refer to a normal 24 hours day and night of the humans; since humans did not exist when the creative process was initiated. It is far more likely that it refers to a “day and night of the gods”.

It is possible that a “day and night of the gods” is nothing but the complete Yuga Cycle of 24,000 years duration (i.e. the Precessional Year). In this context, the ascending half of the Precessional Year of 12,000 years can be viewed as the “day of the gods” and the descending half of the Precessional Year of another 12,000 years as the “night of the gods”.

Therefore, the six days and nights of creation is equivalent to 144,000 years, while the two days and nights during which all life forms were created, is equal to 48,000 years. Hence, we can conclude that as per the Genesis, the reconstruction of the entire biosphere at the beginning of a Day of Brahma takes around 144,000 years, while life forms appear on the earth over a period of 48,000 years.

And, quite miraculously, as per the estimates created by Gould and Eldredge, the “speciation” event takes anywhere between 5000 – 50,000 years. This is roughly the same value that we obtain from the Genesis!

We get further confirmation from the Surya Siddhanta, the oldest astronomical treatise of India. It states: “One hundred times four hundred and seventy four years passed while the All-Wise was employed in creating the animate and inanimate creation, plants, stars, gods, demons and the rest.”[xxi] This indicates that the entire creative process took 47,400 years, which is surprisingly close to the value proposed by Gould and Eldredge and to the biblical estimates.

It is evident that the data from fossil records corroborate what the ancient, sacred texts told us all along: that there are cycles of creation and destruction every 24-26 million years; that new life forms abruptly appear on the surface of the earth at the beginning of each Day of Brahma; that modern human beings must have appeared at least 5.5 million years ago; and that speciation at the beginning of a Day of Brahma takes around 48,000 years. On the other hand, none of the assertions of the standard Darwinian model of evolution are reflected in the fossil records. In the face of such enormous evidences, the claim for Intelligent Design can hardly be ignored any longer.


References


[i] Bibhu Dev Misra, A Day and Night of Brahma: The Evidence from Fossil records , March 2011, http://bibhudev.blogspot.in/2011/03/day-and-night-of-brahma-evidence-from.html
[ii] Raup and Sepkoski, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, Vol 81, pp 801-805, February 1984
[iii] D M Raup, The role of extinction in evolution, PNAS July 19, 1994 vol. 91 no. 15 6758-6763.
[iv] J. Alroy, The Shifting Balance of Diversity Among Major Marine Animal Groups,  Science, Vol. 329 No. 5996, September 3, 2010.
[v] Gould, S.J. (1977), "Evolution's Erratic Pace", Natural History, vol. 86, May
[vi] Gould, S.J. (1977), "Evolution's Erratic Pace", Natural History, vol. 86, May
[vii] Gould, S. J. and Eldredge, N., Punctuated equilibria: an alternative to phyletic gradualism (1972), pp 82-115 in "Models in paleobiology", edited by Schopf, TJM Freeman, Cooper & Co, San Francisco.
[viii] Gould, S. J., 1977. Evolution’s erratic pace. Natural History, 86(5):14.
[ix] Gould, S. J. and Eldredge, N., 1977. Punctuated equilibria: the tempo and mode of evolution reconsidered. Paleobiology, 3:115–151 (pp. 115).
[x] Gould, S.J ., 1980. Is a new and general theory of evolution emerging? Paleobiology, 6:119–130 (p.127).
[xi] Origin of Species, 1859, p 280
[xii] Origin of Species, 1859, p 342
[xiii] Eldredge, N. and Tattersall, I. (1982), The Myths of Human Evolution, Columbia University Press, p. 48
[xiv] Grasse, Pierre-Paul (1977), Evolution of Living Organisms, Academic Press, New York, N.Y.
[xv] Eldredge, N. and Gould, S. J., 1972. ‘Punctuated equilibria: an alternative to phyletic gradualism’, Time Frames: the Rethinking of Evolution and the Theory of Punctuated Equilibria, N. Eldredge, Heinernann, London, 1986, pp. 202.
[xvi] Stephen Jay Gould, The Evolution of Life on Earth, Scientific American, October, 1994.
[xvii] Michael Cremo and Richard Thompson, Forbidden Archaeology: The Hidden History of the Human Race, January 1998.
[xviii] Marylène Pathou-Mathis, L'Anthropologie, 1995 v.99, no. 1, p. 159.
[xix] Stephen Jay Gould, "Darwin's Untimely Burial," Natural History 85 (Oct. 1976): 24-30
[xx] Tim Murray, British Journal for the History of Science, 1995 v. 28, pp. 377–379.
[xxi] Surya-Siddhanta:a text-book of Hindu astronomy, Ebenezer Burgess, Phanindralal Gangooly, Chapter 1, p 13