They Claim Thousands Yielded Macroevolution, But Billions Did Not Yield It

 A recent story on the phys.org site creates a wrong impression. Referring to some study about the number of people who have a particular artery in the arm, the story states, "Dr. Teghan Lucas from Flinders University says this study into the prevalence of the artery over generations shows that modern humans are evolving at a faster rate than at any point in the past 250 years."  But the real truth is that macroevolution (the appearance of complex visible new biological innovations) is failing to appear from the human population, to an extent that should cause great doubt about claims of a merely Darwinian evolutionary origin of human beings. 

The median artery is an arm artery that appears early in the development of a human, but normally disappears or changes into some other arterial structure. The phys.org story cites a study claiming that while there used to be only 10% with such an artery in the nineteenth century, there are now about 30% with such an artery. But the medical reference here claims that only 10% of people living now have such an artery.  And the autopsy study here of 60 people in 2012 found only 6.6% of the arms studied had such a median artery. The 2015 autopsy study here found only 6 out of 100 cadavers had a median artery.  So how can a new study be claiming that 30% of us nowadays have a median artery?

In any case, it makes very little difference whether more people nowadays have such an artery.  There is no clear survival or reproduction benefit from having such an artery as opposed to alternate arterial structures, so citing it as evidence for natural selection is very dubious. Nowadays having a median artery is associated with the troubling problem of carpal tunnel syndrome.  And even if there were to be more people with such a median artery, it would be a mere example of microevolution, not macroevolution. Microevolution is some minor tweak in an organism that is not any major complex visible biological innovation. 

We know of a few minor examples of microevolution occurring in humans, such as the ability of more humans to digest lactose, and the ability of some humans to breathe better at high altitudes.  But no one has ever observed macroevolution in the human population. Macroevolution is the alleged appearance of major complex visible biological innovations in organisms due to natural evolutionary processes.  For example, if a species that did not have wings once evolved into a species that did have wings, that would be an example of macroevolution. And if a species that did not have eyes ever evolved into a species that did have eyes, that would be an example of macroevolution. 

Recorded history provides no example of macroevolution occurring in the human population. We have Egyptian statues and bas-reliefs of humans dating from 5000 years ago, and the humans depicted look just like the humans of today.  We have priceless ancient literary works such as those of Plato, proving that humans were capable of brilliant thought and writing thousands of years ago. If humans from five thousand years ago were transported to the current age, they could pass for modern humans. 

Evolutionary biologists claim there was in the past some huge amount of macroevolution that caused rather ape-like ancestors to transform into humans capable of speech, writing and city building. But a study of the growth of human population will cast doubt on such claims. 

The number of humans that have lived has been estimated at 100 billion. But a web site discussing this issue tells us that 99% of these people have lived in the past 10,000 years. Since 8000 BC some 100 billion humans have lived, but in the period between about 400,000 BC and 8000 BC, the total number of humans or pre-humans who lived was quite probably no greater than about a billion, and very probably less than 3 billion (the average population size being only about 20,000 or smaller for most of this time).  The web site discussing the issue states at 8000 B.C. the total number of humans who had ever lived was only about a billion. 

But we know there has been no macroevolution of humans since 8000 BC -- only a little microevolution like better lactose digestion and better high-altitude breathing in some people.  A statue from about 9000 BC shows a human with the modern human form, as do skulls and skeletons from around such a time.  We also know from archeological records that humans were building towns around such a time, in places such as Jericho. We also know from cave paintings that something like modern humans existed around 30,000 B.C.  

So if you believe the conventional account, you must believe that a totality of no more than 3 billion humans or pre-humans living before 8000 B.C. underwent enormous macroevolution (resulting in humans that had language, abstract thinking and symbolic abilities), but that in 100 billion humans living since 8000 BC there has been no such  macroevolution. Such an idea is not credible.  Why would there be such dramatic macroevolution during less than 3 billion lives, and no macroevolution during the subsequent period in which there were 100 billion human lives?  We would think the opposite would be more likely. 

A science site says, "An effective population size of 10,000 has been estimated for the most recent common ancestor of modern humans and of Neandertals (Ptak et al., cited in Premo and Hublin, 2009)." Conversely, our planet has had billions of humans for about 70 years. According to the account of our evolutionary biologists, from a population of only about 10,000 or a few tens of thousands of organisms before 50,000 B.C. there came some dramatic burst of macroevolution transforming ape-men into humans, but no such macroevolution has come from any of a population of billions of humans living in modern times.  This claim is as fishy as the recent claim that the number of humans with a median artery has sharply increased, contrary to those two autopsy studies I mentioned. 

Below is a table summarizing various studies or claims relating to the prevalence of the median artery in the forearm:

Source	Date	What Percent Had a Persistent Median Artery
“Prevalence of the Persistent Median Artery”, an autopsy study of 60 corpses	2012	6.60%
“Persistent median artery of the forearm and palm: a cadaver study into its origin, course, fate and clinical significance”	2015	“A large, well developed persistent median artery extended to the palm and contributed to its vascular supply in 6 out of 100 upper limbs dissected.”
“Prevalence of Bifid Median Nerves and Persistent Median Arteries and their Association with Carpal Tunnel Syndrome in a Sample of Latino Poultry Processors and Other Manual Workers”	2010	"We screened 1026 wrists of 513 Latino manual laborers in North Carolina for bifid median nerves and persistent median arteries using electrodiagnosis and ultrasound...3.7% of wrists had a persistent median artery independent of subgroup ethnicity, age, gender, or type of work."
“Recently increased prevalence of the human median artery of the forearm: A microevolutionary change”	2020	“A total of 26 median arteries were found in 78 upper limbs... a prevalence rate of 33.3%”

Altogether this data presents no real evidence that persistent median arteries in the arm are becoming more prevalent.  The attempt of the last of these papers (the Flinders University study) to sell their outlier result as evidence of recent microevolution is unfounded, and their sample involving only 78 limbs is much less reliable than the 13 times larger sample of the 2010 study finding a prevalance of persistent median arteries only one tenth of what the Flinders University study found (a prevalance of only 3.7%).  We seem to have here an example of the "cherry-picking for Charles" that is done so often by Darwinism enthusiasts. 

When discussing the unlikelihood of getting dramatic macroevolution from a small population, and the relation of population size to the likelihood of there appearing large complex evolutionary innovations, our biologists try their best to cloud the waters by distracting us with side points. But the matter will be more clear to anyone who considers a hypothetical example.  Requiring almost infinitely improbable protein molecule innovations and so much more, the appearance of a macroevolution innovation largely by random mutations can be compared to some typing monkey accidentally producing a brilliant essay or a clever computer program.  Now imagine if some huge group of scientists tested for years billions of monkeys trained to sit at keyboards and type, and saw no such worthy outputs ever appearing from their efforts.  It would then be very dubious for such scientists to claim that such worthy outputs came in the past from a group of only about 15,000 such typing monkeys.  It is just as dubious to claim that some tiny population of perhaps 15,000 yielded some gigantic marvel of macroevolution, when no macroevolution at all has come from population sizes 300,000 times larger.