"Recapitulation" (also called the "Biogenetic law") is the
theory that, at different stages in your development as an embryo, you had the organs of
your supposed evolutionary ancestors. Here is the story behind this false theory, which
has repeatedly been repudiated by competent scientists. Evolutionary theory is a myth. God
created everything; the evidence clearly points to it. Nothing else can explain the
mountain of evidence. This is science vs. evolution—a Creation-Evolution
Encyclopedia, brought to you by Creation Science Facts.
This theory is not merely foolish; it is the result of an outright hoax, initially
developed by *Ernst Haeckel in 1866.
In the 19th century, when relatively little was known about the human body, some
evolutionists came up with a strange idea which does not agree with modern scientific
facts. Then, in order to make the theory appear even more convincing, one of those men
produced woodcut illustrations which were soon afterward proven to be hoaxes.
The concept of "recapitulation" is based on the fact that there are
similarities among embryos of people, animals, reptiles, birds, and fish. All creatures
are so tiny when they first begin life that one would expect certain similarities to
initially exist between, say, a fish and a bird. All babies begin as extremely tiny round
balls and all look similar for the first few weeks. When very small, there is only one
ideal way for them to develop. The problem here is size and packaging. Literally thousands
of structures and organs are developing within a very small space.
The evolutionary theory of "recapitulation" declares that human embryos have
organs which are leftovers from evolutionary ancestors. Human embryos are said to have a
yolk sac like a chicken, a tail like a lizard, and gill slits like a fish! Is this true?
No, it is not. Reputable scientists laugh at the idea, but evolutionists keep saying it is
so.
In a baby chick, the yolk sac is its source of nourishment until it hatches. This is
because the chick is in a shell, without a connection to its mother.
In a human, the only similarity of this bulging sac is its shape. Your blood is made in
your bones; but, when you were an embryo, you had no bones! So God gave you a tiny
sac-like organ to initially make your blood for you. That is what that sac is for. It
takes blood to make the bones which will make the blood! You have reason to be thankful
for that little sac.
When you were an embryo, your spine was longer than your body. Therefore, it stuck out
and looked like a "tail." This is because your spine is very complicated and it
initially required extra space to develop. Later your body grew larger and perfectly fit
the length of the spine. Would you rather that all your spine was not formed back then?
God does everything just right. The complex nerves in your spine needed that extra length
in order to grow properly.
The evolutionists call these "gill slits." These are three little folds you
had in your neck when you were an embryo. Why were they there? Carefully examining them,
we find no gills to extract oxygen out of water, and no gill slits (no openings) of any
kind. These are not gill slits! There are no slits and no gills.
Scientists now know that the upper fold eventually develops into the middle ear canals,
the middle fold changes into the parathyroids, and the bottom fold becomes the thymus
gland.
Once again the evolutionists are wrong. In fact, they are wrong all the time! When a
person bases his ideas on a false premise, all his conclusions will be incorrect. And
evolutionary theory is based on the concept that everything made itself.
Before concluding this study on recapitulation, we should consider *Haeckel himself.
*Haeckel invented the word, "recapitulation," also calling it the "biogenetic
law." He said that embryos repeat (recapitulate) the shapes of their evolutionary
forebearers.
But he needed proof for his theories, first proclaimed in 1866; so, since he had
drafting ability, he doctored sketches of embryos, to make them appear alike! In 1874, he
published his fraudulent charts, and fooled many people in Germany into believing that
evolution must be true.
Later, a leading German embryologist, *Wilhelm His, Sr., exposed the hoax for what it
was. He printed sketches of what those embryos really looked like, and declared *Haeckel
to be a liar and a fraud.
But the facts about the fraudulent aspect of *Haeckel's work have never been widely
published in English. Instead, you will find the recapitulation theory in standard
schoolbooks, along with similarities, mimicry, and vestiges.—pp. 38-39, 41.
The human heart. Some lower level creatures have a single chamber in their
heart, others have two or three. So, if we—who have four chambers in our hearts—"recapitulated"
lower creatures while we were embryos, we should have first one, then two, then three, and
then four chambers in our hearts, as we progress through our embryonic development.
But the truth is that, when you were conceived, you first had two chambers in your
heart. They later fused into a single chamber. Eventually, before birth, they developed
into four chambers. So, instead of the evolutionary 1-2-3-4, humans have 2-1-4.
Basic flaw. There is a basic flaw in *Haeckel's theory. It is this:
Man is supposed to have descended from a bird. And an animal, whose ancestor was a
fish, which got tired of swimming around, came out of the water and spent the rest of its
life on land while giving birth to nonfish.
But, aside from the oddity of such a yarn, why do fish embryos also have—not only
their own fish gills,—but also the bird yoke sac and the animal tail? Did the fish
descend from the bird? It is clear that *Haeckel's theory does not even agree with itself.
