Definition of Missing Link

Since the investigations of Charles Darwin in the 19th century, most of the scientific community agrees that the natural selection it is the mechanism that explains the transformations of living beings. With respect to the human being, it is considered that the present man (the homo sapiens sapiens) is the result of an evolutionary process of hundreds of thousands of years.

From the theory of evolution a belief that over time has been proven false: before the current human being there was another species of homo. This putative species has not been conclusively identified. Despite this, this hypothetical homo was called the "missing link."

In other words, for decades the scientific community believed that between apes and man there must be a intermediate species and when its existence was discovered, the entire evolutionary process of the man.

The rise of the myth began in the 19th century

Followers of Darwin's theories began to spread the idea that homo sapiens must have a direct ancestor. Some researchers claimed that said ancestor had to be Neanderthal man, others said it could be the

australopithecus or homo erectus. Every new fossil who appeared became a possible candidate for the missing link.

The idea about the missing link has more to do with the means of communication than with the scientific community that studies the evolutionary process of man and his ancestors.

Today's paleontologists do not intend to find the mythical missing link in the evolutionary chain

Paleontology studies try to reconstruct the genealogical tree of the apes and, in parallel, they try to explain how this tree has generated the appearance of the human species. Thus, in a strict sense, there is no missing link, but rather a branching of species that have different relationships with each other.

The idea of ​​ramification is opposed to the linear vision of human evolution understood as a process in a single direction and that ends in the current homo sapiens.

Creationist theories oppose evolutionism

Evolutionism is admitted by the vast majority of scientists. Despite this, some hold creationism as an explanatory system of the universe and of living species. According to creationism, the different forms of life are not explicable by any process of natural selection or by any scientific theory, since the intervention divine is the only thing that can explain the different forms of life.

Consequently, the idea of ​​a human being who has evolved from the ape lineage and the idea of ​​the missing link are questions rejected by creationists.

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