Monday, December 5, 2016

Was Noah ‘Prehistoric’?






























Noah abs-cbn.jpg


by
Damien F. Mackey

 






 
 


An anthropo-palaeontological study of Noah and the Flood, when fairly considered, ought to be of enormous assistance towards a necessary co-ordination of the Stone Ages and of those most troublesome and complex Geological (and Ice) Ages.

 


 
Introduction

A biblico-historical revision of BC time demands a multi-disciplinary approach, especially
with regard to the historical data provided in the Book of Genesis, with which this particular series is concerned. {The same will be found to be the case, later, for a necessary and satisfactory revision of AD time}. In order to do justice to early Genesis, one is required to revise, for instance, the conventional Stone Ages; the Archaeological Ages; the astronomically-based (Sothic) dating system; and the subsequent arrangement and sequence of ancient dynasties.
Throughout this series I have had cause to praise - and to make heavy use of - Dr. John Osgood’s sterling efforts to revise the Stone Ages. He seems to me to have been a bit of a lone hand in doing this. Dr. Osgood, a Creationist, does also have a little bit to say about the Geological Ages. The latter (including the Ice Ages), an area that is crying out for a proper biblical co-ordination, is the subject of many Creationist articles. However, the general Creationist belief in a global Flood that erased all previous traces, permanently - which I think is actually un-biblical - tends to vitiate these well-intentioned efforts.
Such, at least, is my estimation of it.
The task of fully revising the Geological Ages is way too ambitious, however, for this present series whose primary purpose has been to attempt to unlock the mystery of Har Karkom, and thereby to discover, in professor E. Anati’s words: "Why this mountain? … The mountain is likely hiding still other messages". What are these "messages"?
And secondarily, in the process of attempting to do this - by speculating that Noah may also have been involved with this mountain - to bring some further (in addition to Dr. John Osgood’s efforts) coherence to the Stone Ages, and, in the case of the biblical Flood, to the Geological (and Ice) Ages.




The World of Noah

Two Genesis texts I immediately find to be of interest and special relevance here:


Genesis 4: 17-22



Cain knew his wife, and she conceived and bore Enoch. When he built a city, he called the name of the city after the name of his son, Enoch. To Enoch was born Irad, and Irad fathered Mehujael, and Mehujael fathered Methushael, and Methushael fathered Lamech. And Lamech took two wives. The name of the one was Adah, and the name of the other Zillah. Adah bore Jabal; he was the father of those who dwell in tents and have livestock. His brother’s name was Jubal; he was the father of all those who play the lyre and pipe. Zillah also bore Tubal-cain; he was the forger of all instruments of bronze and iron. The sister of Tubal-cain was Naamah.


Genesis 6:4

The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went to the daughters of humans and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown.

If you want to write something attention grabbing on the Internet, just write about the Nephilim!
What the extract from Genesis 4 tells me (and I would be most surprised if I were the only one who has ever discerned this) is that the full sequence of customary Stone Ages had been represented already before the Flood.
The reader may be able to discern each one of these Genesis progressions in ‘civilisation’ in the following explanation by Dr. Osgood of the conventional Stone Ages ("A Better Model for the Stone Age"):




The stone age chronology is clearly evolutionary, and occupying a period of approximately 2,000,000 years, telescopes down as we get closer to the present. It begins, by definition, where our supposed ancestors finally developed into Homo Erectus. Homo Erectus occupies a large portion of the Lower Paleolithic until the theoretical development of Homo Sapiens or modern man, from which time cultural evolution is prominent.

These supposed time cultures have to be defined and this is done by means of artifacts. The following indicates how:


    1. Paleolithic. Usually defined on the basis of stone implements alone.


    2. Mesolithic. Defined in terms of stone implements and some evidence of building, usually with either rock or clay materials.


    3. Both these time cultures are defined as hunting-gathering cultures.


    4. Neolithic. Defined in terms of

      1. stone tools,


      2. some bone tools,


      3. early pottery development,


      4. evidence of early farming communities, and


      5. evidence of buildings and town structures.


    5. Chalcolithic. Defined in terms of stone and metal tools, bone tools and other artifacts, pottery, town and village communities and farming communities, but particularly the introduction of metal (mostly copper) used in weapons and other implements.




The essential ingredients in putting together such a chronology as the above are:

    1. the assumption of a developmental history of mankind anatomically and culturally; in other words, an evolutionary framework as a first base assumption; and


    2. the acceptance of various dating techniques for absolute values in dating human habitation.




[End of quote]

Now, following through the Genesis narrative, the early simple existence (Abel was already a shepherd) turns Neolithic with Cain’s building of a city and also with Jabal’s livestock: "Jabal was the first nomad who introduced the custom of living in tents, and pasturing and breeding not sheep merely, but larger quadrupeds as well, for the sake of wealth". http://biblehub.com/genesis/4-20.htm

But Chalcolithic is also represented here in the expertise of "Tubal-cain; he was the forger of all instruments of bronze and iron".




Tubal-cain has rather convincingly been linked to the smithy god, Vulcan.
"It had been suggested back in 1976 that the name "Tubal-cain" is the origin of the Roman name for Hephaestus, "Vulcan" (Henry M. Morris, "The Genesis Record" Page 146)".

When we add to this ancient mix the fact that, as according to our other text (Genesis 6:4), there were giants also kicking about the land at the time, then the Noachic Weltanschauung might appear somewhat like that of Moses in the environs of Mount Sinai (especially if this area were also geographically relevant to Noah), with nomadic Kenites (relatives of Moses) - thought by some to have descended from Cain - and, more distantly, Nephilim giants. Numbers 13:32-33:




‘The land through which we have gone, in spying it out, is a land that devours its inhabitants; and all the people whom we saw in it are men of great size. There also we saw the Nephilim (the sons of Anak are part of the Nephilim); and we became like grasshoppers in our own sight, and so we were in their sight’.

Moses, who - as discussed in Part One - wrote Exodus in part as ‘a miniature Flood story’, might even have been deliberately drawing a connection between the pre- and post- Flood Nephilim. That Moses was wont to forge vital connections between the old and new family histories, I have discussed in e.g.:



Editor Moses Added Vital Geographical Clues for the Genesis Flood and Sodom







And Moses’ hand is found at work in Genesis 6:4, which belongs to Adam’s toledôt, see:




The "Toledoths" of Genesis





when he adds to the ancient Adamic verse: "The Nephilim were on the earth in those days", his "- and also afterward", that is, afterward in Moses’ own days.
The Hebrew reference to the Nephilim on "earth" here:



הַנְּפִלִים הָיוּ בָאָרֶץ, בַּיָּמִים הָהֵם

uses the word eretz (אָרֶץ) for what is often misleadingly translated as "earth" - thereby encouraging the likes of Creationists to read "global" - when it should actually read as the more confined concept of "land".
Noah could perhaps have been living near Har Karkom (at Kadesh-barnea?) just as Moses later would, a neighbour to nomadic Cain-ites (Tubal-cain-ites?) (Kenites), and with those menacing Nephilim, too, living not so far away.
The full Stone Age sequence - a largely artificial construct, anyway - that apparently ran its course from the beginning of humanity to the time of Noah and the Flood, would have re-commenced after the Flood. For instance Abram, who lived roughly half a millennium after the Flood, was contemporaneous with a Late Chalcolithic culture in some parts, but a Neolithic Jericho. This can all be found in Dr. Osgood’s excellent article, "The Times of Abraham": http://creation.com/the-times-of-abraham including the following summary showing what a mix of cultures the Patriarch probably knew:



In summary, Abraham entered the land of Canaan at approximately 1875 B.C.. In his days there was a settlement of Amorites in En-gedi, identified here with the Ghassul IV people. This civilization was ended by the attack of four Mesopotamian monarchs in a combined confederation of nations, here placed in the Uruk-Jemdat Nasr period in Mesopotamia. They were a significant force in ending the Chalcolithic of Palestine as we understand it archaeologically, and Abraham and his army were a significant force in ending the Jemdat Nasr domination of Mesopotamia, and thus the Chalcolithic of Mesopotamia, by their attack on these four Mesopotamian monarchs as they were returning home. Egypt was just about to enter its great dynastic period, and was beginning to consolidate into a united kingdom, when from northern Egypt a surge of Egyptian stock, including the Philistines, moved north into southern Palestine to settle, as well as to trade, identified in a number of sites in that region (most notably in the strata of Tel Areini, Level VI then V) as the Philistines with whom Abraham was able to talk face to face. The biblical narrative demands a redating of the whole of ancient history, as currently recognised, by something like a one thousand year shortening - a formidable claim and a formidable investigation, but one that must be undertaken.
[End of quote]

The key consideration now is: If Noah were active in the region of Har Karkom, as here hypothesised, and most tentatively, then one may wonder which Geological Age, Stone Age, or Archaeological Age evidence at this site might represent that activity?



 

 

Geological evidence indicates that Har Karkom, which I agree was the biblical Mount Sinai, lay once, for a time, submerged completely under a shallow sea.
Could this be a further addition to those ‘watery traces’ of the Noachic Flood?


 
 
For other such ‘watery traces’, based on the findings of Dr. John Osgood, see my series:













If the devastating Noachic Flood, as described in Genesis 6-9, really occurred, then it must have left its watery traces over far-flung places. Dr. John Osgood, a master at pointing out early biblical eras in the archaeological record, appears to have well identified some of these traces.










Prior to the watery traces that Dr. John Osgood has identified in Iraq and the Middle East, Anatolia, Sinai and Egypt - all pointing to, for him, the great Genesis Flood … - these regions must have been, in my opinion, completely overwhelmed by a ‘Sea’ that had, as it eventually retreated, left this substantial wetness. ….










I am fully aware that it is quite a ‘long shot’ to try to develop any sort of Noachic connection also with the holy mountain that I think has been well identified as the Mount Sinai of Moses.
What has encouraged me to attempt this are the definite parallels with the Flood story that Moses has interwoven through various parts of the Book of Exodus. We saw that Kikawada and Quinn had referred to the story of Moses and the tebah, Ark, as ‘a miniature flood story’.
I also discussed professor Anati’s wrestling with the secrets of this mysterious mountain, leading to his query: "Why this mountain?", which I have taken as the very title of this series. Anati thought himself to have discerned, albeit dimly, a kind of "common denominator" repetition scenario at the site of Har Karkom:



It seems that the story of exodus, in exodus times, relied already on archetypes. The story of a great migration, which gave birth to the ‘nation’ is known from many mythologies in five continents around the world. The common denominator brings us back to the early migration of Homo sapiens leaving his place of origin to explore and conquer the world. From what is presently known, the whole of present-day humanity, entirely descending from Homo sapiens, acquired its consciousness, including its ability and need to produce art, when the early ancestors left their ‘Garden of Eden’. Har Karkom seems to provide both; the evidence of this primordial migration and of the one which is believed to have given birth to the Israelite nation. Is the coincidence fortuitous? ….
[End of quote]
That God sometimes uses major parallels along lines like this one, potentially, is apparent from, for one, the whole Old Adam and Eve and New Adam and Eve symmetry; or, perhaps more accurately, the ‘rival operation’ (an undoing of the bad knot), both incidents occurring in, I believe, the very same geographical setting. The Garden in Eden (see),



The Location of Paradise (Genesis 2:10-2:14).


the scene of human history’s first great drama, the Fall, was located at Jerusalem and its "garden" - " John notes that Jesus' death and resurrection also took place in a garden (19:41; 20:15): https://www.biblegateway.com/resources/commentaries/IVP-NT/John/Jesus-Is-Arrested - scene of the remedial Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Adam and Eve fell in the very geographical environs where the New Adam and Eve (Mary) stood. Symmetrical, but also inverse. (Various traditions support this geographical view).
One would expect, however, the quality and topography of the region to have greatly deteriorated since the pristine days of Adam and Eve. And the same comment would apply, presumably, for the region of Har Karkom in Noachic times as compared with it at the time of Moses – at least some degree of deterioration.
Now, as in the case of the same geographical location serving for the Fall and Redemption, might not, too, the Exodus Covenant (Exodus 19:5): ‘Now therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people: for all the earth is mine’, have been uttered geographically at the same place as when God promised Noah (Genesis 6:18): ‘But I will establish my covenant with you, and you will enter the ark …’? (Professor Anati’s "archetypes"?).
Did Moses, looking up at the awesome Mount Sinai, "a mountain … burning with fire; to darkness, gloom and storm … a trumpet blast … such a voice speaking words that those who heard it begged that no further word be spoken to them … trembling with fear" (Hebrews 12:18, 19, 21), contemplate this as being the very mountain from which Noah had heard that doleful pronunciation (Genesis 6:13): ‘I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth’?



As I say, such a parallelism is a ‘long shot’, but interesting, nonetheless, to consider.



Stone and Bronze Age Har Karkom

We know from the estimation of professor Emmanuel Anati, as set out in his Har Karkom. The Mountain of God, Rizzoli, NY, 1986), and elsewhere, that Moses and the Israelites, encamped at Har Karkom, belonged to the era of the Bronze Age.
Anati, having noted on p. 35 that the mountain "reaches a height of 847 meters", goes on to tell of the two ages most evident at the site (p. 412): "Two archaeological periods are particularly well-represented. The Palaeolithic (Old Stone Age) …. The abundant remains dating to the Early Bronze Age and the beginning of the Middle Bronze Age (the "BAC" period) …". The wandering Israelites were, as already discussed in this series, the Middle Bronze I nomads who conquered Early Bronze III sites in Palestine and (Early Bronze IV) Transjordan. Evidence for any activity during the far distant time of Noah would have to be looked for, therefore, significantly earlier than BAC. And, whilst I suggested that the long lifetime of Noah would have run through a fairly complete gamut of Stone Ages:



Now, following through the Genesis narrative, the early simple existence (Abel was already a shepherd) turns Neolithic with Cain’s building of a city and also with Jabal’s livestock: "Jabal was the first nomad who introduced the custom of living in tents, and pasturing and breeding not sheep merely, but larger quadrupeds as well, for the sake of wealth".http://biblehub.com/genesis/

But Chalcolithic is also represented here in the expertise of "Tubal-cain; he was the forger of all instruments of bronze and iron".
[End of quote],

the somewhat isolated Har Karkom region might not necessarily exhibit all such stages. The neat evolutionary-based linear succession of Stone Ages has been shown to be quite artificial, with primitive Stone Age cultures being at some sites contemporaneous with sophisticated cultures in other places.
I have argued, for instance, that the advanced material civilisation and culture of the ancient Akkadian rulers was contemporaneous with Late Neolithic, for example, in parts of Syro-Palestine:



Akkadian and Elamite Impact on Early Egypt. Part Two: Lost Culture of the Akkadians




Possible Evidence for the Flood
at Har Karkom and the Negev

From professor E. Anati’s The Mountain of God:
Appendix

P. 336



Summit Conglomerate

At the top of the highest peak of Har Karkom a surprising discovery was made. Preserved only within the upper 12 m of the mountain a few small occurrences of unconsolidated conglomerate was found that indicate a radical change in geological conditions following deposition of the Eocene carbonate rocks …. Elsewhere … traces of this sedimentary unit have been stripped away by erosion.
… similar units [conglomerate] are widespread throughout much of the Negev. The conglomerate on Har Karkom seems to best match description of the upper lithographic member of the Hazeva Formation … which is at least mid-Miocene in age.

P. 337

… an intensive river and lake system that drained much of the Negev and Sinai during the lower and mid-Miocene.

P. 339

… deposition of marine sediments took place throughout southern Israel up until the end of the Eocene, approximately 36 million years ago, at which time the seas overlying the Negev began to recede. We can now imagine the area of present day Har Karkom emerging slowly from a shallow sea ….

P. 342

After the regression of the Tethys Sea as a result of the Messinian orogenesis, the gateway to the north opened up again between 5.5 and 6 million years ago during the late Miocene period.

 
 
This massively estimated Eocene to Miocene period may be a good place with which to start. Evolutionists seem to have a greater reliance upon Zeros than the Japanese had during WWII.
The Noachic Flood ought to, as noted at the beginning, enable for a proper co-ordination of these runaway Geological Ages. It is a case, too, of lopping Zeros from the currently estimated figures.

 



























 


 






 


 










Sunday, November 27, 2016

What became of the Neanderthals?



Image result for neanderthals

 



 

 

 

Evolutionists and Creationists can come up with widely disparate theories

as to why the Neanderthals, who “appeared to have everything going for them”, suddenly, startlingly, disappeared from the world scene.

 

 

 

Anne Habermehl, who lists some of these many theories, considers that Dr. Jack Cuozzo’s “explanation of the Neanderthal demise [is] a good one”:

Those Enigmatic Neanderthals. What Are They Saying?

Are We Listening?

 


 

Why Did the Neanderthals Disappear?


 

The biggest puzzle, that neither the majority of creationists nor the evolutionists have been able to solve, is why the Neanderthals disappeared. The robust Neanderthals appeared to have everything going for them, all agree, and there is no visible reason why they should not have survived (Trinkaus 1978). Nonetheless, disappear they did, rather suddenly, before the end of the post-Flood Ice Age or, as evolutionists call it, the end of the last ice age9 (Van Andel and Davies 2004).

 

Everyone agrees that modern humans showed up on the world scene at approximately the same time that the Neanderthals disappeared; whether or not this timing was a coincidence is debated. Some evolutionists allow thousands of years for the two groups to overlap—how many thousand is a matter of intense discussion—because they have a lot of time at their disposal, and a few thousand years here or there are a mere trifle (see, for example, Lewin 1999, pp. 157, 165–166). Creationists obviously have far less historical time available to account for the Neanderthal disappearance and subsequent appearance of modern man; therefore they have to explain how this mysterious event could have happened so quickly. But the problem for both sides is the same: why did it happen?

 

The proposed explanations forwarded by evolutionists on the Neanderthal demise have been both varied and creative, and only a sampling of the rather large literature on this subject can be touched on here. The Neanderthals’ supposed inability to cope with climate change has been especially popular (Jimenez-Espejo et al. 2007); although the Neanderthals had been able to live through the Ice Age successfully, they apparently could not cope with the ending of this cold period. Also much discussed are losing out to modern humans in various kinds of competition (Banks et al. 2008; Hoffecker 2002; Shea 2001), intermarrying with moderns (Zilhão 2006), or possibly both (Miller 2001). But there are others. Carnieri (2006) suggests that anatomically modern humans in Europe ate a lot of seafood; this more healthful diet helped them outlive the largely carnivorous Neanderthals. Sorensen (n.d.) suggests that Homo sapiens, migrating out of Africa, brought infectious disease that killed off the Neanderthals. Kuhn and Stiner (2006) argue that because Neanderthals did not divide their labor between the sexes the way modern humans did, this gave the latter a survival advantage. A mathematician, using what he calls a “simple mathematical homogeneous model of competition,” has determined that extinction of the Neanderthals was unavoidable (Flores 1998). Economists have gotten into the act with a theory that the Neanderthals came out second best because modern humans were better at trade (Horan, Bulte, and Shogren 2005). A rather grisly version surfaced in reports that, finally, there was good evidence that the Neanderthals actually did practice cannibalism, as had been suspected (Sanders 1999); presumably we were to believe that, like the gingham dog and the calico cat (Field 1894), the Neanderthals simply ate each other up. Then a different angle on the alleged cannibalism was proposed: eating each other, especially the brains, might have caused spreading of a mad-cow-related disease that could have played a large part in wiping the Neanderthals out (Underdown 2008). More recently, news articles (for example, McKie 2009) trumpeted to the world that it was actually cannibalistic modern humans who ate the Neanderthals up; this was based on an interview with scientist Fernando Rozzi, head of a research team that had just published a paper (Rozzi et al. 2009) that cast doubt on what their leader was telling the press(!). According to a group of geneticists, the small population size of Neanderthals may have made them more vulnerable to extinction, whatever the causes (Briggs et al. 2009).

 

This is not an exhaustive list of the many possibilities that have been proposed. As one insightful science newswriter says, “Figuring out why Neanderthals died out and what they were like when alive have kept plenty of scientists busy” (ANI 2009). Mark Twain would have been quite impressed by how little hard evidence supports some of these papers. He wrote, “There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact” (Twain 1883). One might think he was talking about evolutionists’ papers on the disappearance of the Neanderthals.

 

Meanwhile, creationists’ explanations of the Neanderthal demise have seemed rather tame and tentative by comparison, nor has there been a noticeable rush to embrace many of the various theories offered by evolutionists. Even Lubenow, who is very definite about many other ideas in his book, glosses lightly over the matter of why creationists think the Neanderthals disappeared from view; indeed, he speculates that Neanderthals could have survived into fairly recent times (Lubenow 2004, p. 82). The creationist stance is exemplified by a recent online piece about an apparent Neanderthal stabbing (Human stabbed a Neanderthal, evidence suggests, 2009), that ended with the words,

 

The more interesting debate is whether Neanderthals went entirely extinct . . . or whether their genes survive in many modern Europeans, as some studies have suggested.

 

On the one side, Oard (2006a, p. 129) states that the Neanderthals “very likely” intermarried with Cro-Magnon man, who seemed to follow the Neanderthals into Europe some time later; and Sarfati (2004, p. 317) concludes that “. . . modern humans and Neandertals likely amalgamated in Europe.” But, on the other side, Wise (2008) claims that DNA evidence shows that we do not carry Neanderthal genes today; therefore Neanderthals went extinct without intermarrying with modern humans. He speculates that this extinction event could have occurred because of challenges of survival in the post-Flood earth, or from various kinds of human violence.

 

The creationist debate as to whether or not the Neanderthals mixed their genes with those of modern humans through marriage is mirrored by evolutionists (who prefer to talk about “interbreeding” or “admixing” or “cohabiting”). Their positions are entrenched on both sides of this fence. “It is becoming increasingly clear that the Neanderthals and their modern human successors did not mix and that the Neanderthals are an extinct side branch of humanity” (Klein 2003); see also Currat and Excoffier (2004) and Tattersall (2007). But on the opposite side of the question are Wolpoff et al. (2004), who specifically refute Klein (2003); and Trinkhaus (2007), who believes that paleoanthropology shows definitively that the Neanderthals and moderns interbred, and the case is closed. Not so, says Paabo (Morgan 2009), whose belief in DNA and genome mapping (Green et al. 2008) bring him down on the side of almost total lack of interbreeding between Neanderthals and later humans. There would appear to be practically no middle ground between the two camps.

 

Predictably, progressive (old-earth) creationist Hugh Ross much prefers the DNA “proof” that Neanderthals and modern humans did not interbreed10; this is an extremely important matter to Ross, because if it can be shown that they did intermix, this would be “fatal to the current Progressive Creationist model,” according to Line (2007).

 

Obviously creationists and evolutionists are grappling with the same questions. Lubenow’s remark that the disappearance of the Neanderthals is like the disappearance of the Cheshire cat (Carroll 1865), whose grin remains to taunt evolutionists (Lubenow 2004, p. 81), applies equally to creationists. Clearly, the matter of what caused the disappearance of the Neanderthals has not been clear at all.

 

A major problem with most of the proffered hypotheses on the Neanderthal extinction is the widening geographical distribution of Neanderthal sites that have been located in the past few years, a subject that will be discussed later in this paper. Many authors address extinction of the Neanderthals in Europe, for example, and then rather ignore the ones in more far-flung places. Did other Neanderthals in other places become extinct for the same reasons? The whole subject becomes more complicated as the very large distances involved make it increasingly difficult to assume that everything can be explained by merely saying that the Neanderthals were nomadic.

 

However, the problem of the demise of the Neanderthals goes away entirely if we accept that Cuozzo is correct in his conclusions that the Neanderthals were the post-Flood long-lived people who spread out from Babel in all directions. Their “disappearance” would have occurred when they no longer lived long enough to develop the distinctive Neanderthal characteristics.11 The modern humans who supposedly “replaced” the Neanderthals would be the descendants of the latter, who did not live as long as their ancestors. This not only makes the matter of the Neanderthal disappearance very simple and straightforward, it also explains why it happens that modern humans arose at around the same time as the Neanderthals disappeared; furthermore, this would be true in all parts of the world. Proponents of Occam’s razor (Occam’s razor 2009), often stated as “The simplest explanation is usually the best,” would recognize the Cuozzo explanation of the Neanderthal demise as a good one.

 

According to Cuozzo, we would expect that, with people’s decreasing lifespans as time went on, the Neanderthal characteristics would gradually lessen from generation to generation, and then disappear entirely. In fact, this is what we see in various archaeological discoveries, although these are usually interpreted as humans that are the result of intermarriage between the Neanderthal and modern peoples (except for the DNA proponents, who do not agree, and who propose other ideas). For example, excavations in Israel are claimed to show “continuous biological evolution from Neanderthal to anatomically modern Homo sapiens” (Jelinek 1982). Also, at the Neanderthal site in Romania, the human remains display a “mosaic of modern human and archaic and/or Neandertal features” according to the paper published on the find (Soficaru, Dobos, and Trinkaus 2006). Creationists have hailed this as exciting news and further evidence that the Neanderthals were fully human beings (Anderson 2006; Jaroncyk 2007).

 

It follows logically that Cuozzo’s work knocks out the underpinnings of the Ross old-earth belief system, since the Ross view of Neanderthals as animals without spirits is nullified.