Evidence That Neandertal Men and Cavemen Lived In Bible Times and were human

I have included 3 articles here. 2 about Neandertal Man and one about cavemen. These articles give evidence and support that these men actually lived within Bible times during the ice-age, which followed shortly after  the global Noah’s flood. The Ice-age was probably caused by the flood.

The ice-age would have occurred quite soon after the global Noah’s flood) when the dispersion took place of mankind throughout the Earth,after God divided the tongues at Babel.

The articles are: “The Caring Neandertal”, “Neandertal Man, the changing picture” and "were cavemen really Primitive?". These were all found on Answers in Genesis website. 



The caring Neandertal

by A.J. Monty White

If we are ever asked to imagine what a Neandertal was like, most of us would think of some half-witted cretin. In fact, the word Neandertal is often used as a term of abuse. It generally signifies that the individual to whom reference is being made acts brutishly and has very little feeling for others. This is a pity, because the more we learn about the Neandertals, the more we are forced to conclude that although they may have looked brutish, they were very caring people, who looked after the sick and elderly members of their communities.

The Neandertals are named after the Neander Valley, not far from Düsseldorf in Germany. The fossilized remains of a Neandertal man were first found there in a cave in 1857. Since then, remains of Neandertals have been found in western Europe, the Near East, and western Asia. Compared with modern Europeans, the Neandertal people were rather robust, and so for almost a century it was mistakenly believed that they

were half way between ape-like creatures and humans.

The idea that the Neandertals were a link between apes and humans was reinforced by drawings which depicted them as stooping half-ape/half-human brutes ambling along on the outsides of their feet, like some oversized chimpanzee.

This view persisted until the mid-1950s when a couple of American anatomists concluded that there was no valid reason for assuming that the Neandertal posture was different from that of modern humans. They went on to suggest that if a Neandertal man were bathed, shaved, and dressed in modern clothing he would probably pass unnoticed in a New York subway!

It has also been suggested that much of the brutish appearance of the Neandertals, such as their eyebrow ridges, is due to the enormous chewing stress on the skull imposed by their powerful jaws. And this was due to the common eating of tough food.

They are now placed in the same species as modern-day humans, being put into the sub-species Homo sapiens neanderthalensis (with us being in the sub-species Homo sapiens sapiens). However, the bony differences between them and modern people may be the result of trivial genetic differences. Similarly, people of modern ‘races’ today look more different than they are at the genetic level. Some ‘Neandertal’ bony characteristics are found in some Europeans today.

From their remains, it has been discovered that some of the Neandertal people suffered from rickets. Rickets is a disease of childhood resulting from a deficiency of Vitamin D. Because this vitamin helps the absorption of calcium from the food we eat, people suffering from rickets have soft bones which cause them to have swollen joints and distorted limbs—sometimes they are extremely bow-legged, but in more severe cases they are completely crippled and unable to walk.

Vitamin D is found in fish oils, milk, and dairy products. If your diet is deficient in these, you may develop rickets. The fact that some Neandertals suffered from rickets indicates that they had a diet which lacked these products. However, you can get Vitamin D another way—Vitamin D is made in the skin when it is exposed to sunlight. From this we are able to conclude that the Neandertal people who had rickets must have lived at a time when they would not have been exposed to much sunlight—such as during the Ice Age.

Some of the Neandertal people suffered from arthritis, while others sustained injuries during their lifetime - perhaps by falling over when hunting. Broken bones were not uncommon. Although such people were no longer productive members of their community, they were cared for by other members of their tribe. Their bones demonstrate that they kept on living long after the onset of their disability. This shows that these people had tender feelings for each other—sometimes apparently providing support for those they knew would never get better.

From the evidence discovered, it can be deduced that the Neandertals were good hunters, making and using rather elegant stone tools effectively. They lived in huts which they sometimes located in caves. They kept warm with fires on which they burned bones—because it was the middle of an Ice Age, when there were not many trees growing in Europe.

They cooked their food on fires, sometimes using stone hot plates. They wore clothes which they made by sewing animal skins together. In fact, far from being dull-witted brutes, these people were quite sophisticated—there is even evidence of a form of writing!

The Neandertal people also had a sense of the after-life—they buried their dead with ceremony and arranged flowers around the bodies of their dead. A pollen analysis of one grave from the Shanidar cave in the Zagros Mountains in Iraq has revealed the presence of yarrow, cornflower, St Barnaby’s thistle, ragwort, grape hyacinth, hollyhock, and woody horsetail. Most of these plants are known to have herbal and medicinal properties, so it appears that the Neandertals had some knowledge of medicine.

None of this is surprising when we consider that they were not primitive evolutionary ‘links’. They were people, forced to live in harsh conditions, after the dispersal of humanity at Babel, during the great post-Flood Ice Age.³

A.J. Monty White, B.Sc., Ph.D., C.Chem., MRSC, is a well-known author and creation speaker in the United Kingdom. He is the author of the book Wonderfully Made, which deals with the origin of people.

References and notes

1.         Anthropologist Marcellin Boule was responsible for much of the attribution of ‘subhuman’ characteristics to Neandertals. It seems that what really persuaded him about the truth of human evolution was the Piltdown skull, which later turned out to be a clever fraud. In turn, this conviction caused him to emphasize and exaggerate some characters in Neandertal bones to fit the ‘subhuman’ idea.

2.         John Reader, Missing Links, Book Club Associates, London, 1981, p. 36.

3.         See Life in the Great Ice Age, by Michael and Beverly Oard, Creation-Life Publishers, Inc., California, 1993.

Neandertal Man—the changing picture

An overview of how this alleged ‘subhuman’ is being progressively rehabilitated, despite the evolutionary bias resisting the trend.

Michael J. Oard

17 February 2003

‘Neandertal man’ was the name given to bones found in 1856 in Germany’s Neander Valley (‘tal’, or ‘thal’ in old German spelling). The name Neander was a pseudonym of the 17^th century minister Joachim Neumann, the Greek translation of his name (‘new man’).

A recent major PBS-TV series on evolution¹ depicted Neandertal Man as only half human and not very intelligent, one who lived a very inferior life compared to the alleged first humans, the Cro-Magnon people. Some scientists today believe he was ‘lacking the language skills, foresight, creativity, and other cognitive abilities of modern humans’.² Neandertal Man is considered to be either a link leading to man or a dead end in human evolution from the supposed ape-like ancestor.

Biblical creationists, on the other hand, believe that there were no ‘subhumans’ at any time. Neandertal fossils are all post-Flood, so these bones are believed to represent just one more group of people which split off from other groups following the Babel dispersion.

The evolutionary assumptions about the Neandertal Man began early this century. The first Neandertal was reconstructed as a ‘missing link’ by famous paleontologist Marcellin Boule (1861–1942).³ He was called Homo neanderthalensis, implying a primitive evolutionary link to modern man, Homo sapiens.

Forty-four years later, a reanalysis of Boule’s work showed his extreme evolutionary bias in the reconstruction of Neandertal Man. After the reanalysis, some scientists stated that if you dressed him up, gave him a shave and bath, and sent him into society, he would attract no more attention than some of the subway’s other denizens (see Recreating the faces of our Neandertal cousins below). Neandertal Man was then reclassified as Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, just a particular type of modern man.

It is interesting that, just as with Piltdown Man, Neandertal’s uplifted status was hailed as a ‘great moment in science’ in which errors are eventually corrected. But the clues to Neandertal Man’s human affinity were obvious at the time of Boule’s reconstruction, just as it should have been obvious that Piltdown Man was a fraud.

The great pathologist Rudolf Virchow (1821-1902) claimed that the Neandertal specimen he examined had rickets and arthritis, which may have caused some of the unique Neandertal features, but his opinion was overlooked.⁴ It took 44 years for the highly misleading nature of the reconstructions to be revealed, indicative of the shared bias of the evolutionary community.

Even after the Neandertal reconstruction at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago was shown to be false and highly misleading, it took another 20 years for this renowned institution to correct its display!

Although the image of Neandertal Man improved by the 1950s and 1960s, there still is considerable controversy within evolutionary circles over his status,⁵ with many still preferring the ‘missing link’ concept. Although his brain size is a little larger than modern man’s,

Neandertal’s brain is said to be of ‘lesser quality.’ Some believe he had incredible physical strength and would fight large animals at close quarters, while others claim he was a scavenger or even a vegetarian. Evolutionists do not know where Neandertal Man came from or where he went.

One faction of evolutionists believes modern man, Cro-Magnons, killed the Neandertals, while others believe Neandertal interbred with Cro-Magnon Man, eventually becoming modern man. Neandertal Man disappeared about 30,000 years ago in the evolutionary timescale—a more or less ‘absolute’ date, despite evidence of younger Neandertals.⁶

Another difficulty for evolutionists is evidence that Neandertal Man lived at the same time as modern man and ‘archaic Homo sapiens’, sometimes in the same area. This creates big problems for those professing Christians who, like Hugh Ross, generally accept secular dating methods.

Since they cannot date Adam back too far without stretching the genealogies beyond recognition, any human-type skeletons ‘dated’ earlier than a few tens of thousands of years ago have to be written off as pre-Adamic ‘soulless’ quasihumans. Biblical creationists believe Neandertal Man was just a unique variant of modern man who lived in Europe and adjacent Asia and North Africa after the Babel dispersion in the Ice Age (the aftermath of the Flood—ref. 24).

Despite the PBS series on evolution, the status of Neandertal Man has been improving among evolutionists during the past 10 years. The series’ failure to mention any of the recent discoveries appears to be typical of its whole propagandistic thrust. The discovery of a human hyoid bone (related to the larynx or voice box) prompted many evolutionists to state that Neandertal Man had speech and language ability equivalent to modern man.⁷

Trinkaus and Shipman⁸ say:

‘Although no one had explicitly predicted what a Neandertal hyoid would look like, few were really surprised when it turned out to be a slightly enlarged version of a human hyoid and nothing like an ape hyoid ... . Many anthropologists came to believe that Neandertals could have spoken any modern human language, whatever their accent may have been.’

Although the Neandertal hyoid bone was indistinguishable from those of modern humans, some still downplay its significance to speech ability. A later report based on further anatomical evidence concludes that language has been around for 400,000 years of evolutionary time, including the entire Neandertal period.⁹

The PBS series pointed out that Neandertal burials left little evidence of ritual as compared to those by later humans. Besides leaving me suspicious that their case was concocted, any difference may not mean much, since there are other ways to explain the scarcity of implements or other signs of ritual with Neandertal skeletons. Lately, more evidence of ritual has been showing up.

A Neandertal baby was found buried in Israel with a red deer jawbone next to its hip indicating that Neandertal Man at least had the capability for symbolic behavior.¹⁰ A Neandertal toddler was unearthed in Syria at the bottom of a 1.5 m (5 ft) -deep pit, with a flint tool resting at about the spot where the infant’s heart had once beaten. This discovery is considered ‘the best evidence yet of Neandertal burial practices’.¹¹

Furthermore, pierced animal teeth, probably worn as pendants, and ivory rings were discovered with a Neandertal fossil in a French cave in 1996.^2,12 Moreover, it is now known that Neandertals made their own, relatively sophisticated ornaments and tools.² This suggests ‘a high degree of acculturation’.¹²

At one time archaeologists did not believe Neandertals used spears, but this idea has been given the shaft by the finding of aerodynamic wooden spears used by the supposed ancestors of Neandertals.²

Furthermore, it has been discovered that Neandertals crafted a variety of stone tools and deadly, stone-tipped spears, showing an aptitude often attributed only to modern humans.^2,13,14 

Some scientists had claimed that Neandertal Man was only capable of scavenging carcasses, but a new analysis of break and cut marks on animal bones in caves indicates that he butchered the animals, which is consistent with hunting.² John Shea, who featured in the PBS series, states that this new information contradicts the idea that Neandertals were markedly inferior.²

A very recent report now finds that Neandertals used stone implements in more flexible ways than previously thought, which gave them access to a more varied diet of meat and plants.^15,16Based on microscopic evidence of use-wear and residues left on the stone tools in the Crimea,¹⁶the report suggests that those who used the tools, likely Neandertals, exploited a variety of woody and starchy plants and even hunted birds. Residues of bird feathers were found on some of the tools.

It has recently been concluded that Neandertals lived side-by-side with modern humans in the Middle East for 100,000 years of evolutionary time and made virtually identical stone tools.¹⁷Hybrids of Neandertals and humans are known from a number of areas,⁸ including a recent find of a child in Portugal.¹⁸ It is not difficult to conclude that Neandertal Man was totally human, and that modern humans and Neandertals likely amalgamated in Europe.

One report claimed that Neandertal Man’s DNA was quite different from modern humans, supposedly justifying the classification of them into a different species than modern man. But its author, the famed Svente Pääbo, claims that his paper has been misinterpreted.¹⁹ And mitochondrial DNA retrieved from an Australian Homo sapiens, claimed to be 62,000 years old, also differs greatly from that of modern humans.²⁰ 

The team that made the DNA discovery believes this new result will usher Neandertal Man back into the human fold. This result also suggests that DNA studies are not very good for determining supposed evolutionary closeness.

It has been suggested that Neandertal Man fashioned a bone flute, an obvious human accomplishment. This deduction is strongly disputed, claiming that the holes in a hollowed-out bear bone were punctured and gnawed by the teeth of an animal, possibly a wolf.²¹ 

However, the two complete and two partial holes in the picture shown are linear and very round, making the carnivore theory suspect. Besides, there are about 30 partial bone flutes that have been found in Europe late in the Neandertal period and younger.²²

Those scientists that dispute Neandertal’s human affinity seem to forget that he lived during the Ice Age and was able to survive the cold and harsh weather.²³ Neandertal Man had to have a human level of sophistication to survive.^9 ,24)

A new article published in the journal Nature now claims that Neandertals, or possibly modern humans, lived in northern Russia during the Ice Age.²⁵ It had been widely believed that no humans lived in this region until 14,000 years ago in evolutionary time. Based on a mammoth tusk bearing cut marks, likely made from stone tools, the earliest date of man living in this cold territory during the Ice Age was pushed back to 40,000 years.

The significance of this is that ‘adaptation to northern climes requires high levels of technological and social organization’,²⁶strongly suggesting that Neandertal Man, if he was the tool user, was fully human.

Many of these reports of Neandertal’s total humanity are disputed by some scientists, seemingly motivated by a blind evolutionary bias. In one scene from the similarly biased PBS series, John Shea throws a Neandertal spear with a heavy head 23 or 24 m (80 ft), while he throws a later human spear 42 m (140 feet). This demonstration implied that Neandertals were inferior to modern people. But earlier in the Neandertal episode it was concluded that Neandertals were very strong: the body builders of the Paleolithic.

It therefore stands to reason that Neandertal Man could throw his spear significantly farther than 24 m, and that the heavy, sharp stone tip would have been very effective in hunting. The spear that was thrown 42 m had a light antler head and was thrown with the aid of a spear thrower.

Despite all the prejudice towards including Neandertals into Homo sapiens, many evolutionists have become impressed with the evidence for Neandertal’s humanity, as research casts a ‘more complimentary light on the older cousins. This emerging view depicts Neandertals as having a capacity for creative, flexible behavior somewhat like that of modern people’.² Thus, the evidence increasingly supports the Biblical position.

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RECREATING THE FACES OF OUR NEANDERTAL COUSINS

From their skeletons, we know that the average Neandertal person had bony differences from the average person alive today, including a bigger braincase. So what did they look like?

Bones cannot tell you about things like hairiness, nor the shape of the fleshy parts, like nose or ears. But computerized forensic science has come a long way in making educated ‘guesses’ at a person’s appearance from the shape of a skull. As reported in January 1996 National Geographic, researchers at the University of Illinois used computer ‘morphing’ techniques to fit pictures of living people onto Neandertal’s skulls.

Unlike the artistic reconstructions of earlier times, this time nothing was imaginatively added based on evolutionary assumptions of ‘primitivity’. The results indicate that the bones of the skull would not preclude Neandertals from looking like people you would not greatly comment on (apart from hair and dress style) if they moved in next door to you today.

Were cavemen really primitive?

What comes into your mind when you hear the word cavemen? We have been so evolutionized that the majority of people immediately think of hairy, brutish men usually dressed in animal skins who carry a big club, which they use to attract (well, clobber) a wife. We also think of them making grunting noises to each other because they have not yet learned to speak properly. And sadly, the terms cavemen, primitive, and prehistoric tend to go together into the same sentence and then into our thought processes.

In contrast, when we hear the words the sixties, we usually think of the Beatles, the assassination of JFK, and the Apollo moon landings. Would you ever think there could be a connection with these two apparently different worlds?

In a place called Kinver, near Stourbridge in the center of England, some rock houses, now owned by the National Trust, are a fascinating place to visit. These caves were the basis for eleven separate houses for many years. The last inhabitant was forced to leave in 1967 due to legislation which prohibited dwellings that were devoid of electricity, sanitation, and running water. Reluctantly, these cavemen of the sixties left their caves for normal houses.

These cave-dwellers were far from primitive. The children went to school, the men worked in local industry, and the women took in laundry from the town below. They got water from a well and heated it on a full-sized cooking range, which was built into the rock wall in their living room. The hot water was then taken outside to a “dolly-tub” in a washhouse carved in another rock.

These hardships could not have made for an easy life, but it was a life the inhabitants preferred to lead, rather than to rent a more conventional home. They even baked cakes on their range and sold them and other refreshments to curious visitors who would travel to catch sight of these cave-dwellers. Many of them also placed their family Bibles in a prominent place in their homes.

In many parts of the world, people still live in caves; some even have electricity and television. Far from being brutish, cave-dwellers are no different from any of the rest of Adam’s fallen race, for whom the Saviour died. Caves make ideal homes and offer great protection from the elements. Incidentally would have been very useful during the ice-age (which would have occurred quite soon after the global Noah’s flood) when the dispersion took place of mankind throughout the Earth,after God divided the tongues at Babel  It makes sense that people would utilise these provisions and turn them into homes. We need to eradicate primitive thoughts of these people from our minds and rather think of how sensible and enterprising cave-dwellers have been throughout the centuries. To see these modern day “cavemen” for yourself and to read more, visit Kinver Caveman on our site.

Note from John Chingford:
The purpose of this article is to show that you cannot trust the lies/exaggerations of evolutionists who never tell us that their estimations are theory. They always tell us these things (including timescales) as if they were facts - i.e. deliberately concealing/withholding truth is lying!

With every new discovery if declared honestly, reveal that the Bible is true and far more reliable in its details than mere men who try to figure things out with imperfect and finite minds. When the Bible is shown to be true, it then SHOULD impact us to trust in the God who effectively dictated to men what to write in the Bible and therefore realise that God knows about His Universe infinitely more than what we think.

Please read this article which proves why the Bible can be trusted and why it IS indeed the Word Of God.
http://watchmanforjesus.blogspot.co.uk/2010/09/proving-why-bible-is-inspired-inerrant.html

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References

[1] For more information on this topic, see our Get Answers: Anthropology and Apeman section.

[2] Brainard, J., Giving Neandertals their due—similarities with modern humans shift the image of the caveman brute, Science News 154(5):72–74, 1998.

[3] Lubenow, M.L., Bones of contention—creationist assessment of human fossils, Baker Book House, Grand Rapids, Michigan, pp. 36–39, 1992.

[4] It is not claimed here that all of the Neandertal bony features are the consequence of disease, the major cause of the variation is almost certainly genetic, as is the variation in external features among different groups of people today. In any case, not all Neandertals had these pathologies.

[5] Ref. 3 , pp. 59–77.

[6] Bower, B., Neandertals show staying power in Europe, Science News 156(18):277, 1999.

[7] Bower, B., Neandertals to investigators: can we talk? Science News 141(15):230, 1992.

[8] Trinkus, E. and Shipman, P., The Neandertals—changing the image of mankind, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, p. 391, 1993.

[9] Bower, B., Language origins may reside in skull canal, Science News 153(18):276, 1998.

[10] Bower, B., Neandertal tot enters human-origins debate, Science News 145(1):5, 1994.

[11] Bower, B., Child’s bones found in Neandertal burial, Science News 148(17):261, 1995.

[12] Hublin, J.J., Spoor, F., Braun, M., Zonneveld, F. and Condemi, S., A late Neanderthal associated with Upper Palaeolithic artifacts, Nature 381(6579):224–226, 1996.

[13] Bower, B., Neandertal hunters get to the point, Science News 156(1):4, 1999.

[14] Bower, B., Tool time in the Stone Age, Science News 156(16):254, 1999.

[15] Bower, B., Neandertals used tools with versatility, Science News 160(12):187, 2001.

[16] Hardy, B.L., Kay, M., Marks, A.E. and Monigal, K., Stone tool function at the paleolithic sites of Starosele and Buran Kaya III, Crimea: behavioral implications, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science98(19):10972–10977, 2001.

[17] Bowers, B., Neandertals and humans each get a grip, Science News 159(6):84, 2001.

[18] Bower, B., Fossil may expose humanity’s hybrid roots, Science News 155(19):295, 1999.

[19] Despite that small section he analyzed differing from modern humans, he does not exclude the possibility that Neandertals and modern humans interbred, he claimed on a Nova TV program. See also Lubenow, CENTech. J. 12(1):87–97, 1998.

[20] Bower, B., Gene, fossil data back diverse human roots, Science News 159(2):21, 2001. Also <www.answersingenesis.org/mungo>.

[21] Bowers, B., Doubts aired over Neandertal bone ‘flute’, Science News 153(14):215, 1998.

[22] Bowers, B., Chinese dig sound from ancient flute, Science News 156(13):197, 1999.

[23] Constable, G., The Neanderthals, Time-Life Books, New York, pp. 38–58, 1973.

[24] For a story of the interaction of Neandertals with modern humans, i.e. Cro-Magnons, during the Ice Age in Europe see Oard, M. and Oard, B., Life in the Great Ice Age, Master Books, Arkansas, 1993.

[25] Pavlov, P., Svendsen, J.I. and Indrelid, S., Human presence in the European Arctic nearly 40,000 years ago, Nature 413(6851):64–67, 2001.

[26] Gowlett, J.A.J., Archaeology: out in the cold, Nature 413(6851):33–34, 2001.