I love archeology and paleontology almost as much as fixing up old houses. It is fun to find something lost or discover something new. However, how long does it take for scientists to come to any conclusion when what they find is nothing new? The poor Neanderthals found dispersed in Europe and the near East, and Asia have been called anything from thugs to cavemen to artistic genius’ and yet no final report can arrive at the conclusion that by now ought to be obvious; we are them, they are us. The deep longing that dead things will tell us who we are, is fallacious. What we find is proof of this.
Read the titles from just a few summaries of the many finds on this poor fellow. Even DNA says they were fully human let alone the fact that they behaved in every way as we do from what can be gathered from remains. The caveman of yesterday was and is not a primitive subspecies or an intermediate link.
Here are a few titles of articles that speak volumes about the humanity of “Neanderthals.”
Europeans Have Three Times More Neanderthal Genes for Lipid Catabolism Than Asians or Africans
Neanderthals Were No Strangers to Good Parenting
Talking Neanderthals Challenge the Origins of Speech
How Are We Different and What Gave Us the Advantage Over Extinct Types of Humans Like the Neanderthals?
Neanderthals Were Not Inferior to Modern Humans, Study Finds
Were Neanderthals a Sub-Species of Modern Humans? New Research Says No
Did Neanderthals Eat Their Vegetables? First Direct Evidence of Plants in Neanderthal Diet
Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons Did Not Coexist on the Iberian Peninsula, Suggests Re-Analysis of Dating
Ancient DNA Shows Earliest European Genomes Weathered the Ice Age: Neanderthal Interbreeding Clues and a Mystery Human Lineage
Neanderthals ‘Overlapped’ With Modern Humans for Up to 5,400 Years
First Neanderthal Rock Engraving Found in Gibraltar: Abstract Art Older Than Thought?
Stone Age Humans Weren’t Necessarily More Advanced Than Neanderthals
Skulls With Mix of Neanderthal and Primitive Traits Illuminate Human Evolution
It is a dizzying business reaching a scientific conclusion on something as simple as humans are humans. How exciting and unexpected is it that human-like people ate vegetables?
Follow also the imagery of our development of the Neanderthal. It follows the preconceptions of our evolutionary theory; from preconceptions to real science.
And so ends the story of the famous cave man. Turns out he was us living under the first ice age the world had ever seen. Making use of any habitable place and fairing very well with minor deficiencies in vitamins; not unlike mankind today.
My point? Science is so enamored with a materialistic description of the world that imagination often supersedes reality. Even now there is great disappointment that Neanderthal is not any kind of missing link. Why be disappointed in the truth? Most likely because there is so little but conjecture on a theory that was supposed to explain everything.
Neanderthal had art, music, religion, clothes, tools, and language. He had a brain bigger than ours by 800cc (almost a liter) and was built like a weightlifter – without the need to lift weights. He was most likely brighter, stronger and more “adapted” for life than we are except for our industrial revolution. Now, let our caveman sleep in peace as Homo sapiens, an ancient people who gave us our future.
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