Dear Steve,
I read your article on the “Age of the Earth” and found it to be most interesting and plausible. However, since no mention was made of the supposedly early human species, I wonder if you could give your views on this topic. This would include theories about neanderthols to cave drawings found in Europe dated about 30,000 years old. I’d be most interested to hear from you.
Thank you,
John Csutorka
Nova Scotia, Canada
MYREPLY
Dear John,
You ask an interesting question. It is outside my area of original research but I’m familiar with various explanations by others re: the Neanderthals. I’ll offer three possible such explanations. To begin with, I don’t regard the “30,000” year dating of their skeletons as having any chance of being accurate. I adhere to the scriptural assertion that all mankind is no more than 6,000 years old. Evolutionists used to teach a uniformitarianism which scoffed at the Bible’s assertions about global catastrophes and near-extinctions until scientists realized the earth’s geology supported the Bible’s assertions. However, they simply ditched the old evolutionary fables and substituted new ones instead of accepting the Bible’s accounts. Re: the datings, it is evident that the comets or heavenly objects which hit the earth and destroyed the dinosaur age (discussed in the article of mine which you cited) and the global tectonic cataclysms that hit during the Flood (Genesis 7:11) would have both caused a non-uniform amount of C14 being present on the earth and in organic matter so C14 datings cannot possibly be accurate in any context prior to the Flood.
So where might the Neanderthals fit? Here are three possibilities of which I am aware.
(A) The Neanderthal skeletons may be evidence of the pre-Adamic race of Cain on which God set some kind of distinguishing physical identifier (or “mark”) to identify then as being different from the remaining seed of Adam and Eve (Genesis 4:15). All the race of Cain would have died out in the Flood of Noah’s time so that could explain why they disappeared all over the earth.
(B) The Bible records that pre-Flood mankind could easily live over 900 years. Even after the Flood, the initial post-Flood generations which still had much of the pre-Flood DNA in them lived for centuries. Because our current lifespans are so puny in comparison, we have no frame of reference in modern times to know what physical changes human bodies would undergo if we lived for several (or many) centuries. We do know that elderly people today “shrink” in height and change in appearance as their bone structure, spinal discs, and soft tissues age. However, we do not know what further changes would occur in human bodies if we lived for hundreds of years instead of merely a few decades. I heard a radio presentation by a Christian teacher years ago (I cannot recall his name or I would credit him) on this subject which opined that what scientists call the Neanderthals and the Cro-magnons were actually from the same race of humanity, but that the Neanderthal skeletons were those of the pre-Flood or initial post-Flood generations who were most advanced in age. In this theory, such features as stature, heavy brow ridges, DNA changes over centuries, etc., might be simply the normal order of the human aging process. Under this theory, the Neanderthals didn’t “die out,” but rather they ceased being found in human skeletons after a certain period of time because mankind no longer can live long enough for our bodies to experience the bodily changes that would occur if we lived for centuries (as used to be commonplace for the first two millennia of mankind’s existence on earth).
(C) The apocryphal book of Jasher (IV:18) states that in the pre-Flood era mankind learned how to mix the species together, which means they could bio-engineer new kinds of living creatures. This does fit very well with Matthew 24:37’s prophecy that the pre-Flood era would be mirrored in the society of mankind that would exist on the earth in the latter days before Jesus Christ returns. Only a high-tech society like we have today can replicate the pre-Flood society’s ability to “mix the species,” and this requires cloning, genome-mapping, in vitro fertilization technologies, etc. There is no doubt in my mind the pre-Flood society was far more advanced in these techniques than modern man–even though modern levels of knowledge are still expanding rapidly. If mankind could create and modify species in the pre-Flood, they could also have modified mankind’s DNA to bio-engineer a less-intelligent version of “mankind” which could be used to perform menial or “slave” tasks. In this theory, the Neanderthal skeletons would be the bioengineered version of mankind and Cro-magnon skeletons were the normal mankind specimens.
I do not know if any of these explanations of the correct one, but I hope this response gives you some food for thought on the subject.
Steve
