How do we explain Neanderthals?

[rusmeister]

So we should pay no mind to evolution, and to a history that is different than the one that is traditionally taught to us?

Ultimately, yes.
We have been taught to place far too great a value on an education that is secular at its roots, even if that education was conducted under Christian auspices. True education is in the Church, in Tradition. Scripture itself, the teaching of the fathers, is true education. That does not mean we must not use our minds; far from it! Only that much of our thought was instilled with a hermeneutic alien to our Faith. I date the beginning of my own education now to my 38th year, to a non-Orthodox thinker (Lewis) leading me to Orthodoxy, and of accepting that the Church knows better than me, and has the power to teach and correct me. The 21 years of formal education that proceeded that were largely a waste, whereas my private reading and learning and practice was not.

 

[ArmyMatt]

Hmm, I think there are real questions about what you mean when you say they are clear on something - and it's hardly uncontroversial to call their remarks uniformly and unquestionably clear.

when saint after saint, pre and post Darwin, all write and experience the opposite of evolution, that is clear. our hymns also reject it, as do our prayers.

yes, that is clear. it is only unclear by those that don't want it to be.

 

[buzuxi02]

Hi.Here's my dilemma. Okay..so other planets exist. Mars, Jupiter etc. .we know us humans can't survive in Saturn's atmosphere but yet these planets exist and God the supreme creator made them.I don't know if they serve a purpose or what..but I look at Neanderthals in the same way. They existed but exist no longer yet we have proof of their existence the same as we can see Mars or Venus through a telescope. They're something that God created because that's what He does. Creates.As to their purpose..shrugs..although I do believe that Neanderthal DNA exists in us homosapians.It all seems like a mystery to me.

No difference between Neanderthals and homosapiens, hence why we have Neanderthal DNA. For example the remains found in Ukraine in the Bura Kayan caves have been refered to as "anatomically modern humans". They claim the Neanderthals and Denisovans were separate subspecies more similar to each other than to us yet we still interbred with us.
If you take a horse and donkey and mate then you get a mule or hinny but those offspring cannot procreate after their own kind. This is because a horse and donkey is genetically similar enough to mate but not similar enough for their offspring to keep going. Well we and Neanderthals are so similar we could continue a lineage and continue to procreate which can only mean we are the same species.
Many have said that Australian aborigines should be labeled as a subspecies. This is because their DNA have some differences from Western man and a slightly different cranial features compared to others. But it's irrelevant they are still homosapiens.

 

[rusmeister]

I'm sure your correct in believing that humans were surely intelligent enough to understand and that some of them may have known enough about selective breeding to consider speculative theories about evolution. I'm also pretty sure, however, that religious minds would not have accepted these sorts of explanations for things in any canon of sacred writings. Beliefs are a matter of life and death for people. Ideas that are seen to oppose or invalidate long standing traditional beliefs are not welcome even in many religious belief systems in our own time. Much less would they have been in a time when many clung to their heartfelt beliefs to the point of surely killing those who threatened such beliefs.

So, I will rephrase my earlier statement for greater accuracy: Although mankind was likely highly intelligent enough to grasp the concepts if presented with them and offered a sufficient body of supporting evidence, the social psychology of the cultures at large would not have stood for such concepts, especially if they were perceived as a threat to life and culture sustaining dogmas.

That is why the Pentateuch looks and feels as if written by Moses, rather than Charles Darwin. This, of course, as with all things, is by God's design.

You're showing your hand, TF.
The one question that matters is whether those beliefs are true. Yet you speak as if they were not true, but existed only to "sustain a culture".

Your words can be completely reversed to snobbishly sneer at the modern education, as you do at people who happen to not have been born in your much more enlightened time:

"Although modern man is likely highly intelligent enough to grasp the concepts if presented with them and offered a sufficient body of supporting evidence, the social psychology of the culture at large will not stand for such concepts, especially if they are perceived as a threat to culture-sustaining dogmas."

Of course, if you see "supporting evidence" as a thing that can only be offered from the natural sciences, and not from philosophy or theology, such a quote will simply bewilder you.

One of the massive weaknesses in such a view, that dethrones our ancestors as less intelligent, and less well-informed (which is what Lewis called chronological snobbery), is that you don't see that your own grandchildren can turn around and do the same to you, legitimately debunk the ideas of your time that you hold on exactly the same grounds that you debunk the views of Christians of the past, as they will be born later than you, and can consider themselves more advanced and better-informed than you.

 

[Cappadocious]

experience the opposite of evolution

What in their experience is/was the opposite of evolution?

 

[rusmeister]

What in their experience is/was the opposite of evolution?

Capp, man has a divine origin. Yes, out of the dust of the earth, but divine. There's nothing divine in evolution. I'm trying hard now to imagine the divinity of creatures killing each other as they, or rather, their descendents, slowly become man (which then is slowly becoming something else without any theosis), but I'm having a hard time seeing the divine aspect of that. Maybe you could make it clearer. Though I have my doubts about that.

Evolution, as an idea, does NOT prove there is no such thing as God, but it does prove that there is no such thing as man, only an endless becoming, from we-hardly-know-what, to flat-out, we-know-not-what. That's what X-Men, Star Trek, and all the rest endlessly aver, talking about "the next step in our evolution". There's no rational basis in evolutionary science to suppose that our evolution has come to an end, though some forms of humanism do tacitly assume that it has, other, slightly more thought-out forms can be seen in Roddenberry's "Star Trek:TMP" and Decker's "New Humans" and "the Q Continuum". And where does Christ step in to Incarnation, in our ongoing evolution? At what stage? The contradictions with Holy Tradition just keep on coming. You may hold a private vision that, as you see it, avoids these contradictions, but it is quite private, and not shared by most of the scientists you look to for support, any more than it is by the Church fathers.

 

[Cappadocious]

Let's hear what Matt has to say.

 

[~Anastasia~]

No difference between Neanderthals and homosapiens, hence why we have Neanderthal DNA. For example the remains found in Ukraine in the Bura Kayan caves have been refered to as "anatomically modern humans". They claim the Neanderthals and Denisovans were separate subspecies more similar to each other than to us yet we still interbred with us.
If you take a horse and donkey and mate then you get a mule or hinny but those offspring cannot procreate after their own kind. This is because a horse and donkey is genetically similar enough to mate but not similar enough for their offspring to keep going. Well we and Neanderthals are so similar we could continue a lineage and continue to procreate which can only mean we are the same species.
Many have said that Australian aborigines should be labeled as a subspecies. This is because their DNA have some differences from Western man and a slightly different cranial features compared to others. But it's irrelevant they are still homosapiens.

Good point, and biologically that is an argument that they are the same species.

How about these?

They are a tribe of people called the Doma, who I remember seeing photos of many years ago. They are of course human. And many of them have two toes. They also can have differently shaped hands as a result of the same genes.

But if these remains were found, concentrated together in a group (as they live, and the reason for the prevalent mutation), it is easy to imagine that scientists could infer they might be a separate specie. Interestingly enough, one that wears clothes, builds rudimentary habitations, uses tools, etc ...

I don't know the exact answer concerning Neanderthals. But counting toes and positing evolution based on it is not necessarily the whole picture.

 

[buzuxi02]

Anastasia,
That's a good find. Reading up on the Doma people one article says how their feet aid in climbing trees. Chinese anthropologists many times refer to 'homosapiens' as any hominid species starting from Homo Erectus on down. A discovery in Georgia in a place called Dmanisi found a homo erectus skull buried with 4 other hominid skulls which are about 1.8 million years old. The conclusion is all these human like people are all one and the same species
Dmanisi Human: Skull from Georgia Implies All Early Homo Species were One | Anthropology | Sci-News.com

The relevant portion:

“The differences between these Dmanisi fossils are no more pronounced than those between five modern humans or five chimpanzees,” said Dr David Lordkipanidze from the Georgian National Museum in Tbilisi, a lead author of a paper in the journal Science and co-author of a paper published in theProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Traditionally, researchers have used variation among Homo fossils to define different species. But in light of these new findings, Dr Lordkipanidze and his colleagues suggest that early, diverse Homo fossils, with their origins in Africa, actually represent variation among members of a single, evolving lineage – most appropriately, Homo erectus.
“Had the braincase and the face of Skull 5 been found as separate fossils at different sites in Africa, they might have been attributed to different species,” said Dr Christoph Zollikofer from the Anthropological Institute and Museum in Zurich, Switzerland, a co-author of the Science paper.

Another interesting paper presented by an anthropologist:
RETHINKING "OUT OF AFRICA" | Edge.org
The interesting part:

A further big surprise was that not only were there distinct humans in Siberia maybe 50,000 years ago, but when whole genome scans were done against modern humans, it turned out that there was one group of living humans that seemed to be related to the Denisovans, that had Denisovan DNA in them, and these people are down in Australasia. They're in New Guinea, Australia, and some neighbouring islands, so that's also very unexpected. The Denisovans are only known from their DNA in Siberia. Down in New Guinea and Australia, there is Denisovan DNA in living people..

And this:
Then the find known as Homo floresiensis was made in Liang Bua Cave on the island of Flores, and was quickly nicknamed "The Hobbit," because the Lord of the Rings films were popular at that time. The excavators who described this material argued that they had found a new species of human, small-bodied at about a meter tall, with primitive features in the skeleton, and a brain the size of that of a chimpanzee. And this creature was living on the island of Flores, way over the Wallace Line, five-hundred kilometers beyond Java. Not only that, it was still around 17,000 years ago, long after the Neanderthals had died out. It was an extraordinary claim from a partial skeleton and some more fragmentary material dug up from just this one site on Flores. I was at the Nature press conference where these findings were announced, and commentated on the discovery, which did impress me. I took this seriously as a distinct human-like species, which had somehow got to Flores and had evolved separately in isolation for a long period of time. The leading view in 2004 was that this creature represented a dwarf form of Homo erectus. Homo erectus had somehow headed eastwards, arrived on Flores, and under the conditions of this relatively small island, the species had dwarfed down in size (a process called insular dwarfism, which happens to medium-to-large-sized mammals on islands with reduced resources, when evolution favors a reduced body size). The argument was that this was a dwarfed Homo erectus, explaining the smaller body and brain size.
However, some researchers refused to accept that. They felt that this was such a bizarre find, under bizarre circumstances, and they actually favored the view that they were some kind of pathological modern human, perhaps suffering from cretinism, microcephaly or something called Laron Syndrome. These conditions can produce small brains and small bodies in modern humans, so some people have argued that these findings are not a distinct species at all. "

But regardless of the theory if successful reproduction can take place between the various hominins which are labeled anatomically modern humans, basically means we were the same. Others have argued the low amount of neanderthal dna in us (about 2.5%) can mean interbreeding was a hit or miss, it was more like the sterile mule, but you occasionally had an anomaly.

 

[jckstraw72]

Hmm, I think there are real questions about what you mean when you say they are clear on something - and it's hardly uncontroversial to call their remarks uniformly and unquestionably clear.

at least on the issue of man's mortality, which Army Matt was speaking about, there is no ambiguity on the subject. we often here on this matter that "the Church has not expressed itself" -- meaning it's not been dealt with by an Ecumenical Council, but, at the very least, the issue of man and death has in fact been addressed by Ecumenical Council:

Canon 109 of African Code, (120 of Council of Carthage), ratified at the Ecumenical Councils of Trullo and Nicea II.

That Adam was not created by God subject to death.

That whosoever says that Adam, the first man, was created mortal, so that whether he had sinned or not, he would have died in body—that is, he would have gone forth of the body, not because his sin merited this, but by natural necessity, let him be anathema.

Ancient Epitome of Canon CIX.

Whoso shall assert that the protoplast would have died without sin and through natural necessity, let him be anathema.

 

[jckstraw72]

I do not know what St. Pasios is qualified to discern. Blasphemy is a most nebulous term and depends very much on one's preconceptions.

disagreement on this question always seems to come down to this general idea -- the saints differ from us in no way.

of course, when they speak about the Resurrection and Baptism and the Eucharist and that Christ will raise us all from the dead, we never once attribute their words to mere "preconceptions." only that pesky book of Genesis has remained shrouded in darkness to even the saints, it seems. It's a veil God just can't seem to lift.

 

[truefiction1]

You're showing your hand, TF.
The one question that matters is whether those beliefs are true. Yet you speak as if they were not true, but existed only to "sustain a culture"...

..."Of course, if you see "supporting evidence" as a thing that can only be offered from the natural sciences, and not from philosophy or theology, such a quote will simply bewilder you"...

..."One of the massive weaknesses in such a view, that dethrones our ancestors as less intelligent, and less well-informed (which is what Lewis called chronological snobbery), is that you don't see that your own grandchildren can turn around and do the same to you, legitimately debunk the ideas of your time that you hold on exactly the same grounds that you debunk the views of Christians of the past, as they will be born later than you, and can consider themselves more advanced and better-informed than you"...

I don't mean to speak as if all those beliefs were not true. But beliefs do indeed sustain life within human social cultures, even if the beliefs themselves are based on mere mythologies or problematic philosophies, evil political ideologies, or whatever.

I do not see supporting evidence as a thing that can only be offered from the natural sciences because of my faith. But my faith is a gift coming from God and my faith is in God, not in fathers, for we have sufficient evidence of their incorrectness at times all too often and their divided personal opinions about certain things (like the exact age of the earth) to inform us that their knowledge is never perfected in this age. I don't disregard either, however, teachings that can shown to have an extremely high likelihood of being true because of vast amounts of material evidence. I also don't agree that a view that dethrones ancestors as having a lesser awareness (not lesser intelligence) of how things work in this natural universe is a problem. If I don't have a cure for a terminal illness and my grandchildren discover one, I feel that would be a good thing.

 

[rusmeister]

Yeah, Matt, are anathemas still valid, or are they historical curiosities? (I think I know the answer to that, but I'd like to know what is being taught at seminary these days.) Can we say things that can legitimately subject us to anathema?

 

[stephen583]

Personally, I have no problem accepting the existence of Neanderthals, or any of the many other prehistoric proto-humanlike creatures identified by science with the Biblical account of creation found in Genesis. God created modern man, (homo sapien sapien) in His own image, and then He instructed them to go forth and be fruitful, multiple and replenish the earth.

The word "replenish" according to Merriam Webster means to "fill up again, that which has been diminished". To "refill", or "replace" something that has disappeared. Just like you would have to replace the gasoline in your automobile when the fuel indicator reaches "empty". Certainly that was the case with Neanderthals, who according to science were pretty thin on the ground when modern man arrived on the scene. According to archeological evidence, their population was confined to a few hundred isolated, individuals surviving in caves on the Western shores of Spain around twelve thousand years ago. After that, their remains simply disappear from the archeological record.

Perhaps if more Christians took a scientific view of the creation, than a pseudo-science fundamentalist view of the creation, 70 percent of Christian kids leaving home would not be abandoning the faith they were raised in shortly after leaving the nest.

Just something to think about.

 

[jckstraw72]

Perhaps if more Christians took a scientific view of the creation, than a pseudo-science fundamentalist view of the creation, 70 percent of Christian kids leaving home would not be abandoning the faith they were raised in shortly after leaving the nest.

conversely, we can say that if modern Christianity was not so weak in the face of evolution, and returned to the Tradition and gave kids real answers, they wouldn't be leaving.

 

[JackRT]

According to archeological evidence, their population was confined to a few hundred isolated, individuals surviving in caves on the Western shores of Spain around twelve thousand years ago. After that, their remains simply disappear from the archeological record.

Anthropologists estimate that the Neandertal population never was more than about 25,000 at any one time so they were quite widely scattered. You are correct that their last stand seems to have been in Spain in the region of Gibraltar but IIRC it was more like 30,000 YBP. Just why they went extinct is still not settled but it seems likely to me that modern man simply pushed them aside in some way.

 

[stephen583]

conversely, we can say that if modern Christianity was not so weak in the face of evolution, and returned to the Tradition and gave kids real answers, they wouldn't be leaving.
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That would be the 30 percent of young adults who remain members of their church. Not actually very impressive retention record. As they say, "the proof is in the pudding", or perhaps more appropriately in this case, the "Poison Kool-aide".

 

[jckstraw72]

That would be the 30 percent of young adults who remain members of their church. Not actually very impressive retention record. As they say, "the proof is in the pudding", or perhaps more appropriately in this case, the "Poison Kool-aide".

no, my point was that if Christians would give their kids real answers to the questions arising from evolution, then they wouldn't be so easily persuaded away from their faith. the retention rate is low because the fact that the Church has real answers and the content of those answers remain largely unknown.

 

[Kristos]

when saint after saint, pre and post Darwin, all write and experience the opposite of evolution, that is clear. our hymns also reject it, as do our prayers.

yes, that is clear. it is only unclear by those that don't want it to be.

Yes, yes - and the Sun actually rotates around the Earth. We know all these things already. It is clearly part of our Tradition to use Scripture/Tradition as preeminent evidence proving ourselves right in all things outside the realm of theology. Ballyhoo!

This is the OPPOSITE of our Tradition! A lover of truth does not obfuscate the issues to serve their own preconceptions.

Our hymns and our prayers reject the theory of evolution? Really? Oh wait - you believe the Sun does rotate around the Earth - nevermind.

 

[Kristos]

no, my point was that if Christians would give their kids real answers to the questions arising from evolution, then they wouldn't be so easily persuaded away from their faith. the retention rate is low because the fact that the Church has real answers and the content of those answers remain largely unknown.

Nope. Kids are too smart for that. They are not going to believe that the Earth is 7500 years old.