This is partly a personal question and partly a scientific one - where do neanderthals and other pre-Sapien hominids fit into the creation story?
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Most TEs believe in both the evolution of mankind and Gensis; some believe it was metaphorical, other that there was a literal Adam and Eve. Evolutionists believe change is gradual and emerged from pre-existing beings (as oppose to each species being directly created by God) yet when it comes to humanity we take a more creationist view - mankind did emerge suddenly and was directly created by God. Adam was the first human.
Normally I see no conflict between evolution and Christianity, but in this case I haven't been able to reconcile the evolution of man with the creation story. There are just too many question left unanswered:
For us to have evolved from apes it would have required an accelerated evolution of brain related genes. The evolution of the human brain would have had to start it's accelerated evolution on a molecular basis some 2 million years ago and within Homo Erectus (considered human by most creationists) would have had a brain size twice that of the Austropihicene and early Hominids.
Homo habilis that would have lived. 2.5–1.5 mya with a cranial capacity of ~600 cc. The next link would have been Homo erectus with a cranial capacity of ~1000cc. KNM-WT 15000 (Turkana Boy) would have lived 1.5 mya and the skeleton structure shows no real difference between anatomically modern humans. The skull while smaller then the average cranial capacity of humans but close to twice that of his ancestors of 2 mya.
The Neanderthals, it should be noted, had a cranial capacity 10% greater then our own.
With a 1200-1750 cm³ skull capacity (10 percent greater than modern human average)
Neandertal
With that in mind lets take a look at your questions.
Were the neanderthals descendants of Adam? They seemed intelligent enough to be considered (almost) our equals. Recent evidence shows
Europeans and Asians have neanderthal genes but Africans don't.
The Neanderthals had a cranial capacity comparable to modern humans and may well have been larger on average. Compare that to chimpanzees and the Homo habilis cranial capacity that is nearly three times smaller.
The loose definition of species is the ability to interbreed. Sometimes even distinctly different species can like the Troglodytes and Bonobos. At any rate should we decide that the Neaderthals could have we are left with the tentative conclusion that they belong in our species, not just our genus.
I couldn't follow your link but I found this. The Neanderthal genome is a new interest for me so I'm piecing this together the best I can.
“Neandertals are not totally extinct; they live on in some of us,” says Svante Pääbo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, and leader of the Neandertal genome project.
He and other geneticists involved in the effort to compile the complete genetic instruction book of Neandertals didn’t expect to find that Neandertals had left a genetic legacy. Earlier analyses that looked at only a small part of the genome had contradicted the notion that humans and Neandertals intermixed (SN Online: 8/7/08).
“We as a consortium came into this with a very, very strong bias against gene flow,” Reich says. In fact, when he and his colleagues announced the completion of a rough draft of the Neandertal genome a year ago, the researchers said such genetic exchange was unlikely (SN: 3/14/09, p. 5).
But several independent lines of evidence now convince the researchers that humans and Neandertals did interbreed. “The breakthrough here is to show that it could happen and it did happen,” Pääbo says.
Neandertal genome yields evidence of interbreeding with humans
Both neanderthals and sapiens are considered to be descendants of homo heidelbergensis - and the above link shows we were apparently closely-related enough to interbreed. Was Adam a member of homo heidelbergensis?
Homo heidelbergensis would have had a cranial capacity overlapping our own. They comparable in size if not a little taller with tools, language and social behavior not unlike our own.
These fossils, like the Neanderthals, represent variations in the lineage from our common ancestor Adam. What you should be asking yourself is if there is the time or the means for humans to have evolved from apes.
At what point did hominids develop some concept of religion? Certain hominids buried their dead, which might indicate some kind of belief in an afterlife. This is a hard question to answer as finding the right kind of evidence would be extremely difficult.
What they believed isn't important, what we should be able to conclude is that they are well within the range of modern humans along with Homo erectus.
According to evolution there is no 'magic moment' where one species suddenly emerges, there is only gradual change. We can trace the slow development of whales from furry quadrapeds into fish-like mammals, but there was no magic moment when the blue whale suddenly came into existance. Why should humans be any different?
But that's not what we see, major transitions are marked by a sudden appearance in the fossils record particularly with regards to the Cambrian explosion and the three fold expansion of the human brain from that of apes. Gradualism is not a model for adaptive evolution, it's a rationalization that has been confounded by the actual evidence.
Timeline - if Adam was the forefather of both neanderthals and sapiens this means he lived more than a million years ago, which seems incompatable with the family legancy written in the Bible.
It makes perfect sense to me. 1 Sam 17:4 describes Goliath as being some 9 1/2 feet tall and Genesis describes the Nephilim as 'heroes of old, men of renown.' Then in Numbers 13:32-33 the descendants of Anak, are described as giants. What we are looking at is the range of variation that is still evident in human populations to this day. I see no real problems here, just puzzles.
I don't actually know a great deal about prehistoric anthropology so feel free to add anything you think is useful.
You introduced a subject I have not really explored before, thanks for that. Hope my little contribution helps you along in your journey.
Grace and peace,
Mark
