Ken Ham #fundie

Ken Ham #fundie answersingenesis.org

Neanderthals—Descendants of Adam

A popular news item was trending this week on Facebook involving Neanderthals. Headlines declared things like “Neanderthals and humans interbred ‘100,000 years ago.’” Really, the idea that Neanderthals and humans share DNA from “interbreeding” isn’t new—it’s been known and well documented for years. What’s different about this news item is the timeline. The 100,000-year date, according to evolutionists, pushes the date back another 40,000 years.

Now, as we’ve said many times before, Neanderthals were human. They used fire, buried their dead with rituals, wore jewelry, possibly wore make-up, and even organized and heated the water in their homes. They were humans, made in God’s image and descended from Adam and Eve just like us. Neanderthals simply represent a people group that formed after the dispersion at the Tower of Babel, after the Flood, just a few thousand (not hundreds of thousands) years ago. They had unique characteristics that likely became more prominent as they were isolated from other people by the divinely created language barrier. So it’s to be expected in a biblical worldview that modern humans and Neanderthals share DNA.

You can learn more about Neanderthals on our website.

Thanks for stopping by and thanks for praying,
Ken

This item was written with the assistance of AiG’s research team.

28 comments

old comment by Cyclonus

@Kuno

What exactly is the definition of a species? I thought that members of different species either couldn't interbreed or produced sterile offspring, like lions and tigers producing ligers. That way the two gene pools are permanently separated. I mean otherwise what meaningful purpose could it have? Couldn't it be used to say that different races are actually different species? Why are chiwawas considered the same species as great danes? Because they can interbreed and their pups can also breed. So by my definition, if we could interbreed with Neanderthals and the offspring weren't sterile (meaning they could pass on the mixed genes) then yes, they were the same species as our ancestors, albeit a different race or breed if you like. I'm not actually up on the current science, so could someone please tell me how this is wrong? Because I can't think of any other meaningful definition of the word "species" that couldn't be covered by "race" or "breed".

old comment by Kuno

@Cyclonus

I am not a biologist, more an interested layman. But as far as I know, species is indeed basically defined as “can interbreed and produce fertile offspring”, but as biology is messy, the lines are rather blurry. Again, I may be wrong, but in the case of humans, Neanderthals and the quite recently discovered Denovians are not considered separate species but rather sub-species of Homo Sapiens. Also, there is apparently some discussion if domesticated dogs are the same species as wolves or if they also should be considered as a sub-species. According to Wikipedia, “[m]embers of one subspecies differ morphologically or by different coding sequences of DNA from members of other subspecies of the species.” A look at the bones of a Neanderthal makes it pretty clear that this was not a modern human as we know it, but you cannot discern if a human skull belonged to an African or a Caucasian. How this definition works in regard to dog breeds, I have honestly no idea.

And there have been single cases where hybrids like ligers or hinnies have been fertile. Like I said, biology is messy and there are no clear lines.

ETA: Ninja’d by Tempus.

old comment by Tempus

@ Mayasmom: the cartoon-esque, Pokemon-grade version of it that they claim "evolutionists" believe doesn't exist.
(Yeah, I know you were being sarcastic, but c'mon, I'm booooorrrrrrred...^_^)

Strangely enough, though, that's the version of
it that would be needed if some of their Global Deluge apologetics were correct. Leaving aside the separate issues that neither the Great Flood or Noah 's giant Ark actually, y'know, EXISTED, many YECs believe that Noah could have skirted the massive logistical necessity of bringing breeding pairs of every animal on Earth simply by bringing representative "kinds" along on his Ark--for instance, a wolf-kind, a cat-kind, and so forth; after the floodwaters receded, these "kinds" then would have underwent ultrafast speciation in only a handful of generations until we finally have all the species we see today. So instead of a gradual changing of the genetics of a population, this would pretty much have required the offspring of each new generation to be a completely different species from their parents.

Creation science in a nutshell: "A miracle happened, and then another miracle happened, and then another miracle happened." When you have to constantly resort to miracles, wholesale suspensions of physics, just-so stories and endless deus ex machina events to explain the world around you, you might as well stop calling it "science" altogether. It's no wonder young-Earthers rarely bother with experiments--there's absolutely no point, since they don't believe you can get anything remotely resembling the world we live in by any natural, material means.