Neanderthals: Their Anatomy and Culture

Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis ) were human beings who suddenly appeared 100,000 years ago in Europe, and who disappeared, or were assimilated by mixing with other races, quietly but quickly 35,000 years ago. Their only difference from modern man is that their skeletons are more robust and their cranial capacity slightly bigger.

Neanderthals were a human race, a fact which is admitted by almost everybody today. Evolutionists have tried very hard to present them as a "primitive species," yet all the findings indicate that they were no different from a "robust" man walking on the street today. A prominent authority on the subject, Erik Trinkaus, a paleoanthropologist from New Mexico University, writes:

Detailed comparisons of Neanderthal skeletal remains with those of modern humans have shown that there is nothing in Neanderthal anatomy that conclusively indicates locomotor, manipulative, intellectual, or linguistic abilities inferior to those of modern humans.202

Many contemporary researchers define Neanderthal man as a subspecies of modern man, and call him Homo sapiens neanderthalensis.

On the other hand, the fossil record shows that Neanderthals possessed an advanced culture. One of the most interesting examples of this is a fossilized flute made by Neanderthal people. This flute, made from the thighbone of a bear, was found by the archaeologist Ivan Turk in a cave in northern Yugoslavia in July 1995. Musicologist Bob Fink then analyzed it. Fink proved that this flute, thought by radio-carbon testing to be between 43,000 and 67,000 years old, produced four notes, and that it had half and full tones. This discovery shows that Neanderthals used the seven-note scale, the basic formula of western music. Fink, who examined the flute, states that "the distance between the second and third holes on the old flute is double that between the third and fourth." This means that the first distance represents a full note, and the distance next to it a half note. Fink says, "These three notes … are inescapably diatonic and will sound like a near-perfect fit within any kind of standard diatonic scale, modern or antique," thus revealing thatNeanderthals were people with an ear for and knowledge of music.203

Some other fossil discoveries show that Neanderthals buried their dead, looked after their sick, and used necklaces and similar adornments.204

A 26,000-year-old sewing needle, proved to have been used by Neanderthal people, was also found during fossil excavations. This needle, which is made of bone, is exceedingly straight and has a hole for the thread to be passed through.205 People who wear clothing and feel the need for a sewing needle cannot be considered "primitive."

The best research into the Neanderthals' tool-making abilities is that of Steven L. Kuhn and Mary C. Stiner, professors of anthropology and archaeology, respectively, at the University of New Mexico. Although these two scientists are proponents of the theory of evolution, the results of their archaeological research and analyses show that the Neanderthals who lived in caves on the coast of southwest Italy for thousands of years carried out activities that required as complex a capacity for thought as modern-day human beings.206

Kuhn and Stiner found a number of tools in these caves. The discoveries were of sharp, pointed cutting implements, including spearheads, made by carefully chipping away layers at the edges of the flint. Making sharp edges of this kind by chipping away layers is without a doubt a process calling for intelligence and skill. Research has shown that one of the most important problems encountered in that process is breakages that occur as a result of pressure at the edge of the stones. For this reason, the individual carrying out the process has to make fine judgments of the amount of force to use in order to keep the edges straight, and of the precise angle to strike at, if he is making an angled tool.

Margaret Conkey from the University of California explains that tools made in periods before the Neanderthals were also made by communities of intelligent people who were fully aware of what they were doing:

If you look at the things archaic humans made with their hands, Levallois cores and so on, that's not a bumbling king of thing. They had an appreciation of the material they were working with, an understanding of their world.207

In short, scientific discoveries show that Neanderthals were a human race no different from us on the levels of intelligence and dexterity. This race either disappeared from history by assimilating and mixing with other races, or became extinct in some unknown manner. But they were definitely not "primitive" or "half-ape."

202 Erik Trinkaus, "Hard Times Among the Neanderthals," Natural History, vol. 87, December 1978, p. 10; R. L. Holloway, "The Neanderthal Brain: What Was Primitive," American Journal of Physical Anthropology Supplement, vol. 12, 1991, p. 94. (emphasis added)
203 "Neandertals Lived Harmoniously," The AAAS Science News Service, April 3, 1997.
204 Ralph Solecki, Shanidar, The First Flower People, Knopf, New York, 1971, p. 196; Paul G. Bahn and Jean Vertut,Images in the Ice, Windward, Leichester, 1988, p. 72.
205 D. Johanson, B. Edgar, From Lucy to Language, p. 99.
206 S. L. Kuhn, "Subsistence, Technology, and Adaptive Variation in Middle Paleolithic Italy," American Anthropologist, vol. 94, no. 2, March 1992, pp. 309-310.
207 Roger Lewin, The Origin of Modern Humans, Scientific American Library, New York, 1993, p. 131.