The anti-evolution writings contain an enormous amount of incorrect, misleading, and deceptive material, and it is troubling to consider that the writers claim to be Christians for whom truthfulness and honesty should be fundamentally important behaviors. Instead, seeking to discredit evolutionary biology from a position of ignorance, they make absurd claims and reveal their ignorance of the material. This essay is part of an ongoing effort on my part to reveal this deception for what it is.
1. Neanderthals
Neanderthals (sometimes now called Neandertals) were a species of human that existed from about 300,000 years ago until about 30,000 years ago in Europe and central Asia (Willoughby 2007). The first primitive hominid fossils to be recognized as such were from a Neanderthal found in 1856; the name comes from the Neander Valley in Germany, where the first fossil was found. Initially, the prevailing view was that the skeleton was that of a Cossack that had died in the cave several thousand years ago. Later it was determined that in fact, the skeleton was much older, and indeed, the Neander Valley fossils have been dated to nearly 50,000 years ago. Since then, thousands of fossils resembling some stage between apes and modern humans have been discovered and at least 23 extinct species are now recognized (Prothero 2007). The grouping of humans and their closely-related extinct relatives, distinct from apes, is called the hominidae, and the various species that make up that family are called hominids. The keystone trait that is used to define membership in hominidae is if the species walked upright, since humans are the only primate that habitually walks upright. Neither Neanderthals nor several of the other extinct hominids are thought to be directly ancestral to modern humans; the prevailing scenario is that modern humans (Homo sapiens) derived about 150,00 - 100,000 years ago from Homo heidelbergensis, which in turn descended from Homo erectus (Stringer 2002, Prothero 2007). Willoughby (2007) sums it up as “The African fossil hominin record can best be understood as showing a sequence extending from Homo erectus through Homo heidelbergensis to anatomically modern Homo sapiens.” Even earlier, the genus Homo is considered to be a descendent from the genus Australopithecus, although it remains uncertain which species of Australopithecus gave rise to the early species of Homo (Prothero 2007). It is important to note that the hominid family tree is far more bushy than linear, and the old ideas of a linear sequence of species should be discarded in favor of a much more branchy metaphor.
Fast-forward to today, where Dr. Ron Rhodes declares that in fact, Neanderthals were fully human Homo sapiens. Rhodes reveals his lack of knowledge of the topic in numerous ways. He begins his section on Neanderthals by saying (correctly) that by the early 20th century, researchers considered Neanderthals a possible transitional form between apes and modern humans. He than tells us (pg. 81) that “beginning in the 1950s however, scholars began to change their minds, especially in view of the fact that similar remains have been discovered in Europe, Africa, and Asia.”. Here is false statement #1. There have been no Neanderthal remains discovered in Africa (Willoughby 2007). Rhodes then says that modern evidence shows that the bones of the original Neanderthal fossil were those of a person who had rickets, a bone disease that causes deformity. Close enough to correct; the Neanderthal type specimen had extensive arthritis or a similar disease, which contributed to early interpretations of the species as stoop-shouldered. As the number of fairly-complete skeletons of Homo neanderthalensis increased, it was soon clear that Neanderthals were not stoop- shouldered or slouching, but stood erect like we do.
Rhodes then makes a very big error followed by several smaller ones: “Today Neanderthal man has been recategorized as truly human and, creationists believe, is a descendant of Noah. He was very muscular, powerful and thickset, but such features are certainly within the gene pool for humanity. Such robusticity can be found on an individual basis in modern living populations today.” Finally, Rhodes describes some of the surprisingly advanced cultural behaviors that have been found for Neanderthals, and concludes that “Clearly, Neanderthal man was a Homo sapiens.” The really big falsehood here is Rhodes’ assertion that “Neanderthal man has been recategorized as truly human.” No researchers claim that Neanderthals = modern humans. While a minority classify Neanderthals as a distinct subspecies (Homo sapiens neanderthalensis), the majority view today is that Neanderthals are a distinct species (Homo neanderthalensis). Note that Rhodes provides no citations of mainstream researchers to support this claim, only the assertions of John Morris from the Institute for Creation Research. Rhodes also misleads the reader with his comments about the morphology of Neanderthals, implying that Neanderthal proportions might easily be found among modern humans. They would not; bone thickness, limb proportions, skull dimensions, etc, of Neanderthals all differ from those of modern humans. In the next few paragraphs, we will demonstrate that Neanderthals are quite morphologically distinct from modern humans.
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The first place to look for distinctiveness in Neanderthals is the skull. The photo at left shows a modern human skull on the left, and a Neanderthal skull on the right. Note that the Neanderthal has much more pronounced brow ridges, a much larger nasal opening, more protruding cheekbones, and differently-shaped eye openings. The drawing below shows a side view of a Neanderthal skull, illustrating that it was a longer and lower skull from front to back, compared to modern humans. Neanderthals also have a distinct bulge of the very back of the skull, called an occipital bun; no modern humans have the bun. On the other hand, modern humans have a chin, while Neanderthals do not. Finally, Neanderthal faces protrude, while modern human faces do not. |
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| The above discussion considers only the skull. The diagram at right points out features in the rest of the skeleton that differentiate moderns from Neanderthals. The overall impression is that a Neanderthal skeleton is more robust than modern humans: the limb bones were shorter and thicker, particularly at the distal end, and the long bones were bowed (Willoughby 2007). Ribs and collarbones were shaped differently, and the hips were wider. The wider shoulder blades show evidence of more muscle attachment than modern humans have (Stringer & Andrews 2005). In sum, both the skull and skeleton of Neanderthals show dozens of differences, clearly producing a distinct morphology, and one in which the combination of features is not shared by any modern humans. Such evidence ovewhelmingly demonstrates the falseness of Rhodes’s claim that Neanderthals were equivalent to modern humans. |  |
| Rhodes even has the brazenness to imply that the paleontologists have not done their homework properly in terms of skull dimensions, and that they “would be wise” to consider that Neanderthals have skulls that are little different from those of modern humans. This is another blatantly incorrect statement, whose audacity merits repetition of the full paragraph: “To throw one more wrench into the evolutionary hypothesis, people today have all kinds of different shapes. Just walk down a crowded street in a busy city and you will see what I mean. Skull shapes alone show all kinds of variety among modern humans. When we evaluate evidence from the past, looking at various skull discoveries, we can easily make false and subjective assumptions regarding how this skull or that skull must have been ancient ancestors to modern humans because of the way they are shaped. Researchers would do well to keep in mind the wide diversity of skull shapes among extant human beings.” (p. 89) This statement screams with irony. Rhodes apparently bases his claims that modern humans and Neanderthals have similar skull morphology on...walking down a city street! Yet he simultaneously implies that researchers have been too subjective in evaluating fossil skulls, while there is no suggestion anywhere that Rhodes has any direct experience with fossils of any kind -- such hypocrisy is astonishing. | |
| We have seen qualitative evidence for skull differences in the photo above. More quantitative differences, which Dr. Rhodes implies do not exist, can be found in Stringer (1998), Schillaci & Froehlich (2001), Harvati (2001), Ponce de Leon & Zollikofer (2001) and dozens of other statistically-based analyses of fossil skulls. These example studies decisively refute Rhodes’s inuendo of blatant subjectivity in skull analysis. For example, in Ponce de leon & Zollikofer (2001), the authors measured 73 skull traits on Neanderthal and modern human skulls to see how the two groups differed throughout development. The graph at right shows the result of relative warp analysis, an eigenanalysis technique that condenses many different measurements onto two dimensions. The black dots represent Neanderthals and the white dots represent modern humans; clearly there is no overlap. One wonders if Dr. Rhodes has ever performed any relative warp analysis. |  |
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Another example of objective quantification of skull morphology is shown in this graph from Trinkaus (2007), which presents the residuals from regressions of arc vs chord measurements of frontal and parietal bones of several different categories of modern and extinct hominids. The grey triangles enclosed in the line are the Neanderthals, while the black and grey squares represent modern humans (other symbols represent other groups). Notably, there is almost no overlap between the modern humans and the Neanderthals (one skull is an exception). Once again, the objective, quantitative analysis disproves Dr. Rhodes’ baseless claim. Many more cases could be added to these two examples, but the evidence is irrefutable: researchers’ conclusions that Neanderthal morphology is distinct from that of modern humans’ is broad-based and objective, while Rhodes’ claim that Neanderthals are simply modern humans is nothing more than wishful thinking on the part of his anti-evolution ICR sources. |
| Further disproof of the erroneous claim that Neanderthals are simply modern humans, is derived from analysis of Neanderthal mitochondrial DNA. To date, researchers have sequenced portions of the DNA of eleven Neanderthals (Krings et al. 1997, Krings et al. 1999, Ovchinnikov et al. 2000, Krings et al. 2000, Schmitz et al. 2002, Caramelli et al. 2003). In all of the published studies, the Neanderthal mtDNA sequence groups separately from that of modern humans: None of them match the sequences for typical modern humans in the sequenced regions. Indeed, the figure at right shows a classification of DNA sequences of modern humans, Neanderthals, and chimpanzees. As expected, the Neanderthal DNA sequences all cluster together, and distinctly so in comparison to the DNA of modern humans. |  |
| The table below presents actual DNA sequence differences among several of the Neanderthals that have been sampled for DNA, and the standard modern human sequence, abbreviated RCRS (top row), for Revised Cambridge Reference Sequence. For example, the leftmost position (16037) is “A” in the human sequence, while all of the Neanderthal sequences for this this position is known have a “G” instead -- this counts as one difference. If we move to position 16129 (the ninth in from the left), we see that while the standard human sequence has a “G”, all of the Neanderthals for which this position is known have an “A” -- this counts as another difference. A few positions further to the right, the standard human sequence has “CAC”, while all of the Neanderthals have “TGT”. All of the Neanderthal samples have an additional “A” base at position 16263 (labelled as 16263b). These sequence differences are summed and compared to the known average differences between human individuals and/or other taxa. In the first such study, Krings et al. (1997) found that the average number of differences between living humans was 8.0 +/- 3.1, when the average differences between living humans and the Neanderthal sequence was 25.6 +/- 2.2. The same human sequences differed by an average of 55.0 +/- 3.0 compared to chimpanzees. The subsequent mtDNA studies yielded similar patterns. Indeed, in a critical review of Neanderthal mtDNA studies, Hebsgaard et al. (2007) conclude that the initial findings of Krings et al. (1997) are largely correct, and that “Large-scale Bayesian analyses strongly support a position of the Neanderthal mtDNA sequences outside that of anatomically modern humans.” Thus, both the skeletal morphology, and the mitochondrial DNA sequences point to Neanderthals as being quite distinct from modern humans. One of the studies (Caramelli et al. 2003) reported mtDNA sequences from a Cro-Magnon fossil, which did group within the range of variation shown by modern humans. Dr. Rhodes’ statement that they are fully modern humans thus has no foundation in real evidence. |
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| Very recently, nuclear DNA work has resoundingly confirmed the patterns revealed from the mtDNA research. Two papers, published the same week (Green et al. 2006, Noonan et al. 2006) report results from two labs that used different techniques to sequence major amounts (up to one million base pairs) of Neanderthal nuclear DNA (not mtDNA). Both teams used samples from the same Neanderthal fossil, but employed distinct methodologies. Yet their findings were quite similar: Neanderthal DNA is 99.5% similar to modern human DNA, as opposed to the 98% similarity between modern humans and chimpanzees. The similarity of the results from two labs using somewhat different techniques reinforces the validity of their findings, and the nuclear DNA patterns also reinforce the findings from mtDNA. The consensus from both the nuclear and mtDNA research is shown in the above diagram from Weiss & Smith (2007): all the genetic evidence clearly indicates that Neanderthals are very similar to modern humans (far more similar than chimpanzees), yet just as clearly show that Neanderthals were a distinct lineage. Thus both the mtDNA and nuclear DNA research resoundingly disproves the erroneous claim that Neanderthals are just modern humans. |
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Anti-evolution writer Richard Milton makes the following false claim about Neanderthals: “Evidence was also found that, far from predating Cro-Magnon (modern) humans, the Neanderthals lived at the same time and possibly mixed freely with Cro-Magnons.” (p. 202) Milton is incorrect to imply that Neanderthals did not pre-date Cro-Magnons. The generally accepted time range of Neanderthals is from approximately 300,000 years ago, until about 30,000 years ago (Stringer & Andrews 2005, Willoughby 2007). Cro-Magnons did not appear in Europe until about 40,000 years ago. While there was a roughly 10,000 year overlap in time between the two, the majority of Neanderthal’s jurisdiction was prior to the appearance of Cro-Magnons. Milton is making false claims.
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