I ran into the following item in an otherwise boring book. It is the
caption to a figure.
"One of the oldest amateur collections known. It consists of a fossil of
a big shell from the Secondary Period [Mesozoic-grm], 225-70 million years
ago, a coral of the same period, and a rounded piece of iron pyrite. They
were found in final Mousterian layers in the midst of flint tools and
animal bones. These curios were gathered rather far from the caves where
they paleoanthropians lived and brought home by them."~Andre Leroi
Gourhan, The Hunters of Prehistory, transl. Claire Jacobson, (New York:
Atheneum, 1989), p. 93
Arcy-Sur-Cure is SW of Paris and a look at the paleogeographic maps (Peter
Ziegler, _Geological Atlas of Western and Central Europe_, Shell Int.
Pet., 1982), maps 23-26 show that this region is covered by Tertiary not
Mesozoic strata. This would indeed require these objects be carried quite
a distance.
To me this is evidence of both an artistic and self-conscious approach to
the world. Fossils are often collected for their beauty and curiosity
value. Many geologists I work with are heavily into mineral collecting
also. They do it because the minerals are beautiful at least to them.
Apparently this Neanderthal also thought pyrite and fossils were pretty .
This is a HUMAN trait.
One of the things I have been trying to do with my researches into
anthropology is to show just how weak the answers christians have given on
these issues. You have the young-earth creationists who say that
Neanderthal is fully human (Lubenow, Bones of Contention, p. 75; Scott M.
Huse, The Collapse of Evolution, p. 101-102). They are able to say this
because their view allows the Neanderthals to be pre-diluvial people and
thus they don't have to separate Neanderthals from humanity in order to
avoid evolution.
Things are different with the old earth creationists. Wiester (The
Genesis Connection pp. 187-189) is not sure of the status of Neanderthal.
Percival Davis and Dean H. Kenyon, use the mitochondrial Eve hypothesis
(which has since been discredited) to eliminate Neanderthal from the human
race. They state:
"Design adherents, however, regard Homo erectus, as well as the other
hominids discussed in this section, as little more than apes, and point
instead to the abrupt appearance of the culture and patterns of behavior
which distiguish man from the apes." Of Pandas and People, p. 112-113
Hugh Ross, as I pointed out the other day, rejects all except anatomically
modern humans as humans. (Creation and Time, p. 141). This obviously
excludes Neanderthal.
Why do old earth creationists reject the theological humanity of
Neanderthal? Simple, they would then have to have Adam live at least
230,000 years ago and that raises the possiblity of evolution. Thus the
old earth "design" adherents [the word design means that God designed it
the way they say He designed it and not another way] must reject any and
all evidence of human-like behavior or their view is seriously weakened.
Thus they are placed in the position of rejecting all anthropological
observations while the YEC's reject all geological observations. To me,
rejection of any observation is wrong. There MUST be a synthesis which
allows the data of both anthropology and geology to be accepted. That is
what I am offering (obviously rather futilely).
But is my view so out of line with observation that it must be rejected
out of hand? I say no. Ross, Davis and Kenyon and Wiester are trying to
tell us that a being who created a flute
(http://www.zrc-sazu.si/www/iza/piscal.html ), who collected fossils, who
made jewelry (~Victor Barnouw, An Introduction to Anthropology: Physical
Antrhopology and Archaeology, Vol. 1, (Homewood,Illinois: The Dorsey
Press, 1982) p. 156), and buried his dead, is not human at all. This,
frankly, seems absurd. Views like theirs, which do not match observation,
should be rejected.
My view is the only one which requires the human-like activities of Homo
erectus and Neanderthal (without ignoring geology as the YECs do) and is
able to absorb any future discoveries of like kind.
glenn
Foundation,Fall and Flood
http://members.gnn.com/GRMorton/dmd.htm