North Sea Neanderthal found according to BBC News 15 June 2009. Fishermen off the coast of the Netherlands have dredged up a piece of a Neanderthal skull from the bottom of the North Sea. The fossil was found in 2001 amongst debris that included animal remains and artefacts. It has been studied by anthropologists led by Jean-Jacques Hublin, from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, and has been identified as part of the skull frontal bone with the distinctive eyebrow ridge seen in other Neanderthal specimens. Chemical analysis indicates the Neanderthal lived on a diet with high meat content. Neanderthals are known to be “resourceful, physically powerful hunter-gatherers” and large areas of what is now the bottom of the North Sea were once dry land where large herds of mammals such as horses, reindeer, woolly rhino and mammoth, roamed a rich habitat of river floodplains, valleys and lakesides.
According to the BBC article: “For most of the last half million years, sea levels were substantially lower than they are today.” Mammoth fossils were collected off the coast of Norfolk and Suffolk, England, 150 years ago and over the years fishing trawlers have brought in many animal bones, but this is the first known human fossil. According to Professor Hublin this was the extreme edge of the Neanderthals’ northern range. He commented: “What we have here is a marginal population, probably with low numbers of people. It’s quite fascinating to see that these people were able to cope with the environment and be so successful in an ecological niche which was not the initial niche for humans.”
Editorial Comment: In spite of all attempts to classify Neanderthals as a separate species, all studies indicate they were human beings who were suffering the effects of a poor diet and a harsh climate. The harsh climate of the ice ages made life difficult, but it also facilitated the movement of people away from the Tower of Babel on the Plain of Shinar near the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in what is now Iraq. Soon after Babel (Genesis 11) there are references to ice forming on the earth (e.g. Job 38:29). As the ice built up on the land the sea levels dropped to a point where access to much of the world was feasible. Land areas that are now separated were joined, and the scattered people could migrate far and wide. The first settlers and animals walked to England, Alaska, etc. Following the Ice Age and the first global warming event, sea levels again rose and the scattered people were now separated. Hublin is right about one thing; the bottom of the North Sea was not the initial niche of human beings. These remains found are from the people who were the descendents of those who left the Tower of Babel. (Ref. anthropology, archaeology, races)
Evidence News 8 July 2009