Sophisticated, fearless Neanderthals described in an article in AlphaGalileo and ScienceDaily 14 May 2009.
Neanderthals are usually portrayed as brutish muscle men who were unable to compete with smarter modern men in the struggle for existence. Gerrit Dusseldorp of the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research has analysed archaeological sites of Neanderthals and concluded they were highly intelligent, skilled hunters. He found that Neanderthals living in warmer, forested regions preferred solitary game, but those living in cold areas with sparser vegetation were successful in hunting herding animals, even though these can be hard to surprise and capture on open steppes. To do this they must have good communication and organisational skills. As a result they were able to hunt strong, difficult to capture game, such as rhinoceros and bison that gave high yields of meat, skins and fleeces.
As summarised by AlphaGalileo “Dusseldorp established that just as for modern humans, the environment and the availability of food determined the choice of prey and the hunting method adopted. If the circumstances allowed it, Neanderthals lived in large groups and even the most attractive and difficult to catch prey were within their reach.”
Editorial Comment: As Neanderthals had bigger brains than modern humans it is no surprise that they were sophisticated and fearless, with good communication and organisation skills. This is a yet another study that shows Neanderthals had all the faculties and abilities of Homo sapiens and there is no excuse for trying to classify Neanderthals into another species.
The only reason for trying to separate them is to reinforce the idea that modern man is merely the survivor of the evolutionary struggle for existence and is not unique. However, the evidence of their decreasing brain size really does fit Genesis, which tells us that human beings were unique creations, separate from the animals and there is only one human family who are all descendents of the first man Adam.
Evidence News 27 May 2009
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