Neanderthals grew like us, according to articles in Science (AAAS) News and ScienceDaily 21 September 2017, and Science vol. 357, pp. 1282-1287 doi: 10.1126/science.aan6463, 22 September 2017.
A team of scientists led by A. Rosas at Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales (MNCN)-Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) in Madrid, Spain, have studied the partial skeleton of a Neanderthal child found in the El Sidrón cave, located in Piloña, northern Spain. The skeleton was one of 13 individuals of varying age found in the cave in 1994.
There was enough of the skeleton for researchers to estimate the child was 111cm tall (3ft 8in) and weighed 26 kg (58 pound) when he died. The bones are quite robust so they have assumed it was a boy. Using microscopic examination of the teeth they estimated his age as 7.7 years. They then examined the bones for the characteristics that occur with growth and maturation at this age and compared these with bones of modern human children. There were some small differences in the skull and vertebrae compared with modern children, but otherwise the bones fitted the growth rate of a child between seven and eight years old.
The skull and brain growth were a little less mature than that of a modern child of similar age. The scientists estimated the brain size was 1,330 cubic centimetres. According to the researchers, the average adult Neanderthal brain size was 1,520 cubic centimetres, and the modern average adult is 1,195 cubic centimetres. Therefore, the child’s brain had reached 87.5% of full growth, whereas a modern child’s brain has reached 90% of its full size by the age of five. This small difference between Neanderthals and modern brain growth may just be a matter of statistics. After all, modern human brain sizes vary, so do Neanderthals, and there is no way of knowing what this child’s final brain size would have been had he lived.
Luis Ríos, one of the researchers, summed up the overall results of the study: “Applying paediatric growth assessment methods, this Neanderthal child is no different to a modern-day child”.
Editorial Comment: Here is another reminder that Neanderthals were not pre-human creatures, or another kind of human. They were people like us, and the more research that is carried out on them the more this is confirmed.
The brain size figures used by this research team remind us that a 7 year old Neanderthal child had a bigger brain than modern adults, so modern humans do NOT have the biggest brains in history, and the human race is actually going downhill, not evolving upwards.
Neanderthals actually fit well into the Biblical history of human beings from Adam to Noah via Babel to us. They were the descendants of people who left the Tower of Babel after God’s judgement on the descendants of Noah who had gathered together to make a name for themselves in defiance of God’s instructions to spread over the earth. Neanderthals are found throughout Europe and in some places in the Middle East. Therefore, they fit the Biblical distribution for some of the Japhethite clans who migrated north and west of Babel, and are therefore related to modern day Europeans, which seems confirmed by genetic studies showing some had genes for blue eyes, red hair and fair skin, just like some Europeans today.
Some museums in Europe have finally caught up with this research, and are no longer displaying models of Neanderthals as brutish looking idiots, but as normal looking people with European features, clad in properly constructed clothes, using tools and making artefacts.
Evidence New vol. 17, No. 19
11 October 2017
Creation Research Australia
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