Yet again today Neanderthal man makes the news in the London press, as scientists claim to have finally unravelled his unique genome.
Not surprisingly, Big N continues to be the dominant brand in the "cave man" market place, prompting many imitators.
But just who was this reclusive chap and where did he come? He clearly had a great PR agency.
In his "Evidence for Truth" trilogy, the late Victor Pearce, an eminent scientist and Christian theologian attempts to harmize numerous findings of geology and archaeology with a literal reading of the scriptures.
Following his example, might we be able to find a simple scriptural solution to the Neanderthal enigma, one that the anthropologist may have overlooked simply because they hold the word of God in such low esteem? Could the obvious solution have actually been sitting on millions of book shelves for several thousand years? Taking over the world In "The Neanderthal Enigma" James Shreeve discusses theories of the origin and identity of the Neanderthals and also their "sudden" disappearance - calling it the "greatest mystery in anthropology".
So, where did they come from, and where did they go? As Shreeve points out, a century of study has shown that Neanderthal man seems to have been "fitter" for survival than his rivals.
Not only was he barrel-chested and physically stronger, he also possessed a greater average brain capacity than modern man, some 1700 ml.
More recently, it has been shown that he also possessed the capacity for speech, and was actually very creative.
Oddly, however, Shreeve informs us, just when Neanderthal man was "all set to take over the world", he mysteriously disappeared instead.
Cave men As a Google image search will show, reconstructions of Neanderthal remains, give him very pronounced eyebrow ridges, or "superciliary ridges", resulting in brutish, fierce and primitive "cave man" appearance that seemingly belies his sophisticated abilities.
Especially when liberally embelished with a thick coating of body hair! Clearly, although studies of hundreds of Neanderthal remains have shown them to be a separate species to modern man, they must have shared a common ancestor from which Darwin would have required them both to have "evolved".
In fact, Neanderthals now appear to have been a now-extinct side branch from the same main "trunk", so that neither group was descended from the other, but in parallel, the "single origin" theory.
Mysterious disappearance So who were these mysterious people who's remains have been found in many parts of Europe, and why did they disappear? Did they, after living separately from Home Sapies for so long, alongside but on the margins, suddenly decide to intermix and intermarry and simply become absorbed, as some workers suggest? Or did something more catastrophic happen to them? And could there be a quite simple and credible scriptural explanation? The Bible does indeed offer a simple answer to the enigma, but before we look at it, let us first summarize the known facts of about Neanderthal man: i.
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He was clearly "human", despite his very fierce appearance, and was therefore very intelligent and creative with the capacity for speech.
He was also physically strong, but lived a nomadic, hunter-gatherer life apart from the mainstream of the remainder of the world's population.
Early men in the Bible If the solution to this great anthropological enigma of "early man" is to be discovered in the Bible, the obvious place to begin must be in the first few chapters of Genesis, the book of beginnings.
The first detailed scriptural accounts of the activities of "early men" are found in the fourth chapter of the book of Genesis, where we read about Cain and Able, the first sons of Adam the first man.
According to the account, Cain was a "tiller of the soil" but after he killed his brother in a fit of rage, he was cursed by God to be banished, to live as a "vagrant" and a "wanderer", living on the margins of society, a hunter gatherer perhaps rather than a farmer.
These clear similarities would seem to make Cain a prime candidate for the role of Neanderthal man.
Neanderthal parallels Furthermore, according to the account, Cain's family were obviously able to speak, clearly intelligent and creative, even acquiring the ability to become coppersmiths and blacksmiths, as well as apparently inventing and learning to play musical instruments such as "the harp and the pipe".
How long, I wonder, before we find that the Neanderthals did likewise? Of course, as they scattered abroad or became isolated they may have lost knowledge and regressed to a more primitive life-style.
Regarding the sudden disappearance of the Neanderthals, the Cain hypothesis would have them all dying out very abruptly in Noah's Flood - leaving only Noah and his wife, and their three sons and their wives as the survivors who would constitute the main branches leading to modern man, with Neanderthal man as a separate but now severed earlier side-branch.
Although, for a Bible believer, this parallel between Neanderthal man and Cain may be an interesting possibility, and even have a ring of truth to it, there is an additional important fact to be considered.
The mark on Cain According to the Genesis account, when Cain was cursed for killing his brother, he complained to God that as he led his nomadic existence, always moving on because the soil would no longer be very productive for him, people who found him would kill him, just as he killed Abel.
We are then told that God therefore put a "mark on Cain" in order that anyone meeting him should not kill him.
The nature of that mark has been a perennial mystery.
Possible explanations have ranged from his skin colour, or a horn growing from his forehead, to a Hebrew character being stamped there - or even having a dog, I fierce one I suppose, trotting along behind him wherever he went.
So just what was that mysterious "mark"? It is interesting to read a comment by the author of "In Search of Neanderthal Man", who suggests that Neanderthal man, in true evolutionary fashion, magically acquired his fierce countenance because it would "provide a signal, even a threat" to people he met, and so protect him! Verrry interesting! Can one mystery solve another? Perhaps you are now ahead of me.
Could we actually have here the answers to two major mysteries - firstly that the original Neanderthal man was the Cain of the Bible, and secondly that the mark God put on Cain was in fact Neanderthal man's characteristic fiercsome facial features? Objections An immediate objection to such a simplistic suggestion, would be that the Neaderthals apparently roamed the earth some two hundred thousand years ago, whilst a literal reading of the Bible would place Cain a mere six thousand years ago.
However, it is well known that carbon-14 dates, for example, become increasingly unreliable the further back in time the method is pushed.
And that other radiometric dating methods, based on longer half-lives also have their assumptions, complications and erroneous applications, and are therefore also "under suspicion".
Albert Einstein was famous for saying that if an experiment contradicted his theory of relativity, then the experiment was wrong.
Could it be that if anthropology contradicts the scriptures, when properly understood, then the anthropologists and their often ephemeral theories may also, once again, be wrong?