9. Neanderthal ABGs

When taking Allometric Bone Growth (ABG) into consideration, different age determinations can be drawn upon examining the Neanderthal bones. ABG, occurring only in the jaw, front facial bones, and the back of the head, is the continuous outward bone growth during the specimen’s entire lifetime giving them a protruding chin and forehead and a large cranium. Evolutionary scientists believe Neanderthals to be extinct evolutionary offshoots to mankind, but creation scientists have discovered them to be the long living forefathers from the days of Noah and before. We will be comparing three different Neanderthals: Le Moustier (age 17), Chapelle (age 43), and Ferrassie (age 43). These comparisons will be between the age that evolutionists say that they are and the ABG ages when you compare jaw angle and facial growth. Growth rates will be based upon the average ABG that a modern human encounters which is about 5% every thirty years. Chimpanzees and apes encounter a growth rate that is twice that of humans, so their ABG is 2X or two times.

Le Moustier

When this fossil was discovered in France, a lot of “doctoring” went into effect to make it the great neo-darwinian claim that it is. This skull is one of the many constructed composites. A composite is when you find pieces of the skull, and then you put in plastic to cover for the pieces that you do not have. The critical problem with this is that the discoverer has a license to get truly creative / deceptive in putting together his finding. One of the media claims when this fossil was originally presented is that it has a “mallocluded jaw” meaning that the upper and lower jaw do not match. The best way to hide a lie is to throw it out there for everyone to see and hide it with your thesaurus. In reality, when the discoverer was putting the jaw bone back onto the skull, he moved it 30 millimeters (little over an inch) forward so that it would have a more ape-like appearance. This fossil also had a false bone wedged into a fissure at the base of the skull to hide the slower growth rate and to make it appear that the neck and the head slumped forward in a more caveman/ape-man like fashion. Now that we are past the fiction, let’s look at the facts. Evolutionists claim that Le Moustier was 17 years of age. With a 110 degree jawbone, his ABG would have to be twice that of a regular person. When taking into account for ABG, his age is corrected to be 27 years old. This correction may be small, but with other fossils, the results are much bigger.

La Chapelle

La Chapelle-aux-Saints is another French Neanderthal claimed to be 43 years old at the time of his death. Upon closer examination, in order for him to get a jaw angle of 105 by the age of 43, his jaw would have to grow at 7 times the normal rate. Upon making adjustments for normal ABG, his age is adjusted to be about 192 years old. When looking at facial growth, his face would have to grow at 11 times the normal rate. When taking into account for normal ABG, the recalculations come to a ripe old age of 278 years old. A large difference exists between the study of the jaw angle and facial growth. This is partly due to the fact that this specimen’s bone growth was impacted by arthritis and a host of other diseases due to a poor diet in his effort to survive a post-Flood ice age.

Ferrassie

This Neanderthal is also said to be 43 years old at the time of his death. His jaw bone reads an age of 231 and his facial growth reads to be 324 years old. Measuring ABG to determine death is not an exact science, but it is clearly showing that this person could not achieve this kind of bone growth within 43 years. Under circumstances of normal growth, this is evidence of him living to be centuries old.

In Conclusion

In an article from the Sun News, 10/20/2007, they remarked that scientists recently believe that Neanderthals had the “gift for gab.” After massive efforts to dehumanize them as ape-men and evolutionary offshoots, scientists are starting to realize that there is more to them. At their grave sites, evidence for religious burials has been discovered such as powders that have been sprinkled upon the body, flower remains, and various tools. Some of these tools have been medical in nature. All of this points to a much more advanced civilization than Chewbacca with a loin cloth carrying a club. Some of the burial sites have the person with arms folded in a resting position. A reconstruction of what they would look like today conducted by those in the disciplines of Reconstructive Forensics and Anatomy show that a modern day Neanderthal would look like a typical stocky person of today.

Let’s end with a quote from an Answers In Genesis article “Neanderthals: Our Worthy Ancestors Part II” by Marvin Lubenow:

“The Indians of Tierra del Fuego, at the extreme southern tip of South America, were hunter-gatherers. They were considered to be among the most primitive people on earth. Ashley Montagu (Princeton University) writes that these Indians:

[They] . . . live in perhaps the worst climate in the world, a climate of bitter cold, snow, and sleet, and heavy rains a great deal of the time, yet they usually remain entirely naked. During extremely cold weather they may wear a loose cape of fur and rub their bodies with grease.³⁴

When Charles Darwin went on his famous around-the-world voyage, he visited the Fuegians. In his fascinating work, The Voyage of the Beagle, Darwin describes Fuegian life and culture.³⁵ It is difficult to compare people living in historic times with people we know only from fossils and cultural remains. Nevertheless, a strong case could be made that the cultural inventory of the Fuegians was less complex and extensive than was the cultural inventory of the Neandertals. Yet, no one considered the Fuegians to be less than fully human, except Darwin, who believed that they were too primitive (sub-human) to be evangelized. Darwin was proven wrong by missionaries who did evangelize them. In fairness to Darwin, he later admitted his mistake regarding the spiritual potential of the Fuegians.

One of the most brutal episodes in human history was the genocide of the full-blooded Tasmanians about a century ago. The genocide was allowed because evolutionists claimed that the Tasmanians were not fully human. The reason their full humanity was doubted was because evolutionists applied the false test of culture. Jared Diamond (University of California, Los Angeles) states in his article “Ten Thousand Years of Solitude” that any anthropologist would describe the Tasmanians as “the most primitive people still alive in recent centuries.”³⁷ Of all of the people in the world, they were considered among the least technologically advanced. Hence, they were considered less evolved than other people.

Like the Indians of Tierra del Fuego, the cultural inventory of the Tasmanians, as described by Diamond, was less complex and extensive than was the cultural inventory of the Neandertals. Yet, the Tasmanians proved that they were fully human. How did they prove it? They passed the fertility test. Although all full-blooded Tasmanians are gone, there are many Tasmanians of mixed blood today because in those early days many Caucasian men married Tasmanian women.”

8. Great Grandpa Neanderthal

Many scientists boast that their perceptions of life and the universe are based solely on scientific evidence and draw nothing on faith. The chief reason that this cannot be true is based mostly upon the fact that evolutionary and Creation scientists study the exact same bones, fossils, and evidence, yet they draw completely different conclusions. The Creationist studies from the worldview that the Bible is the defining, authoritative Word of God, and the evolutionist has his own personal genesis story that is being written and re-written daily based upon improvable scientific claims. The core beliefs of a human being define their interpretation of the evidence. One steep contrast involves the question, “Who is Neanderthal Man?”

The Evolutionary Perception:

Neanderthals are easily identified by their protruding jaw, nose, and facial bones. Evolutionists believe that Neanderthal Man lived 30,000 to 200,000 years ago which should have yielded a huge fossil record with thousands of generations, but it did not. It is believed that mankind is not a direct descendant of Neanderthal Man, but rather, Neanderthal Man is an offshoot from the evolutionary tree that eventually died out and became extinct. Because of this and their evolutionary timeline, they do not believe that modern day humans and Neanderthals lived at the same time, intermixed, nor intermarried. They believed he lived a very primitive life inside of caves and had a part in some of the cave drawings. They believe that Neanderthals had culture and religious beliefs since they did ceremoniously bury their dead and made musical instruments. They believe that he had rudimentary speech and was not very intelligent despite his large cranial size. Due to the believed harsh lifestyle he faced, the remains dated him to be in his forties at the time of his death. Since his children look no different from our children, they believe that within that forty year lifespan, his facial bones underwent “precocious bone growth” in order for him to get the protruding brow, facial bones, and jaw. They do find it odd how so often the teeth of a Neanderthal will appear to be much younger than the skull it is resting in? For instance, the skull of a child will appear to be of a six year old, while the examination of the teeth shows someone to be three years old. This leads to the belief that Neanderthals give birth to large children and therefore the women must have very large pelvic bones to birth a child that is practically the size of a toddler.

The Creationists Perception:

When a person reaches maturity, they reach a stopping point as far as bone growth. However, this is not true for some of the bones in the human head. This is known as Allometric Bone Growth (ABG). Every thirty years, the human facial bones and the back of the human head is known to have grown outward by 5% or more. Throughout your lifetime, everything from your chin to your brow is growing outward and the back of your skull which contributes to your cranial capacity grows out as well. The same is also true in apes and monkeys, but their growth rate is twice the rate of ours or more. In other words, ape-babies have flat faces much like human-babies, but when apes grow up, their face grows outward faster giving them a jaw and a face that juts out. When taking this into consideration along with the incredibly long lifetimes of hundreds of years or more as recorded in the Bible, a completely different conclusion can be drawn about who Neanderthal Man really is. Before the Fall, mankind could have lived forever and never known death by living in obedience to God and enjoying the fruits of His presence. Since the fall, mankind has been in a downward spiral, and our days have been numbered to not normally exceed 120 years. This numbering of 120 years (which coincides with the amount of time that human cells can continuously replace themselves under ideal conditions) did not take hold right away with Adam, but it took place in a gradual state of decay over many generations. So, when we look at a Neanderthal skull, the question should be, “Is this what I would look like if I lived to be as old as Adam, Methuselah, or Noah?” So Neanderthal is not a missing link or an evolutionary offshoot, but he is no different from a modern day human being who had the privilege to live to a very old age. This explains why in some cases, Neanderthals and Modern Day Humans share the same burial grounds. In fact on Mount Carmel in Israel, there have been modern human remains buried within deeper levels of the mountain than the Neanderthal remains which gives credit to the belief that the Neanderthal was just a human who outlived those who came after him.

It is also believed that the long living humans matured at a slower rate. In the case of the six year old child with a three year old’s equivalent of teeth, the teeth came in later in life than what they do now. Children today have teeth appearing months before their first birthday, but a study based upon dental charts from the 3^rd British Museum on children under the age of 12 months during the years of 1759 to 1859 showed that none of them had teeth eruptions. Another dental record study compared dental charts from the years 1883, 1939, and 1963, and they all showed that humans matured at a faster rate today than they did in the past. Young girls would reach their first menstruation at age 16 in the year 1860, yet over the decades, the average menstruation age changed to 14 in the 1920s, and it continuously becomes younger today. Often times the x-rayed remains of Royal Egyptian Mummies appear to be much younger than their historically recorded age. In contrast, Neanderthal Man is someone who lived a long life with a very slow maturity rate which was common in the days of the early portion of Genesis.

When you take into account the differences in facial features, genetics, and bone structure of all of the different races of mankind: Caucasian, African, Oriental, etc. and compare them, you will see a greater difference between them than you will between the average modern man and a Neanderthal. Forensic efforts from Japan have reconstructed a face from skull remains and revealed how they do indeed appear to be like the average person. Creationists believe that he is one of us blessed with a long life and a very slow maturity rate. His large cranium embodies a brain that has lifetimes of experience. It is believed that he had very good manual dexterity because some of them had carvings on their teeth, whether this was a tattoo or an early form of dental work is unknown, but it does show the use of hands and tools completing very precise tasks. It is also known that among their cave paintings, there was one with a mammoth and a dinosaur fighting each other. This part of the cave was closed to public viewing in that it upset the evolutionary model.

In Conclusion:

Theoretical scientific claims do not come from their evidence alone. Scientists have an idea or a theory, and they are setting out in hopes to prove it. Evolutionists have their own “genesis” story that depends upon a vast amount of time and chaotic, random events coming together to create a higher order. They start out with a created paradigm that has been accredited by the scientific community. Any hopes in adding to that “established” paradigm gives them fame, fortune, and a remembrance that could go beyond their death. They look to the grave to find the meaning of life and all they find is a small, limited fossil record made up of a few bone fragments often proclaiming, “We'll just have to dig more and try to find better fossils.” When one of their hoaxes get exposed, they declare, "I just wanted to show what it would have looked like.” It is creative story telling at its most deceptive, yet passed off as science. Yet, they miss the point that the Tomb is Empty.

Creationists believe that Jesus is the Creator and that He is God. If Moses was wrong about something in Genesis, then Jesus would have been running around correcting him rather than quoting him all of the time. All of the preconceived notions about life and the universe for a Creationist comes from the Bible. With the Bible defining their core beliefs and their world view, they can look at the Neanderthal evidence and see how it coincides with basic medical knowledge of bone growth and come up with something so profound.

Next time, we will examine some of the history of the different Neanderthal findings and compare the number of birthdays that evolutionists say they had with what Creationists have to say when they take into account for Allometrical Bone Growth. This is probably the only case when you would have a Creationist arguing for an older age.