Neanderthal Faces and the Bible
Some
Neanderthal
skulls had huge
eye sockets with thick, heavy brow ridges. Here is a picture of a
Neanderthal
skull from La Chapelle, France.
This
individual was quite old, since the teeth had
fallen out before death. Did someone mash his food so he could eat
without teeth?
According to Hesiod, the
golden race lived in the age of Kronos (time). [The pagan Greeks called the
planet Saturn: Kronos. They thought Kronos was
planet-king
during the golden era.] Hesiod wrote: "Miserable
age rested not on them; but with legs and 
arms never failing they made
merry with feasting
beyond the reach of all evils." In the next age, the Jovian (Jupiter age),
people were "like the
golden race neither in body nor
in spirit. A child was brought up at his good
mother's side an hundred years,
an utter simpleton,
playing childishly in his own home. But when they were full grown and were
come to the full
measure of their prime, they lived only a little time in sorrow."
Hesiod bewailed that he lived in
the iron age when men grow quickly old, laboring by day and perishing
by night. He believed this
degeneration would continue until children are born with gray temples.
The Sumerian King List records eight kings before the flood who reigned
for 66 sars. Each sar is 3600 years, so the eight reigned for
about 240,000 years. After the flood, only a few kings reigned for a
1,000 years. As the generations passed, the maximum duration
of a reign
gradually fell to decades. The king list from ancient Egypt does not
record thousand years reigns. Perhaps the Babylonian
scribes were weighting the value of ancient years against later
years. This would fit the way of thinking of that era - that ancient
time was the great time.
Biblical
genealogies record that Noah lived 950 years. He could have spent
decades
visiting his tenth
generation descendant, Abraham. Yet his three sons were not born until
he was 500 years
old. When Israel (Jacob) was 130
years old, he mentioned (in
Hebrew) that his days and years were short and bad compared to the days
and years of his fathers.
(Genesis 47:9) Did he mean that each generation lived fewer years? This
is unlikely, since his father lived five
years more than his grandfather. Does
he really mean
that both days and years shorten and worsen?
The
book of Job describes in detail two kinds of
dinosaurs living alongside men. Chapter fourteen is a poem about
aging during this dinosaur age.
The poem explains that man, who is born of woman, is
short-lived and full of
turmoil. Man buds like a flower and then withers; like a shadow he does
not remain. He evidently thought that
in his days men lived shorter lives than previous
generations. Yet Job gives geological markers for
the contemporary length of a life. He says that water
evaporates
from the sea
(yawn - the west) like a river becomes parched and dried up - so man
lies down and does not rise. The verb he used for the drying sea is
imperfect, showing an incomplete process. Job lived near the Jordan
that parallels the eastern
shore of the Great Sea, the Mediterranean. In 1970, the oceanographic
ship Glomar
Challenger took bottom cores
from numerous places in the deep Mediterranean. Many of the cores
contained layers of anhydrite, rock
salt and algal stomatolite alternating with layers of deep-sea oozes.
These cores
showed that the Mediterranean
dried up and flooded about fifty times. Was Job referencing the length
of a human life to the
Mediterranean drying up? Job also records life
in terms of deforming faces. He says paniym shanah (faces
continually change, transmute, deform, double) and then God takes them
away (they
die). Why did he write that the their faces continually altered
before they died?
Our
faces are the only part of our
skeleton that keeps slowly growing as we age. If we lived
for geological ages, we would have great, thick brows. If
brows
are
signs of vast age, then Neanderthal children's skulls would not look like the their
grandparents. Dr. Jack
Cuozzo took x-rays of Neanderthal skulls kept in European museums. He
wrote Buried Alive:
The Startling
Truth about Neanderthal Man where he presents x-ray evidence
that the
children of Neanderthals did not have the brows of the old ones. He
examined one
Neanderthal child-skull that had worn teeth as though it was
very old - yet it still had primary teeth. He shows that
the jaw structure indicates that they ate soft foods. Tooth enamel is
the hardest substance in the human body. It can wear down by eating
grain contaminated with stone fragments (from the grindstone) or from
clenching the teeth. Today, tooth enamel thins about 8 micrometers per
year,
mostly from acids secreted by sugar eating bacteria. How did an infant
wear down the enamel on
its baby teeth? Was this child one of those Hesiod wrote about - that
played at its mother's knee for a hundred
years?
What did Neanderthals look like? Explorers found caves with cave
art on other continents. The caves in southwestern France are
especially renown for cave art of prehistoric horses,
rhinoceroses, lions, aurochs, ibis, elephants and mastodons. The cave
explorers were impressed with the animals on the cave walls. However,
they were unaware of the self portraits scratched
into
the limestone floor. Here
are some of these engraved portraits from a
cave at La Marche, France. 
Notice that some of these
Neanderthals are young, like the girl at the upper
left. The lady next to her is
evidently older. Some are wearing hats, like the two
in
the center. Four men are bearded. Notice
that the foreheads are sometimes horizontal, convex or sloping. The
noses vary a great deal among the caricatures from the cave. The last sketch (bottom row -
right) may have the extended brows and deep eye sockets of an old
Neanderthal. Did the artist draw the mouth of this individual as though
the teeth are
missing?
Perhaps the book
of Job has the answer to the Neanderthal mystery. They were
descendants of Noah, just like Job. They lived for vast ages, in few
years, like
the ancient poets memorialized. Ovid explained the golden age
this way.
The law of Man was written in his breast:
No suppliant crowds before the judge appeared,
No court erected yet, nor cause was heard:
But all was safe, for conscience was their guard.
The mountain-trees in distant prospect please,
E're yet the pine descended to the seas:
E're sails were spread, new oceans to explore:
And happy mortals, unconcern'd for more,
Confin'd their wishes to their native shore.
No walls were yet; nor fence, nor mote, nor mound,
Nor drum was heard, nor trumpet's angry sound:
Nor swords were forg'd; but void of care and crime,
The soft creation slept away their time.
...
And Western winds immortal spring maintain'd.
How could spring
like weather seem immortal? The Western concept of time depends on the
Aristotelean assumption that
the properties of matter are not emergent, that matter is not
continuously changing itself. Westerners assume that
clocks measure linear time because they presume that atoms are
perpetual motion machines. They use this idea to contrive ways of
measuring and mathematics - most of which presumes that matter is not
always
changing relationally.
Is the Western concept of
time valid? We directly compare the atomic
light from many eras (distances) with modern
atomic light. The atomic clocks in
hundreds of billions of primordial galaxies clocked minuscule
frequencies compared to those from modern, local atoms. Every atomic
clock accelerates - compared to more ancient clocks. How can we
verify that this visible evidence is real?
When we optically compare the shapes of billions of galaxies at many
ranges, we observe how the galaxies grew. Galactic stars and gas
accelerated
outward from countless naked nuclei packed densely with tiny
stars.
Over the course of cosmic history, billions of galaxies grew into huge
growth spirals. In spiral galaxies, we visibly follow how star
orbits accelerated
outward in lanes throughout the universe's history. The Western concept of time
is visibly denied by the countless accelerating clocks, atomic and
orbital, in
hundreds of billions of galaxies at many ranges.
What would happen if
ancient days and years really were longer (slower) than later
days and
years - as old man Israel seemed to think? Today, some marine animals
and cave
creatures
live in the dark, away from the
daily sunlight, the circadian rhythms. These creatures live longer and
mature
slower than their sun bathed cousins. Are these animals an imperfect
example of Neanderthals who lived
when all circadian rhythms were slower? How do we know the rhythms were
slower? We see the past with our eyes. All clocks in the universe
visibly ticked much slower in the primordial age.
Carefully test the first principle of science, the idea that
matter
does not change itself, change relationally as it ages. This assumption
is the historic first principle of science, the basis for their
mathematics and system of measuring. Peter wrote that the last-day
false
teachers say "panta outos diamenei - all things remain the same in
being." Think about it.
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This document is under a Creative Commons License by Victor
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Last modified on December 22, 2008