Neanderthals and Evolutionary Skulduggery
While there are honest evolutionary scientists who seek to find and promote evidence of all live evolving from a common ancestor, their militant comrades use skulduggery to promote their worldview. In this instance, the Neanderthal was fully human (as affirmed by archaeology, DNA, anthropology, and more, presented on this site several times), but some insist on portraying Neanderthals as less-than-human brutes. Things get worse, as we shall see.
Why do some folks continue to believe that Neanderthals were not quite human and a link to our evolutionary ancestry despite the evidence? They want to. It fits their paradigm, and they are adverse to admitting that the evidence refutes evolution and supports special creation, and that is anathema to them. Portrayals of Neanderthals have been based on presumptions of evolution and on chimerical visions, but not on evidence. Science isn't supposed to work that way, old son. Even in recent times using scientific evidence, the stupid brute look is promulgated.
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| Credit: Unknown, Public Domain, even used at NASA |
“So easy, a caveman could do it” is the witty slogan of a company hoping to lure customers to switch car insurance. The humorous catch to the commercial was the brutish-looking, yet endearing, Neanderthals living among us who found the slogan stereotyping them as dimwits to be “not cool” or “hurtful.” The fact that viewers could readily spot the standard view of Neanderthals shows how pervasive it is and how it dominates the popular perception.To read the rest, click on "Major Evolutionary Blunders: Neanderthals Were Subhuman in Imagination Only".
Evolutionary beliefs—not known facts about Neanderthals—forced this misleading subhumanized caricature of them. Evolutionary imagination conjured up the ape-like, hairy, club-wielding, mentally underdeveloped savage because it fit their expectations of a missing link between an ape-like ancestor and humans, as seen in Figure 1. Rather than liberating scientific research, for decades this major evolutionary blunder has sidetracked an accurate understanding of Neanderthals.