Michael Heiser is Wrong About Deuteronomy 32

 

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A Single Global Human Culture 45,000 years ago?

 

A reverse hand-print from a cave in France.

The world's oldest cave painting has been found in Sulawesi Indonesia. Dating such art is very tricky, but they have determined that it was painted around 45,000 years ago, making it several thousand years earlier than similar art in Europe. And when I say similar art, I mean very similar. Click on the link above and look at the reverse hand-prints. They look like they could have been made by the same artist using the same kind of paint as that shown from the French cave painting above. 

It is hard to avoid the conclusion that some 40 odd thousand years ago there was a common human culture spread out across most of the old world which was not covered by ice sheets

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No, Neanderthals Were Not "So Much Like Us"

The term "human" has been misappropriated to mean almost any species in the loose genus "homo". There has been an ongoing effort to push the narrative that species like Neanderthals were very much like us, indeed even claims that most of us carry genes from some of them. That latter claim has, in my mind been thoroughly debunked, within the margin of error, by the brilliant work of Cambridge Zoology Professor Dr. William Amos. It hasn't IMHO gotten the attention it deserves despite his impeccable credentials because his conclusions don't fit the narrative that the science media is trying to force. 

The nature of man has profound implications for the nature of creation. Of course, naturalists push for the scenario that our kind is not all that special, just another iteration of a host of species that walk on two legs and have a big brain. Science media, which has whole-heartedly embraced philosophical naturalism, relentlessly pushes this evidence. Researchers looking to make a name for themselves know how to interpret the evidence if they want their research to get lots of attention- in a way which supports this narrative. 

Because of this a lot of really terrible, awful, and outrageously biased interpretations have been done from studies which produced data that was otherwise scientifically sound. The evidence they collected doesn't fit their conclusions, but those conclusions get amplified anyway because it fits the desired narrative. I want to give some examples, and to show that I am not cherry picking, these are from a Facebook discussion group where the other gentleman gave these links to support his belief that Neanderthals produced art and had ceremonial burial of their dead and possibly even built religious structures. All a part of the narrative that we, they, and perhaps others were overlapping groups and by sheer luck we happened to be the ones who survived in greater proportion (since we supposedly carry some of their genes).

For example, this study was cited by the other gentleman as evidence that "Neanderthals bury their dead with ritual." And that is indeed the conclusion that the researcher came to, but his evidence was lacking. He had good evidence that part of the body of a two-year old Neanderthal was buried in a pit, but poor evidence that it was a ritual burial. Mitigating against the idea that it was- the pit also appeared to contain contemporaneous "faunal and lithic remains". In other words, other animal bones and chips from tool-making were also buried in the hole.  There were no domestic animals in those days, so it wasn't a case of someone being buried with a pet, nor any indication the other remains were from a single animal. If the "lithic" remains had been tools or toys, he no doubt would have made a big deal of it. A few chips of rock left over from tool-making being swept into the same pit argues against this being a "ceremonial" burial, indeed it has the hallmarks of an unceremonial  or utilitarian one. Burying the dead to keep hyenas away or the stench down is not ceremonial!

This article talks about beads which the study they are reporting on claims were made by Neanderthals 42,000 years ago. They are suspiciously like ones which would be made by the modern humans which were first sweeping though the same area at the same time. The basis for their claim that the artifacts were produced by Neanderthals was that amongst the bones of prey animals which littered the site were those of a Neanderthal baby. I would suggest to you that this is at least equal evidence that modern humans preyed on Neanderthal babies, or that one was left when the rest were frightened away from the cave when modern humans took it over. It is quite suspicious that there is no widespread duplication of this jewelry making in other sites which are doubtlessly Neanderthal, yet something similar is found at a host of modern human sites. 

This article advances the idea that Neanderthals 176,000 years ago built structures deep within a cave that had a religious purpose. Stalactites were stacked in a large oval, with two other small piles within them. Charring indicated that the stacks had been burned, as if something flammable had been on them (torches?). The idea that the structure was built for religious purposes was pure conjecture and bad conjecture at that. Why, if Neanderthals were practicing religion in this way 176,000 years ago, do we see no sign of it in the 140,000 years afterward? Why couldn't the structure, with attendant fires, be built for security, protection, heating, and light in the cool cave? We do the same thing with ceramic stoves. Get the stone part hot and it will continue to radiate heat long after the flame has gone down, while you are sleeping. Clever engineering and so I am not saying they were dumb, I am saying it wasn't a manifestation of religion. That's a bad interpretation of the evidence, but it gets traction because it fits the narrative, not because it is a logical conclusion based on the facts. 

 Then there was this article which claimed that Neanderthals made cave art in Spain 67,000 years ago. This one was so bad that I had previously written an article just demolishing the claim in every way. If you only click on one link in this whole piece, please make it that one. 

There was some article about Neanderthal's use of eagle's talons at one site which he had up for a while too, but the gentleman seems to have pulled it. It was as contrived and speculative as the others I have discussed here. 

That leaves this claim of a seemingly human from 36,000 or so years ago whose DNA looks more Neanderthal than people today look by a considerable margin. They believe this was because he had a recent Neanderthal ancestor. However, it is conceded that this individual probably left no genetic impact in humans today- he was a dead end. Further, it notes that another study of living Europeans found no trace of Neanderthal introgression from the same time frame. That is, no other humans alive today seem to have introgression more recently than the purported introgression from around 50,000 years ago. I hope that this one is re-examined in the light of what Dr. Amos has discovered- that genetic drift or lack thereof explains many of these mysteries better than introgression. But even if it doesn't, even if this is an example of Sapiens-Neanderthal introgression, it was a dead end. 

That doesn't make the case that we are so much alike, but rather that we are different after all. There may have been a zoo of hominids walking around in the mists of time, but they were not us. I have my own speculation about that, here. 

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