If Neanderthals lived 35,000 years ago, when did God create man?

Question

I'm kinda confused about the whole timeline of evolution/creation.
How did it all come together if God created man in His image, certainly He didn't create Neanderthal's to rule the earth.

Answer 1

As a young earth creationist (one who believes in the universe and man being created about 6,000 yrs) I will give you my perspective. Anthropologists agree that Neanderthals and "modern Man" coexisted. They are both "modern men" as far as that goes. There is no written recorded history beyond about 6,000 yrs back and carbon dating is universally accepted to not date any life past 10,000 yrs, so there is really no way for certain to say that any life form is older than those dates. What happens is that many scientists are really guessing according to what they want to believe as far as dates like 35,000 yrs back when it comes to how old life is.

From a Biblical perspective, God made man fully developed and with full reasoning powers, probably greater than man has now since man was created perfect untill he sinned and lost that perfection. There is evidence that there was a golden age in various civilizations about 4,000 yrs back where great building structures and knowledge of advanced mathematics and astronomy and other areas of learning florished. Great empires were in Africa, the Middle East and the Far East among others.
Neanderthals are known to have a larger skull size and therefore a larger brian capacity than current men. This goes against Darwinian evolutuion but fits in with the Bible history of mankind.
An educated guess is that the Neanderthals were the last of what the Bible refers as "ancients" or "from ancient times" refering to the time before the world flood in Noah's time (about 4,500 yrs ago). After the Flood the earth was repopulated and mankind scattered around the world often living in isolated pockets of societies giving us various tribes and peoples up until now beside the modern nations. From the Bible chonology of man's time on earth, it gives a timeline of around 6,000 yrs back to the creation of Adam and Eve. You can see some of my past postings on this and similar subjects by clicking on my yahoo answers name and reviewng my past answers.

Answer 2

It states in the Bible that God created Adam and Eve of his own image. So is it possible that earlier forms of man existed thru natural evolution and that God created a higher form of mankind? On his image?Just a question to provoke thought. Could it be possible that both theories are true? It would explain why the missing link has never been found. It does state in the Bible that there was giants on the land before Adam. Could they have been earlier forms of Human form? Evolution has a lot of holes unlike "Well Traveled" would have you believe. Such as writing and communication skills have now been found to go back much earlier than science thought. The use of metal tools goes back much farther than originally thought. Science has also proven that most of North Africa and the Middle East was at one time destroyed by a major flood. Maybe the answer is in between the accepted norms of today. Science is full of holes where "educated guesses" and the Bible does not attempt to explain everything as it is not a science book. It is a history book (the old testament) and a promise of a better life and prophesy (new testament)

Answer 3

As a geologist I have to correct the young earth creation gentlemans answer. Carbon dating is only one of many radiometric methods that are used to date things, eg. there is uranium-lead, potassium-argon, argon-argon, etc etc. You can get an idea by looking up "radiometric dating" on wikipedia. All of these methods use isotopes with different half-lives, hence different logarithmic decay curves. And, when they are used as they are supposed to be used, they converge on the same ages, a mathematical impossibility if there were any problems with the experimentally determined decay rates. So the supposition that scientists just guess the ages of things is completely wrong.

Anyway, as people have said Neanderthals were our cousins (and brain size doesn't correspond with intelligence btw) but there were many other hominid species (eg. "human evolution" on wikipedia), some of which probably were our ancestors.

I don't personally believe that God created man in His image, but many do, and could He not have done so through evolution?

Answer 4

You've just opened up a can of worms. If you believe there is a "God" who created man, then that's your religious belief. However, there is scientific evidence of early human fossils and archaeological remains that uncovers our past. Humans evolved from a common ancestor millions of years ago. The oldest early human fossils were discovered in Africa - much of human evolution happened on that continent. Evolution occurred over millions of years. Neanderthals inhabited Europe and Asia 200,000 to 30,000 years ago during the late Pleistocene era. You should read up on homo neanderthalensis. Very interesting! Don't be confused.

Answer 5

God didn't create man, man created religion. In fact religion predates modern man. Furthermore, neanderthals had a form of religion which is indicated in the archaeological record in the form of deliberate burials with flowers, red ocher, shells, stone tools, and other gifts indicating they had some idea or belief in an after life. One thing that's important to note is modern humans did not evolve from neanderthals we have completely different DNA and yes DNA has been extracted from neanderthal bones. That's why neanderthals are placed on a separate branch of the evolutionary tree of the genus Homo. In addition, early modern man had religion before the time of god. There is too much physical evidence indicating very early forms of religion to list here. If you would like to pursue this matter further, any physical anthropology textbook would do the job. I could even loan you one.

Answer 6

Neandertals lived from about 150,000 to 35,000 years ago. Humans have existed (at least in the archaic form) for 200,000 years. Whether religion pre-dates H. sapiens is still being debated. According to Brézville-Gourhan, Neandertals had burials involving flowers. Also, whether humans and Neandertals were the same species is still being debated; most people today believe that they were not.
Also, Neandertals do not have their complete DNA left; any comparisons between human and Neandertal genetics is via mtDNA (mitochondrial DNA).
As for the evolution/creation bit, some people practice deist evolution, some practice material evolution, and some are strict creationists. If studying Neandertals has given you a headache from trying to find a correlation between religion and science, then I'd suggest believing in both. It is possible to be a faithful Christian and to believe in evolution--just don't think that faith and science overlap.

Answer 7

Neanderthals ruled most of Europe for 170,000 years, before dying out for as yet conjectural reasons - most likely inability to compete for food as efficiently. Modern Man has been around for 130,000 years, (overlapping with them for about 100,000 years). So, we have got about 40,000 years prove we are better at survival than Nenderthals.

It's a long time, isn't it?

Answer 8

Your question takes facts not admitted into evidence. Like the existence of god. Science has done a solid job establishing the time line of the Neanderthals. People who disagree with this do so blindly with no logic to back up arguments. So their existence in that time frame is an idea that has been submitted. But the question is the existence of god. If you don't have the bible, what proof do you have of gods existence?
B

Answer 9

That's kind of confusing, isn't it? Let's dismiss that God created man and go with evolution. The arguments hold together a lot better.

Answer 10

You're right to be confused if you're considering "creationism." You're in a science category here, so here's the science:

There is no evidence of any kind that "god" created humans, especially not 6,000-odd years ago as in the bible myth.
There is absolutely verifiable evidence that modern humans evolved from earlier humanoid forms, related to chimpanzees and other primates, around 100,000 years ago. That humanoids very similar to us, but not exactly, have been around for over 3 million years. That neanderthals were a sort of "evolutionary dead end" that didn't evolve into modern humans -- they either died off or cross-bred with more modern humans until the unique neanderthals disappeared (there is still debate on what happened to them).

God myths are not science. If you want to know the natural, evidence-backed explanations for the history of humans and our planet, study science and drop the bible. That doesn't mean you can't believe in god -- just don't confuse religion and science. The bible is not scientific source material.
Peace.

Answer 11

I personally don't believe that men evolved from neanderthalls. I personally believe humans and neanderthalls were two different species entirely, but how would I know, right? I'm just a teenager. I don't really understand how humans came onto the scene either. I mean, where did the dinosaurs fit in?