In “Has ‘one species’ idea been put to bed?” (BBC News, 30 December, 2011),
Clive Finlayson comments on the rehabilitation of the Neanderthals in popular science culture:
more and more papers are being published that are breaking down the differences between Neanderthals and our ancestors.
Now it seems that Neanderthals beach-combed for molluscs as far back as our own ancestors did (around 150 thousand years ago along the Mediterranean coast of Spain), so a defining feature of our modernity and geographical expansion has been eroded.
Stalwarts have been left with our superior cognition, expressed via symbolism, as the last bastion that separates us from the Neanderthals. But even here recent papers suggest that Neanderthals used coloured pigments and may have even worn raptor feathers!
The historical downgrading of our Neanderthal cousins has gone well beyond the scientific.
It never was scientific. Darwinists needed an ape-man to prove their theories of human evolution, and the Neanderthals got co-opted into the Ooga! Ooga! role.
Ernst Mayr, portrayed by Finlayson as a prophet who had guessed right all alonng (only one human species), was clearly an exception.
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