De-Humanizing Neanderthals: A Darwinist Dog that Won’t Hunt

On this ID the Future from the vault, Casey Luskin tackles another neo-Darwinian assertion Francis Collins and Karl Giberson make in The Language of Science and Faith. In their book, Giberson and Collins capitalize on the popular notion of Neanderthals as pre-human, cavemen-like beasts in order to bolster their claims for common ancestry. But what sort of common ancestry? And do experts even agree that Neanderthals are drastically different from early homo sapiens? Luskin explores the connection between Neanderthals and humans and points to the growing evidence that Neanderthals interbred with homo sapiens, buried their dead, mastered technology, had a brain size equal to and even slightly larger than homo sapiens, and were essentially just another race of humans. Some have attempted to use Neanderthals to help bridge the enormous gulf between humans and ape-like predecessors, but it’s increasingly clear that this dog won’t hunt. For more on this issue, and the larger question of human evolution, check out the October 2021 Science Uprising video featuring Casey Luskin and Jonathan Wells.