I have not read the entire thing, but
this article from New York Times Magazine suggests that science has long gotten Neanderthals wrong, and that they displayed many behavioral characteristics that were similar to their Homo sapien neighbors in Africa. Note that the last common ancestor with neanderthals was over 500,000 years ago. But anyway, they too, apparently, buried their dead and made specialized tools and jewelry. They also painted their faces or bodies, which could represent symbolic thought.
Personally, human evolution has never really threatened my faith. I have always been open to science, and I think evolutionary biology expresses the creative work of God.
However, I wonder how this understanding of Neanderthals can be consistent with the uniqueness of the human person, who is not just body but soul as well. From the time of our “first parents,” we bodily creatures also have a spiritual aspect, made in the image of God, and can relate to God. Features such as self-consciousness and symbolic thought were thought to be particular attributes of humans made in God’s image, with an immortal soul.
So how this square with Catholic teaching?
From the Ivory Tower
My apology. I only skimmed the article. Still, Nana and Flint were the best I have seen. There were definitely human thoughts.
This one sentence “Neanderthals are people, too — a separate, shorn-off branch of our family tree.” made the most sense. Given the length of female fertility, tree branches multiplied and migrated. Catholic teaching is that Adam and Eve transmitted their human nature to their descendants. This means that God provided the spiritual immortal soul at conception. If we say that the Neanderthals are true people then they would have to have a fully-complete human nature of a decomposing anatomy and an immortal soul. This would square with Catholic teaching.
The current problem centers on the question – are the Neanderthals highly sentient material beings or are they true descendants of Eve and Adam. So far I have not seen any symbolic thought process which is an action of the rational mind and should not be confused with symbolic jewelry or burial customs. A rational mind can build on gained knowledge. The knowledge gained by Neanderthals is basically survival of the species and it appears to stay there…until they disappeared.
Similar behavioral characteristics would be natural because of similar material anatomies and the common need to survive as a community. Which the Neanderthals didn’t, but the initial small group of humans did survive and their “community” grew and eventually covered the globe. That is one basic difference between rational thought and a highly sentient material being.
There are many Catholics who say that the similarity of the Neanderthals with humans is enough to call the Neanderthals “a separate, shorn-off branch of our family tree.”
Maybe they are right. That would mean that the Neanderthals had the ability to recognize the super-natural.
CCC 28 has some interesting points.
**28 **In many ways, throughout history down to the present day, men have given expression to their quest for God in their religious beliefs and behavior: in their prayers, sacrifices, rituals, meditations, and so forth. These forms of religious expression, despite the ambiguities they often bring with them, are so universal that one may well call man a
religious being:
From one ancestor [God] made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him - though indeed he is not far from each one of us. For “in him we live and move and have our being.”
Did the Neanderthals have religious beliefs or did they have simply rituals that worked for their community?
I do not think that we will know the answer to that question while we are on earth. In any case, God has always reached out to His children in His image, Genesis 1:27, regardless of what century they lived in. The natural law of right and wrong existed from the beginning. The sense that there is someone beyond the natural world has been in existence since the beginning of human history. See all the early legends. Unfortunately, there have been some awful conclusions about the super-natural. Still it is God, Who knows what is happening within a person.
Catholic teaching goes beyond the one-size-fits-all concept. Each person is personally known and loved by God. This love began with Adam and Eve.
