upon all humanity. Still, this point about the origin of human death provides an important corollary to understanding the fossil record: human skeletal remains, as records of human death, must date from a time after the fall. B. Paleoanthropological evidence of advanced cognition How then might we recognize or distinguish human from nonhuman in the fossil record, when all that remains is skeletal material and occasional artifacts? If the image of God entails human cognition as an outward manifestation of the image, then evidence of advanced, non-animal cognition would be evidence of true humanity. Thus, the best evidence would not be from the skeleton itself but from the artifacts and cultural remains associated with the physical remains. Specifically, we recognize six distinct categories of evidence that attest to advanced, human cognition and therefore the image of God. These six are: 1. Controlled use of fire 2. The manufacture of advanced tools 3. The crafting of unnecessary objects that attest to artistic creativity or preferences 4. Care for the wounded or elderly 5. Intentional burial of the dead 6. Complex behaviors associated with dispersal or even exploration, such as accessing cave chambers far from the cave entrance or accessing islands. We acknowledge that some of these behaviors are observed in non-human animals, albeit in more rudimentary form (e.g., Proffitt et al. 2016). Especially in ongoing studies of wild and captive chimpanzees, remarkable behaviors have been reported, including tool manufacture and use (McGrew 2010), care for other members of their immediate community (Yamamoto et al. 2009), and special treatment of the dead (Biro et al. 2010, Watts 2020). Though these behaviors are reminiscent of human behavior, we must be careful not to anthropomorphize them and therefore see humanity when there really is none. For example, care for the dead has been observed in chimpanzees, gorillas, and other mammals (Anderson et al. 2018). Primatologists claim that these behaviors blur the lines between human and ape, and while that may be true for some of the simplest tools or the crudest responses to dead conspecifics, humans exhibiting even the smallest advances over these “primitive” behaviors display the striking difference between humans and animals. Despite Louis Leakey’s famous response to Jane Goodall’s observations of chimpanzee tool use (“Now we must redefine tool, redefine man, or accept chimpanzees as human.” Surujnarain 2019), even the most advanced chimpanzee tools do not justify classifying chimpanzees as human. Further, the uniqueness of humanity is not exhibited in a simple observation of tool use or artistic craft, but in the concurrence of these criteria. Thus, while we might remain skeptical of the provenance of an isolated Oldowan flake tool, the presence of Acheulean hand axes, hearths, and the remnants of cooked fish at Gesher Benot Ya’aqov surely testifies to the presence of human activity (Zohar et al. 2022). Therefore, in our search for humanity in the hominin fossil record, we must give greater weight to fossil forms associated with multiple categories of our human evidences rather than treating any one evidence as both necessary and sufficient. We also recognize that traces of any or most of these evidences might be lacking even in some true humans. Consequently, the absence of these evidences must be treated cautiously, registered only as absence of evidence rather than evidence against a particular fossil form’s humanity. Among fossil representatives of H. sapiens, anatomical similarity to living humans and abundant evidence of advanced human culture give unanimous testimony of the humanity of even the “oldest” H. sapiens remains on the conventional timelines. For example, Clark et al. (2003) report stone tools of Levallois and Acheulean technology along with bones exhibiting cut marks found alongside the Herto cranium in the Afar Triangle of Ethiopia. These remains are dated to >200,000 years ago on the conventional timeline. Similarly, the remains at Jebel Irhoud, dated to >300,000 years ago on the conventional timeline, are also found with evidence of controlled fire, stone tools, and cooking (Richter et al. 2017). With a few exceptions, the elaborate cave art of such locations as Lascaux is associated exclusively with ancient Homo sapiens. Since few other than Loke (2022) and Rana and Ross (2015) claim that some ancient H. sapiens are not humans made in God’s image, we will not linger on their arguments here, but rather affirm that all H. sapiens are true humans. Our task at present regards resolving the status of non-sapiens hominins, all of which lie outside the range of modern human skeletal forms. Can we distinguish humans from non-human hominins using artifacts and cultural remains? We believe so, but unfortunately such cultural remains are limited to only a handful of the many named hominin taxa: Neandertals, H. erectus, H. floresiensis, and possibly H. heidelbergensis and H. naledi (Table 1). Neandertals exhibit the greatest number of these six evidences. Neandertal hearths and tools are well-documented (Douka and Spinapolice 2012, Henry 2017, Hoffecker 2018). The recent discovery of a small piece of twined fibers recovered from Abris du Maras, France, confirms the manufacture of rope by Neandertals (Hardy et al. 2020). Also, Neandertals are also known to have produced birch-tar adhesive using a carefully controlled underground distillation process (Schmidt et al. 2023), and they used birch-tar to construct composite tools (Niekus et al. 2019). Evidence of Neandertal artwork includes widespread use of ochre (Roebroeks et al. 2012), painted shells with bore holes for threading (Hoffmann et al. 2018a), carvings (Leder et al. 2021), eagle talons presumably used for adornment (Radovčić et al. 2015, Rodrίguez-Hidalgo et al. 2019), and even cave art and cave engravings (Rodríguez-Vidal et al. 2014, Hoffmann et al. 2018b, Marquet et al. 2023). Care for the wounded or elderly is more difficult to demonstrate, but numerous researchers have commented on the extensive wounds of Shanidar 1, which were unlikely to be survivable without outside assistance (Trinkaus and Zimmerman 1982). Burial in Neandertals is contested by some, but a reasonable case for intentional burial can be made for La Chapelle (where quartz, jasper, ochre and animal bones were found on and around the skeleton; Rendu et al. 2014, Wreschner 1976) and Shanidar (where it appears a flat stone was placed under a Neandertal’s head as the body was laid down; Pomeroy et al. 2020). Finally, the Mousterian tools found on the Greek island of Naxos suggests Neandertals had some form of inROSS, BRUMMEL, AND WOOD Human History: From Adam to Abraham 2023 ICC 68
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