in the creationist context. While the existence of extinct creatures that possessed a mix of traits seen in today’s humans and apes could be seen as very favorable for human evolution, we have seen a wide range of evidence that support classifying nearly all taxa as either ape or human. These fossils definitely broaden our understanding of what human anatomy might entail, just as the ape fossils display surprising features for bipedal locomotion, but our survey left only one truly uncertain taxon, Au. sediba. Since the creationist consensus is currently against Au. sediba being human, even that taxon can hardly be considered proof of evolutionarily intermediate “ape-men.” Instead, the fossil evidence, as it exists now, seems to comport well with the biblical description of a special creation of humans apart from apes. IV. A CREATION MODEL Categorizing hominin fossils as human or ape is both the subject of much study and debate among creationists but also only the beginning of our understanding of the physical record of humanity. Many important questions remain. When did these people live? How are they related to more well-known biblical people and events, such as Noah, the Flood, the Tower of Babel, or Abraham? How do these paleoanthropological remains relate to putatively later archaeological remains that are exclusively associated with H. sapiens? Having addressed the very preliminary question of which fossils are likely human, we must now turn to the more important question of what these human fossils actually mean for our understanding of human history. A. The Post-Flood Context of Human Fossils We begin with the question of when these fossil species lived and died, and to answer that, we must remind our readers that as youngage creationists, we believe that conventional dating methods that reveal tens of thousands or millions of years are interpreted incorrectly as absolute dates. For carbon dating, readers may consult the work of Brown (1994) or Young (1994), who provide what may be a plausible explanation for why carbon dates are so much older than they should be. Other radiometric methods are still under investigation, and none of the dating methods have a widely accepted method of recalibrating to a creationist timescale. Even though these dating methods are crucial to understanding the history of humanity, we cannot give a full account of all of them and instead refer the reader to other creationist work (Snelling 2009; Vardiman et al. 2000; Vardiman et al. 2005). Instead, we will place hominin fossils into a more qualitative timeline relative to the Flood and the Fall. Potential periods would then be pre-Flood or post-Flood, both of which would be post-Fall. We first note that the consequence of the Fall was human death, and since all human fossils are the remains of dead people, they must therefore be post-Fall. Since Eve is described as the mother of all living (Gen 3:20), we do not accept the existence of pre-Adamite people. We also note evidence of interpersonal violence in some fossils, particularly in the evidence for murder at SH and Gran Dolina. At least one skull from SH shows evidence of two deliberate, lethal strikes to the cranium by a hand axe (Sala et al. 2015). The skull, along with remains from numerous other H. heidelbergensis (or Neandertal; Meyer et al. 2016), are deposited together in a pit, perhaps placed there en masse, along with a single quartzite hand axe dubbed “Excalibur.” At Gran Dolina, a number of human remains from several individuals attributed to H. antecessor exhibit cut marks on the bones as well as intentional breakage patterns, implying cannibalism (Fernández-Jalvo et al. 1999). Neandertal remains also frequently exhibit cut marks on their bones, but evidence of burning or tooth marks on the bones are nearly absent (Wragg Sykes 2020), suggesting that the cut marks might be related to ritual excarnation or dismemberment rather than cannibalism (e.g., see Weiss-Krejci 2005). Regardless of the Neandertal situation, the grim findings at SH and Gran Dolina do suggest intense levels of interpersonal violence among hominins that qualify as human in our analysis. Such violence is another sign of their fallen human nature. How then do these humans relate to the Flood? Creationists have long considered these remains to be entirely post-Flood for a variety of reasons (e.g., Nelson 1948). First, they appear only at the very top of the fossil record in the most recent sedimentary deposits. These deposits tend to be very localized, sometimes to a single site, while Flood-deposited sediments are considerably larger in extent, often covering large swaths of a continent. Many hominin sites like Gesher Benot Ya’aqov (Alperson-Afil et al. 2007, Goren-Inbar et al. 2002, Zohar et al. 2022), Amud Cave (Zeigen et al. 2019), or Bruniquel Cave (Jaubert et al. 2016) also exhibit occupation features, such as hearths, stone tool manufacturing sites, animal bone deposits, deliberate stone arrangements, etc., all of which indicate that traces of their occupation were preserved largely intact. Such ephemeral remains would not survive the cataclysm of a global Flood. These general considerations strongly suggest that all hominin remains are post-Flood. We can make an even stronger argument in the case of Neandertals, based on the geology of caves in which Neandertal remains are frequently found. The deposition of material within a cave context must necessarily follow a sequence of events that begins with deposition of carbonate sediment and is followed by lithification, cave formation via dissolution, and exposure at the surface. Only then can occupation within the cave commence, with materials eventually placed and later preserved by cave sediments. It does not matter how long or at what time these processes took place; they must always go in the same order. Based on published reports, we compiled a list of 104 Neandertal sites, which contain either physical remains of Neandertals or Mousterian lithics produced by Neandertals (Supplementary Appendix). The sites are overwhelmingly caves (71 sites, 68%), rock shelters (17 sites, 16%), or sinkholes (1 site, 1%). Of these 89 cave or cave-like sites, 17 (19%) are cut into Paleozoic rock, 58 (65%) into Mesozoic rock, and 14 (15%) into Cenozoic rock. The majority of these caves occur in Cretaceous (26 sites, 29%) or Jurassic (29 sites, 32%) limestone. Because creationist geologists widely accept Paleozoic and Mesozoic strata as Flood-deposited, we may reasonably infer that the Neandertal remains found in caves cut into Mesozoic and Paleozoic rock (75 of 104 sites, 72%) must have been placed there after the Flood. The timing of Cenozoic deposits may be Flood or post-Flood, but in either case the same sequence of events for cave formation must occur. One might argue that the Neandertal bodies could have washed into the caves during the later stages of the Flood, but that would not account for the evidence of in situ ROSS, BRUMMEL, AND WOOD Human History: From Adam to Abraham 2023 ICC 75
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTM4ODY=