Society's stance on neanderthals?

by Ephanyminitas 20 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

• 

  Ephanyminitas

  Here's a question: How many licks does it take to get to the center of a T--?

  Uh ... sorry.

  Here's the RIGHT question: What is the Society's official stance on Neanderthals? There was a recent article in "U.S. News & World Report" that mentioned them; and I realized, "Hey! How many licks DOES it take--" Er, I mean, "There are Neanderthal fossils aren't there? 'U.S. News' says that they only died out about 30,000 years ago, so obviously this is based on solid evidence."

  So what DOES the Society say about Neanderthals? I did a Google site-specific search for "Neanderthal" on Watchtower.org, and didn't even get one hit. I've gotten some information at Wikipedia (http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neanderthals), but I'm stumped. What's the Society's excuse for all these fossils? I suppose those wacky scientists are screwing with the facts again, huh?
• 

  Scully

  Neanderthals make very good COs, DOs, elders and ministerial servants.

  Love, Scully

  Edited by - Scully on 24 September 2002 8:59:47
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  heathen

  You have to go to the creation vs. evolution book .If I remember they just said that neanderthal was just a race of ugly people.
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  heathen

  Ok I found the copy of life how did it get here ? by evolution or by creation ? pg .95, The human family . Fred Hoyle states in his book ,Ice, "There is no evidence that neanderthal man was in anyway inferior to ourselves."They claim that the fossil skeleton found was merely deformed from disease .Which ironically sounds more believable to me than the current attempts to create an entire species from one skeleton.
• 

  seedy3

  Heathen,

  Now I may be all washed up, and full of myself here, but one skeleton? My understanding is they have now found several, and enough material to do a DNA analysis and found that Neanderthals are not even related directly to humans. They were a different spiecies of human and not even (according to evoloutionists) in our evoloutionary past.

  Tests conducted on surviving Neanderthal DNA have shown little similarity to the DNA of modern humans. See E. Trinkaus and P. Shipman, The Neanderthals (1993); J. Shreeve, The Neandertal Enigma (1995); I. Tattersall, The Last Neanderthal (1999).

  Now this is significant in that they have found that the Chimp and Humans have a simular DNA make up which is making them our closest relitives in the animal world. They are not saying that modern humans came from Chimps, but that we share a comon ancestor and are on the same branch of the Evoloutionary tree (that is if you want to accept evoloution, I am not supporting it either way just stating the scientific standpoint). I am unaware of any study that says where the Tests conducted on surviving Neanderthal DNA have put the Neanderthals, but only what is quoted above.

  Anyway just My $.02 worth

  Seedy
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  heathen

  seedy3 - I even found web sites suggesting that the neanderthal was actually the nephilim .Most of what I found does seem to say that they are finding more than what the wt said .Personally I don't believe evolution,the universe just seems too complex to me to have been an accident. I also believe that all religion are cults ,so I have this paradox thing going on .
• 

  pseudoxristos

  They claim that the fossil skeleton found was merely deformed from disease .

  Do they really claim this?

  pseudo
• 

  puzzled

  Mount Carmel

  There are several important caves on Mount Carmel near Haifa in Palestine. Tabun Cave has a long sequence of deposits of ACHEULIAN and MOUSTERIAN type; the latter levels include a skeleton of Neanderthal type. The nearby Skhul Cave has burials of eleven individuals, formerly regarded as NEANDERTHALS, but now usually regarded as closer to CROMAGNON, or hybrid or transitional. The Wad Cave has a sequence of Upper Palaeolithic deposits with important NATUFIAN levels at the top and on the plateau outside; associated with this are numerous burials .....

  Use This Search Engine To Search the Text of the
  99 Table of Contents Pages and the 250+ Archaeological Sites

  http://ancientneareast.tripod.com/Archaeological_Sites.html

  http://ancientneareast.tripod.com/Mount_Carmel.html

  and the 100+ Book and Journal Excerpts

  interesting stuff

  Edited by - puzzled on 24 September 2002 2:37:56
• 

  Simon

  Doesn't the creation book say something along the lines of:

  "... a branch of the human family that died out"

  ? This sounds like they are saying that there were other non-human, human-like creatures.
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  heathen

  I have been looking this over pretty thoroughly .What we have in print seems to be that the very first neanderthal skelelton that was found is universally accepted as having some bone disease, be it ricketts or arthritis but at first was believed to be a nuckle dragging apeman, scince then due to more finds is changed to an upright humaniod that coexisted with man and according to the discovery channel movie competed with modern man but lost out. What I gathered from the wt publication was that the human family was diverse and that some tribes became extinct for unknown reasons , cromagnum,neanderthal and homo erectus where all human beings with no relationship to monkeys .THey state that the lucy skeleton and various other apelike skeletons that the scientific community has time and again tried to claim was the missing link are no more than an extinct monky .What I did find very interesting was the part about piltdown man that was a pitiful attempt to defraud science.I do think this kind of stuff is interesting though.