It gets worse.
Let me preface this with I’m an agnostic.
Neanderthals kept the same tool kit for 100,000 years. That’s an extraordinarily stable culture, one lacking malcontents eager to tear down the old.
Neanderthals had a spiritual life, graves with ocher to give the dead more of a lifelike pinkish color, grave goods, and even burials with flowers.
The modern peoples with the highest IQs also have the highest percentages of residual Neanderthal DNA. (China/the Orient and to a slightly lesser degree Europeans).
Those peoples invented writing and technological civilization.
Peoples in the new world could pile stone on stone, barely managed to domesticate a few food crops, never used the wheel, and spent much of their time cutting out each others’ still beating hearts, Africa much the same, Australia not even crops, Tasmania, not even fire! (I’m glossing over cyclopean stone structures, which according to the natives in areas with them predate their arrival).
We, even those of us with a few percent of Neanderthal DNA, are quadruped apes poorly adapted to walking upright.
Neanderthals with their straight spines and balanced heads were purpose built to walk upright.
Built from scratch.
By who or what?
For what purpose?
And in whose image, eh?
Let me preface this with I’m a Christian that has no ability to comprehend Gods time, ability or methods.
I believe man has been here for a very long time with multiple peaks and valleys. If Neanderthals are needed for our creation then so be it. To me that is more fascinating to think about god planning our genetic base over long period of time. I believe we were seeded over time as his creation.
Having said that it’s obvious there were other hominids running around. I don’t think there is evidence for a sudden replacement. Seems like more of a blending. Question is where did Neanderthal and homo sapians come from. What was before. We were left clues, a big brain, a desire to learn, and the innate passion to ask how and why.
I wish politics and academic prestige would take a back seat to truth and honest discussions.
Thanks for the reply. Feel free to ping me to anything in this topic area. I may be ignorant but it is fascinating.