Neanderthals

Neanderthals interbred with modern humans and left descendants in every living population. They buried their dead and built inside caves. Reading them as fully human is well supported. Their dates are not answered: Bruniquel at 176,500 years and a Y-chromosome clock at 370,000 have no young-earth reply, and the one young-earth radiocarbon curve puts the last Neanderthals before Babel.

By AI (writing model not recorded); strengthening review by Claude Opus 5.5, thinking level unavailable Draft:  September 2026

"Uranium-series dating of stalagmite regrowths on the structures and on burnt bone, combined with the dating of stalagmite tips in the structures, give a reliable and replicated age of 176.5 thousand years (±2.1 thousand years)" — Jacques Jaubert and colleagues, on the Bruniquel Cave constructions, 20161

"There are many other possible scenarios, but realistic modeling has yet to be performed." — Robert Carter, Creation Ministries International, 20102

Summary

Neanderthals are known from hundreds of fossils across Europe and western Asia.  This article asks two questions.  Were they people?  And when did they live?  The evidence answers them differently, and a young-earth reader needs both answers.  Denisovans and the interbreeding with modern humans have their own articles.

They were people.

  1. They interbred with modern humans, and the children were fertile. Green and colleagues found in 2010 that 1 to 4 percent of the genome of people outside Africa came from Neanderthals.3 Prüfer refined that to 1.8 to 2.6 percent in 2017.4 Chen found 17 megabases of Neanderthal sequence in the average African, and concluded that Neanderthal DNA survives "in every modern human population studied to date."5 Descendants alive today are the biological test of a fertile cross, and it is passed. Five ancient people whose family trees show a cross within about seven generations have been sequenced: a Neanderthal-Denisovan daughter, the Oase 1 man in Romania, and three early modern humans at Bacho Kiro in Bulgaria.678 Archaic Admixture sets out these figures and the X-chromosome signal that cuts the other way, and Denisovans the girl with a Neanderthal mother and a Denisovan father.
  2. The protein-coding gap is small when counted. Green found 78 fixed amino-acid changes separating all living humans from the Neanderthal state.3 Prüfer's high-coverage Altai genome gave 96, in 87 proteins.9
  3. They buried their dead, built deep inside caves and wore ornaments. A 39 cm pit cut into marl at La Chapelle-aux-Saints,10 a cut feature with compacted floor at Shanidar,11 stalagmite rings with traces of fire 336 metres inside Bruniquel Cave,1 eagle talons worked into jewellery at Krapina before modern humans reached Europe,12 and late ornaments that the excavators of Bacho Kiro call "notably similar" to the pendants of the first modern humans there.13

The dates are the problem, and the creationist answers do not reach them.

  1. Bruniquel is dated to 176,500 ± 2,100 years by three independent uranium-series targets.1 That is about 39 times the whole period since a Flood 4,500 years ago. No rebuttal exists in print, creationist or otherwise.
  2. The Neanderthal Y chromosome sits outside all living men's Y chromosomes, with a common ancestor at about 370,000 years.14 Mendez put it at 588,000 in 2016;15 Petr cut it in 2020 with 57 times as much sequence, and creationist writing still quotes the old figure.14 The mitochondrial DNA does the same on the maternal side. Those are two clocks on two molecules with different inheritance. The one mechanism published to compress both, an inherited DNA-repair defect, is absent when the repair genes are read. The Mitochondrial Eve article works that out.
  3. The cave-art dispute is real, and every side of it is at least eight times older than the Flood. Hoffmann says older than 64,800 years;16 Slimak says 47,000;17 White and 43 co-authors say under 38,000.18
  4. Radiocarbon on 40 sites puts the end of the Neanderthal tool industry at 41,030 to 39,260 years ago.19 That is a different method from every clock in the genetics, and it lands nine times past the Flood. Creationists do answer radiocarbon: they say the air held little carbon-14 after the Flood, so early samples read too old.20 The one young-earth curve with an equation, Robert Brown's of 1992, puts these dates within ten years of the Flood, before Babel on any biblical text, in a range Brown himself called "highly questionable".21
  5. The long-lifespan model is dead. Jack Cuozzo argued that Neanderthal children matured slowly and adults lived for centuries, and put the Le Moustier 1 youth at 32 years.22 Counted daily growth lines in his teeth give 11.6 to 12.1 years, and Neanderthal teeth grew faster than modern ones, not slower.23

Verdict.  The creationist reading of Neanderthals as a post-Babel human population is on strong ground where it concerns what they were.  It has not shown what a young-earth chronology can do with the dates, and the best creationist authors say so themselves.  Marcus Ross, Peter Brummel and Todd Wood in 2023:  "none of the dating methods have a widely accepted method of recalibrating to a creationist timescale."24  Carter in 2010:  "realistic modeling has yet to be performed."2  Sixteen years later it still has not been.

Part 1: What the genomes say they were

Four genomes carry most of the weight.  In 2010 Richard Green, Svante Pääbo and 54 co-authors published a draft Neanderthal genome from three Vindija Cave bones:  "more than 4 billion nucleotides from three individuals."3  In 2014 Kay Prüfer's team read a toe bone from Denisova Cave to 52-fold coverage,9 and in 2017 a second Neanderthal, Vindija 33.19.4  In 2010 and 2012 David Reich and Matthias Meyer sequenced a finger bone from the same Siberian cave and found a population nobody had a name for.25  That population has its own article, Denisovans.

The protein-coding gap is small.  Counted against the high-coverage Altai Neanderthal genome, living humans carry 96 fixed amino-acid changes in 87 proteins.9  Against Green's 2010 draft it was 78.3  Green's own comment on that number:  "relatively few amino acid changes have become fixed in the last few hundred thousand years of human evolution."3  The Denisovan count, and the chromosome 2 result from the same genome, are in Denisovans.

They carried the human form of FOXP2.  FOXP2 is a gene needed for normal speech, and two of its amino-acid changes "have fixed in the human lineage since our split from the chimpanzee common ancestor."26  In 2007 Johannes Krause, Svante Pääbo and colleagues recovered the gene from two Neanderthals from El Sidrón Cave in Spain, and both carried both human changes:  "Whatever function the two amino acid substitutions might have for human language ability, it was present not only in modern humans but also in late Neandertals."26  FOXP2 helps control the fine movements of speech and is not a grammar gene, so this does not show that Neanderthals spoke.  It does remove one proposed genetic difference between them and us.  The gene has its own section in Human Uniqueness: Language, Mind, and FOXP2.

Their brains were as large as ours and shaped differently.  Simon Neubauer, Jean-Jacques Hublin and Philipp Gunz measured braincases by CT scan in 2018.  Their eight Neanderthals averaged 1,450 ml, against 1,328 ml for 89 living people.27  Shape is where the two differ.  Gunz and 26 co-authors in 2019:  "Neandertals … and modern humans … have similar endocranial volumes but distinct endocranial shapes."28  The Neanderthal braincase is long and low;  ours is round, or "globular".  A skeptic can fairly press this, because the shapes do not overlap at all on Gunz's main measure,28 and Neubauer reads the slow rounding of the human braincase as running alongside the rise of modern behaviour.27  Two findings in the same papers cut the other way.  The earliest fossils everyone calls Homo sapiens, at Jebel Irhoud in Morocco, had the long braincase too:  "their elongated braincases appear more like older human species and Neandertals."28  And Gunz's team scanned 4,468 living people of European ancestry and found that those carrying Neanderthal variants on chromosomes 1 and 18 have slightly less rounded braincases.28  The effects are small, as the authors say, and the carriers are ordinary adults from population samples in the Netherlands and Germany.  So braincase shape varies inside the human family and is partly made by Neanderthal genes still carried today.  It does not draw a line between people and non-people.

They lived in small groups.  The Altai Neanderthal's heterozygosity was 22 to 30 percent of a living non-African's, which Prüfer called "among the lowest measured for any organism".9  Her parents were close relatives:  "either half-siblings who had a mother in common, double first cousins, an uncle and a niece, an aunt and a nephew, a grandfather and a granddaughter, or a grandmother and a grandson".9  That finding travels well in creationist writing, and it needs a correction attached.  The Vindija genome has almost none of the long homozygous runs that mark close-kin mating,4 so the Altai case was not the rule.  What was the rule is low diversity everywhere.  Prüfer's 2017 estimate is an effective population size "of around 3,000 individuals".4  Denisovan heterozygosity is about 0.022 percent, roughly a fifth of an African's, and Meyer found no runs of homozygosity to blame it on.29  A small, isolated, long-lived population fits both.  A founder group of a few dozen people dispersing from Babel a few centuries after the Flood would need to be shown to produce the same numbers, and nobody has run that model.

Part 2: Interbreeding, and its limits

Interbreeding is argued in full in Archaic Admixture.  In brief, Neanderthal DNA survives "in every modern human population studied to date."5  The children of those matings were therefore fertile and left descendants, which is the strongest single piece of evidence that Neanderthals were people.  The limit is the pattern the mixing left.  Neanderthal ancestry is depleted in genes expressed in the testis and on the X chromosome, the classic markers of hybrid male sterility,30 and no creationist author has supplied the comparative case that would answer it.  Denisova 11, a girl with a Neanderthal mother and a Denisovan father, is in Denisovans.

The crosses can be counted in single families.  A Neanderthal ancestor a few generations back leaves long unbroken stretches of Neanderthal DNA, because recombination has not yet had time to cut them up.  Measured that way, plus one child whose two parents can be read directly, five ancient people sequenced so far had a cross in their recent family tree.

  1. Denisova 11, Siberia: a first-generation child. "Rather, she was the offspring of a Neandertal mother, who contributed her mtDNA, and a Denisovan father."7
  2. Oase 1, a modern man from Romania: 6 to 9 percent Neanderthal DNA, against 1 to 3 percent in living Eurasians, with segments long enough to place "a Neanderthal ancestor as recently as four to six generations back."6
  3. Three modern humans at Bacho Kiro, Bulgaria: 3.8, 3.0 and 3.4 percent Neanderthal DNA. One had a Neanderthal ancestor "less than six generations back", the other two "about seven generations back".8 The authors' summary: "all three individuals had Neanderthal ancestors a few generations back in their family history, confirming that the first European modern humans mixed with Neanderthals and suggesting that such mixing could have been common."8

That is direct evidence for Lubenow's test, below, at the scale of a family:  hybrid children grew up, and their own children and grandchildren had children.  Two replies should travel with it.  Fertile hybrids are known between mammals that are kept as separate species, so a cross alone does not settle "one kind".  And Oase 1's people "did not contribute substantially to later humans in Europe",6 so not every mixed family left a lasting line.  Neither reply touches the point that matters for this article:  these were people who met, mated and raised families together.

Part 3: What they did

Burial:  the objection first.  Robert Gargett is not a creationist and his motive runs the other way.  He thinks burial claims have been used to push modern behaviour too early.  His 1989 paper argued that the classic Neanderthal burials at La Chapelle-aux-Saints, La Ferrassie, Shanidar and elsewhere are as well explained by cave collapse and sediment as by anyone digging a grave.  His 1999 follow-up re-examined the five best modern excavations and concluded that in every case the remains "occur in special depositional circumstances, which by themselves are sufficient to account for the preservation in evidence at these sites."31  The field took this seriously.  The two best current cases were made with the methods Gargett demanded.

La Chapelle-aux-Saints.  William Rendu's team spent twelve years re-excavating the small cave where the 1908 skeleton was found.  They exposed "a 39-cm-deep subrectangular depression cut into the substrate marl", 140 cm long and 85 cm wide in its lower part.10  They then ruled out the natural explanations one by one.  There is no karst morphology or groundwater sedimentation, so the hollow is not a solution feature;  it is the wrong shape for a cryoturbation cell, so it is not periglacial;10 and it is the wrong shape and the wrong setting for a bear nest.  The human bones are far less weathered and gnawed than the reindeer and bovine bones around them, which means the body was covered quickly.  Their conclusion:  the Neanderthal "was deposit in a pit dug by other members of its group and protected by a rapid covering from any disturbance."10  Print their limit with it:  "It is not clear whether the hollow into the marl was excavated by the resident Neandertals, a natural feature or a natural depression enlarged by them.  No tool marks into the marl were detected."10

Shanidar.  Between 2014 and 2018 Emma Pomeroy's team found the articulated upper body of an adult Neanderthal beside the famous "flower burial" of the 1960s, the first articulated Neanderthal found anywhere in 25 years.11  The case for a dug grave rests on a thin section across the feature's edge:  two rib fragments lie on an abrupt truncation contact, and "The deposits underlying the cut feature comprise predominately well-sorted silts and clays that appear to be compacted just below the base of the cut, again consistent with an anthropogenic cut rather than a natural channel."11  They call it "a strong case for deliberate burial in a cut feature".11  And they state the limit:  the trench was too small to see the scoop in plan or from a second section.11  The original pollen-based flower claim they treat as questioned.  So "Neanderthals buried their dead" should be said of La Chapelle and Shanidar by name, not as a general fact.  Gargett's point about the pre-1960s digs still stands for those digs.

Bruniquel.  In 2016 Jacques Jaubert's team reported rings built of broken stalagmites 336 metres from the entrance of Bruniquel Cave in southwest France.  "The regular geometry of the stalagmite circles, the arrangement of broken stalagmites and several traces of fire demonstrate the anthropogenic origin of these constructions."1  The distance from daylight is the behavioural point:  "humans from this period had already mastered the underground environment".1  The paper's own word is "humans".  The same paper carries the date that gives this article its hardest problem, and Part 4 returns to it.

Ornaments, and who made them.  At Bacho Kiro Cave in Bulgaria, Jean-Jacques Hublin's team found Homo sapiens remains in a layer with "1 perforated ivory bead and 12 perforated or grooved pendants, 11 of which were made from cave bear teeth".13  Their observation matters here:  "The IUP pendants of Bacho Kiro Cave (Fig. 3) are notably similar to artefacts produced by late Neanderthals of the Châtelperronian".13  Whether the Neanderthals copied, invented the same thing, or shared a culture, the objects do not sort by species.

Ornaments before modern humans arrived.  The Châtelperronian objects leave room for a skeptic's reply:  late Neanderthals might have copied modern neighbours.  Two older finds close that gap.  At Krapina in Croatia, eight white-tailed eagle talons carry cut marks, polish and notches from mounting, and Davorka Radovčić's team concluded in 2015 that "the Krapina Neandertals made jewelry well before the appearance of modern humans in Europe".12  At Cueva de los Aviones in Spain, perforated and pigment-stained sea shells lie under a flowstone that Hoffmann's team dated by uranium-series:  the finds "predate the earliest known comparable evidence associated with modern humans by 20,000 to 40,000 years."32  On the order the dates give, there were no modern humans in Europe yet to copy, so the behaviour is Neanderthal.  That argument needs only the relative order of the dates, not their size.  The numbers, about 130,000 years at Krapina and 115,000 at Aviones, belong with the dating problem in Part 4.

Sharing a cave.  At Grotte Mandrin in the Rhône valley, Ludovic Slimak's 2022 study identified a modern human milk tooth in layer E and Neanderthal teeth in the layers above and below it.  The site "documents the first alternating occupation of Neanderthals and modern humans",33 in the order "Neanderthals/modern humans/Neanderthals/modern humans".33  Two populations used the same shelter in turn.  That is a shared landscape, not a species barrier.

Cave art, and the dispute about it.  In 2018 Dirk Hoffmann and colleagues dated thin carbonate crusts grown on top of paintings in three Spanish caves.  A crust that grew over paint is younger than the paint, so its age is a minimum.  Every cave gave a minimum of 64,800 years or more, and the paper's claim is that Iberian cave art is older than that, which "predates, by at least 20 ka, the arrival of modern humans in Europe, which implies Neandertal authorship."16  The oldest single minimum, over a red hand stencil at Maltravieso, was 66,700 years.16  That stood as the oldest minimum age for cave art anywhere until 2026, when a hand stencil on Muna Island in Sulawesi was dated to at least 67,800 years.34  Three replies followed.  Slimak, Fietzke, Geneste and Ontañón argued in Science that a "critical evaluation of their geochronological data seems to provide stronger support for an age of 47,000 years".17  Hoffmann's team answered that the dates pass the test for a closed system:  "When dates for subsamples are in correct stratigraphic order (i.e., from younger to older systematically from the 'outside' of a crust inward toward the pigment), we can be confident that the carbonate has remained a closed system."35  Then Randall White and 43 co-authors, most of the European cave-art community, replied in the Journal of Human Evolution on the archaeology:  "there exist more than 130 direct 14C dates for paintings in decorated caves and shelters.  None of them are older than 38 ka, even though 14C dating is now able to reach back to 50 ka BP".18  Their sharpest point is internal:  at La Pasiega, "A minimum age of 65 ka was obtained for the left side of a large rectangular sign on panel 78 in La Pasiega C (PAS 34c), while the right side of the same rectangle yielded a date of less than 3.1 ka".18  Slimak co-authored both objections, so they are not independent challenges.

What the dispute shows about the method.  Edwige Pons-Branchu's 2022 study of two Nerja Cave stalagmites is the measured demonstration.  Both were dated along their growth axes by uranium-thorium and by radiocarbon, with mineralogy checked by infrared spectroscopy.  One stalagmite gave consistent results.  On the other, "230Th/234U ages display large significant inversions and discordant results on the upper part and at the base of the stalagmite, suggesting a possible open system behavior for this chronometer.  Interestingly, 14C ages are in stratigraphic order all along the stalagmite".36  The failures sit exactly where aragonite was turning to calcite.  Their conclusion:  "230Th/234U ages are biased, but 14C ages seem to remain accurate".36  Uranium-series on thin cave carbonate can fail, the field knows it, and it detects the failure by stratigraphic ordering, the test Hoffmann applied.

Now the arithmetic a creationist must print in the same paragraph.  Take the Flood at about 4,500 years ago.  Hoffmann's 64,800 years is 14 times that.  Slimak's 47,000 is 10 times.  White's ceiling of 38,000 is 8 times.  The mainstream is arguing over a factor of 1.7.  A young-earth model needs a factor of ten to fifteen.  And the method White's side prefers, radiocarbon, is the one Pons-Branchu found holding up where uranium-thorium failed.  Quoting this dispute as "even the scientists disagree" would be quoting it falsely.

Part 4: When they lived, and why the creationist side has not answered it

Every date here comes from one of five methods:  nuclear substitution counts, the Y chromosome, mitochondrial DNA, radiocarbon, and uranium-series or luminescence on cave deposits.  They rest on different physics.  A young-earth model has to move all of them, and the moves have to agree.

The nuclear genome.  Green's 2010 paper reported a relative number that needs no date:  the Neanderthal-human autosomal divergence is 12.7 percent of the distance from the human reference back to the human-chimpanzee ancestor.  Only by "Assuming an average DNA divergence of 6.5 million years between the human and chimpanzee genomes" does that become 825,000 years, and the paper adds, "We caution that this is only a rough estimate because of the uncertainty about the time of divergence of humans and chimpanzees."3  Prüfer's 2014 Table 1 prints every split under two calibrations.  With the 6.5-million-year human-chimp date, the Neanderthal-Denisova split is 190,000 to 236,000 years and what the table calls the archaic-African split, the archaics against the deepest African human lineages, is 275,000 to 383,000.  With the slower mutation rate measured directly in parent-child trios, the same two splits are 381,000 to 473,000 and 550,000 to 765,000 years.9  The faster calibration is the one that helps a young-earth reader, and it still puts the Neanderthal-Denisova split at 190,000 years, 42 times the post-Flood period.  The smallest figure anywhere in the table is 38,000 years, for the split between the Neanderthals who interbred with modern humans and the Altai individual.  That is a split inside the Neanderthal population, and it is still eight times the post-Flood period.  Meyer's Denisovan population divergence of "170,000 to 700,000 years" was widened on purpose to span every plausible human mutation rate,29 and the low end is still 38 times.  There is no calibration inside the mainstream range that lands within an order of magnitude of 4,500 years.  Green's paper also says the Neanderthal-human common ancestry is "no deeper than the nuclear DNA sequence variation within present-day humans."3  That is a real point for the one-kind reading.  It is not a point about age, because the same paper puts the human variation it refers to inside the last 500,000 years.

The Y chromosome, and a correction the creationist literature has not caught up with.  Fernando Mendez's team recovered about 120 kilobases of the El Sidrón Neanderthal's Y chromosome in 2016.  It falls outside every living man's, including the deep African haplogroup A00.  "We estimate that the time to the most recent common ancestor (TMRCA) of Neandertal and modern human Y chromosomes is ∼588 thousand years ago (kya) (95% confidence interval [CI]: 447–806 kya).  This is ∼2.1 (95% CI: 1.7–2.9) times longer than the TMRCA of A00 and other extant modern human Y-chromosome lineages."15  That 588,000-year figure is the one creationist writing quotes, and it is out of date.  In 2020 Martin Petr's team sequenced five archaic Y chromosomes over 6.9 megabases instead of 120 kilobases.  They put the Neanderthal-modern split at about 370,000 years, and they say why the older number was too big:  Mendez had about 3-fold coverage and counted variants supported by a single read, and "when we applied our stricter filtering criteria to the El Sidrón 1253 data analyzed previously, we arrived at TMRCA estimates for El Sidrón 1253 that are consistent with the other Neandertals in our study."14  Petr's three Neanderthals give 353, 369 and 339 thousand years;  the two Denisovans split about 700,000 years back.14  This article therefore uses 370,000 years.  That is 37 percent shorter than the number creationists have been arguing against, and still about 82 times a 4,500-year chronology.  Two things make even the shorter figure hard for a young earth.  The Y is paternal and haploid, so the branch cannot come from variation carried through the Ark;  every Y on the Ark was Noah's.  And it is anchored to the deepest living human split, haplogroup A00 at about 249,000 years, so it survives any rescaling that treats all human lineages alike.14

The Neanderthal Y is not even the original Neanderthal Y.  Petr found that Neanderthal Y chromosomes group with modern human ones while Neanderthal autosomes group with Denisovan autosomes.  His reading is that an early modern-human lineage introgressed into Neanderthals and swept out the older uniparental lineages:  gene flow "resulted in the replacement of both the mitochondrial and Y chromosomal gene pools in late Neandertals."14  A creationist can take some comfort here.  The mainstream account of these molecules already requires one population's Y and mtDNA to be wholly replaced by another's, which is the kind of event that makes single-molecule dates fragile.  It does not shorten anything.  Petr's replacement window is 370,000 to 100,000 years ago, and those branches carry the same substitutions a young-earth model has to compress.

Mitochondrial DNA, in three sentences.  Neanderthal mitogenomes sit 178 to 206 substitutions from the human reference, against a maximum of about 123 between any two living people, and a young-earth timescale needs the Neanderthal branch to mutate 5.7 to 11.4 times faster than ours.  A direct relative-rate test on 35 Neanderthal and 54 modern mitogenomes finds the Neanderthal branch at 1.01 times the human branch, with a 95 percent upper bound of 1.36.  A 206-gene scan of DNA-repair and mitochondrial-maintenance genes across three Neanderthal exomes and the Denisovan finds no loss-of-function variant and no enrichment, and the one candidate, a POLG substitution, fails on domain, phenotype and zygosity.  The Mitochondrial Eve article owns all of that and works each step.

Radiocarbon.  In 2014 Tom Higham and 55 co-authors applied improved pretreatment to 40 Mousterian and Neanderthal sites from Russia to Spain.  "We show that the Mousterian ended by 41,030-39,260 calibrated years bp (at 95.4% probability) across Europe."19  The overlap with the earliest modern human industries was "2,600-5,400 years (at 95.4% probability)".19  Hublin's Bacho Kiro layer with Homo sapiens remains dates to 45,820 to 43,650 years.13  Slimak's Mandrin incursion is dated to "between 56,800 and 51,700 years ago" by radiocarbon and two luminescence methods on one sequence.33  Higham's own first sentence is worth keeping:  "the radiocarbon method reaches its limit at ∼50,000 years ago."19  That is why the older end of the record uses uranium-series and luminescence instead.

The young-earth answer to radiocarbon, and where it puts the Neanderthals.  Radiocarbon is the one method here with a worked creationist reply, and it should be stated in its own words before it is priced.  Robert Carter of Creation Ministries International:  "If ancient samples started out with less carbon-14 than we expect, they will appear to be older than they really are… The carbon date of any sample that was formed immediately after the Flood would be even more inflated, perhaps by 50,000 years or more."20  The mechanism is real physics:  a sample that starts with less carbon-14 does read older.  Robert Brown turned it into an equation in 1992, with the Flood 5,350 years before 1950 and the post-Flood air at 1.1 percent of today's carbon-14.21  His equation, rebuilt here, reproduces his printed table to within five years.21  Higham's end of the Mousterian, 41,030 to 39,260 calibrated years, is 35,900 to 34,000 radiocarbon years on the standard calibration curve.  On Brown's curve that is 7 to 10 years after the Flood.  Hublin's Bacho Kiro modern humans land 0 to 2 years after it.37  Babel at Peleg's birth is 101 years after the Flood on the Hebrew text and 531 on the Septuagint.  So the only young-earth radiocarbon curve with numbers puts the last Neanderthals, and the first modern humans who mixed with them, before Babel.  That is the opposite of the post-Babel placement creationist writers give them.  Brown warned about exactly this range:  "Use of Equation 8 for C-14 ages greater than 34,000 is highly questionable."21  A curve built to put the Neanderthals after Babel would need the air to stay near 2 percent of today's carbon-14 for about two centuries after the Flood, and nobody has published one.37  Ross, Brummel and Wood point readers to a later paper of Brown's, and one by J. A. Young, for "what may be a plausible explanation for why carbon dates are so much older than they should be," and concede that "none of the dating methods have a widely accepted method of recalibrating to a creationist timescale."24  And a radiocarbon answer, even a good one, does not touch the uranium-series dates at Bruniquel, Krapina and Aviones, or the luminescence at Mandrin.

Bruniquel.  The constructions were dated by uranium-series on three kinds of target:  stalagmite regrowth on the structures, regrowth on burnt bone, and the tips of the stalagmites used as building material.  All three converge on 176,500 ± 2,100 years.1  That is the replication that answers the open-system objection raised against the cave art.  Three targets with different histories would not drift to the same wrong age.  No published rebuttal of the date, creationist or otherwise, was found.  The one creationist paper found that discusses Bruniquel, by Ross, Brummel and Wood, uses it twice as evidence that Neanderthals were human and lived after the Flood:  its hearths and stone arrangements are "ephemeral remains" that "would not survive the cataclysm of a global Flood."24  It answers the date only with its general statement that methods other than radiocarbon "are still under investigation".24  The number is 39 times the post-Flood period, and it attaches to the single best behavioural evidence that Neanderthals were people.

What the creationist literature has done with all this.  Apart from radiocarbon, nothing that reaches the numbers.  Brian Thomas and Jeffrey Tomkins argued in 2014 that the archaic genomes should not be trusted:  DNA "allegedly 50,000–300,000 years of age is similar to that recovered from sites assigned an age one or two orders of magnitude younger",38 and contamination "exists at levels impractical to ascertain".38  Contamination was a real early problem.  It is now counted at diagnostic positions:  0.60 percent in Green's draft, 0.18 to 0.23 percent for Vindija 33.19, 0.35 percent for the Denisovan.  Their headline example, a bone first posted as male and later reported as female, is a mismapping error Green's team found and published themselves:  "We conclude that the three bones are all from female Neandertals and that previous suggestions that Vi33.16 was a male ( 40 , 42 ) were due to mismapping of autosomal and X chromosomal reads to the Y chromosome."3  And two later creationist papers abandon the line:  Line accepts the Denisovan genomes as real, and Jordan builds a phylogeny on the archaic Y data.  The rest of the creationist response is in Part 5.  Jordan engages the Y chromosome;  none of it engages the Bruniquel date.

Part 5: The creationist models, tested

Six creationist treatments carry the young-earth position on this topic.  Each is taken on its own terms here, and each is checked against the sources it names.

Lubenow:  the interfertility test.  Marvin Lubenow's Bones of Contention is the standard creationist book on human fossils.  Its Neanderthal chapters were written before any nuclear archaic genome existed, and its central claim was vindicated six years after the 2004 edition.  He set the test that the admixture papers went on to pass:  "the one and only valid test proving that they were fully human—the test of interfertility with other humans."39  Two of his other arguments have not aged well and should be retired.  He revived Rudolf Virchow's diagnosis that the first Neanderthal was a modern man with rickets, citing Francis Ivanhoe's 1970 Nature piece as "a strong case".39  Rickets softens and bows bone;  Neanderthal long bones are thick-walled and strong, the trait suite runs from Spain to Uzbekistan, and the genomes carry fixed differences no vitamin deficiency makes.  And he argued that recovered DNA proves a young fossil:  "if DNA was retrieved from that Neandertal fossil, it is evidence that the fossil is not nearly as old as evolutionists claim (30,000 to 40,000 years)."39  That was a prediction, and it failed twice.  Meyer's team read nuclear DNA from the Sima de los Huesos hominins, dated to about 430,000 years.40  Slon's team read Neanderthal DNA out of cave sediment in layers with no hominin bone at all.41  Each time the limit was pushed, the DNA was there.

Cuozzo:  slow growth and long lives.  Jack Cuozzo is an orthodontist who took his own radiographs of original Neanderthal fossils in French museums.  His Buried Alive is the only creationist attempt to explain Neanderthal anatomy by a mechanism rather than by saying it falls inside human variation.  The mechanism is patriarchal lifespans.  Children matured slowly and adults kept growing for centuries, so the faces grew forward and the brow ridges heavy.  He put the Pech de l'Azé child at four to five years instead of two, and the Le Moustier youth at 32 instead of the teens:  "I am going to tentatively designate Pech 4-5 (4.5) years old and Moustier 32 years old for the sake of discussion and simplicity in the rest of this book."22  He saw the fork himself:  "Either the Neanderthals had world-record rates of change in the growth of the face or this process took much more time than it does in modern children.  Le Moustier was either in his thirties or in his teens."22  Then he turned a modern facial-growth rate into elapsed years and got "over 300 years" for Le Moustier to become La Chapelle.22  If this were right it would be a real prediction of the biblical chronology.

Cuozzo, tested.  Teeth lay down growth lines daily, so age at death can be counted instead of estimated from a modern chart.  In 2010 Tanya Smith's team imaged eleven Middle Palaeolithic juveniles with synchrotron X-rays and counted.  "We find that most Neanderthal tooth crowns grew more rapidly than modern human teeth, resulting in significantly faster dental maturation.  In contrast, Middle Paleolithic H. sapiens juveniles show greater similarity to recent humans."23  Le Moustier 1, whose earlier estimates ran from 12 to 20 years, came out at 11.6 to 12.1.23  Every Neanderthal in the sample came out at the young end of its old range or below it.  Smith agrees with Cuozzo on one thing:  "comparative ontogenetic studies should not use recent human dental standards to assign ages to juvenile Neanderthals."23  The error just runs the other way.  Cuozzo's youth was twelve, not 32, and Neanderthal development was faster than ours, not slower.  There is no mechanism left for the long-life model, and no creationist writer should repeat it without this paper.

Carter:  three scenarios and a concession.  Robert Carter, a geneticist at Creation Ministries International, wrote within a fortnight of the 2010 draft genome.  He read it as a vindication:  "Neanderthals are well within the range of diversity of modern man …the Neanderthal genome is incredibly similar to the genome of modern man".2  That characterisation is accurate.  He then offered three scenarios instead of one.  They were the early post-Flood patriarchs themselves, with "strange features" from "long life spans and delayed maturity, although this is controversial among creationists";2 or the descendants of a child fathered by a patriarch in old age, carrying extra mutations;2 or "just one tribe of people, dispersed from Babylon with the rest, highly inbred, and pushed out, conquered, or killed as the European ancestors migrated into Europe.  There are many other possible scenarios, but realistic modeling has yet to be performed."2  He also named the question that remained:  "how Neanderthals could have remained able to interbreed with our ancestors after a supposed half a million or so years of separation."2  That is a fair question to the mainstream.  The first scenario is Cuozzo's and it is dead.  The second cannot work:  an old father raises the mutation count of one child by a few dozen, and cannot produce a population-wide fixed difference shared by every Neanderthal ever sequenced.  The third is the one worth building, and nobody has built it.

Line:  the survey.  Peter Line's 2019 overview of the Denisovan finds treats the Denisovan, Neanderthal and Sima de los Huesos remains as interbreeding human populations,42 and sets every long-age date aside as an assumption of evolutionism without offering a mechanism to shorten it.42  Denisovans quotes and tests it.

Jordan:  the re-rooted Y tree.  Marshall Jordan's 2024 paper in Answers Research Journal is the most specific creationist answer to the archaic branch lengths.  He took the Neanderthal and Denisovan Y chromosomes published by Petr and colleagues in 2020, three Neanderthals and two Denisovans over 6.9 megabases,14 and rebuilt the tree with a different root:  not a chimpanzee, but a reconstructed Noah, with "haplogroups A–H belonging to Ham, haplogroups I–J belonging to Japheth, and haplogroups K–T belonging to Shem."43  On that root the archaic Y chromosomes fall inside haplogroup A, in the line of Ham, and "The long tree branches in this proposed Noah-rooted tree indicate high Y chromosome mutation rates for the Neanderthal, Denisovan, and modern A haplogroup Y chromosomes."43  He proposes two causes for the high rate.  One is patriarchal drive:  "Could the high mutation accumulation found on Neanderthal Y chromosomes be due to patriarchal drive which affected all Y chromosomes for a few generations after the Flood?"43  The other is an inherited fault:  "a less deleterious mutation to the DNA repair mechanisms may cause a higher, but non-lethal, mutation rate which is passed on in that lineage."43  From the second he adds one line about the maternal molecule:  "If the high mutation rate indicated by divergence of the Neanderthal Y chromosome is due to defective DNA repair, it should affect the entire Neanderthal genome.  Perhaps the great divergence of the Neanderthal mitochondrial genome from moderns is also due to hypermutation."43  His own caveat should always travel with him:  "The conclusions of this analysis remain tenuous due to the small sample size, just a few Neanderthal Y chromosomes have been sequenced, and the difficulty of using ancient DNA."43

Jordan, tested.  Give him his due first.  The root of a tree is an assumption, not an observation, and Jordan is right that Petr's paper does not defend its root.  Patriarchal drive is the right kind of mechanism for the Y:  the Y is paternal, older fathers pass on more new mutations, and long post-Flood lifespans mean older fathers.  It is the strongest form of this argument anyone has published.  Then three failures.  First, re-rooting does not shorten a branch.  Moving the root changes which node is ancestral;  it does not change how many substitutions separate two tips.  The Neanderthal Y still differs from ours by the amount Petr measured on Jordan's own data, about 370,000 years against 249,000 for the deepest living split, and Jordan turns that surplus into hypermutation by assumption.  Second, the repair-defect mechanism has been looked for and is not there:  the 206-gene scan reported in the Mitochondrial Eve article finds no loss-of-function variant on any archaic lineage.  Third, patriarchal drive cannot touch mitochondrial DNA, which passes only through mothers, and Jordan does not claim it does;  his mtDNA sentence hangs off the repair defect, which is the mechanism that fails.  The direct relative-rate test finds the Neanderthal mtDNA branch at 1.01 times ours.  So the Y and the mtDNA still need the same rescue, and no mechanism on the table covers both.

Ross, Brummel and Wood:  after the Flood by geology, after Babel by inference.  Marcus Ross, Peter Brummel and Todd Wood gave the fullest recent young-earth model of the human fossils at the 2023 International Conference on Creationism, and they count Neanderthals as human.  Their case that Neanderthals lived after the Flood uses no clock.  They listed 104 Neanderthal sites, most of them caves, and checked the rock each cave is cut into:  "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."24  Inside young-earth geology that argument is sound, and it is the best reason on the creationist side for putting Neanderthals after the Flood.  Its limit is that it says nothing about how long after, and a mainstream geologist agrees that a cave is younger than its rock.  They then put the Neanderthals after Babel and gone before Abraham:  "our model implies that all of these other human forms, including widespread Neandertals and H. erectus, emerged after the Flood, dispersed after Babel, and were replaced by H. sapiens prior to the time of Abraham."24  They weighed the alternative, a dispersal before a Babel that involved only Homo sapiens, and preferred their own because Genesis 11 describes all people gathered in one place, while granting that the alternative better explains the takeover by Homo sapiens and that they "remain open to being corrected by future studies."24  They also printed the cost of their own choice:  it "gives no account for either the late appearance of H. sapiens in the fossil record or the voluminous genetic and cultural evidence of H. sapiens coming to dominate and replace all other contemporaneous human forms."24

The Babel window, counted.  William Henry Green summed the Flood-to-Abraham interval from the three ancient texts:  "292 (Hebrew), 942 (Samaritan), or 1172 years (Septuagint)".44  Genesis 10:25 puts the division of the earth, which young-earth writers often read as Babel, in the days of Peleg, born 101 years after the Flood on the Hebrew text and 531 on the Septuagint.  So the Ross-Brummel-Wood model gives Neanderthals at most 191 years, or 641 on the Septuagint, to spread from Spain to the Altai, meet modern humans, mix with them, and disappear.  On the Hebrew text that is about six generations at the fathering ages Genesis 11 gives from Arphaxad to Nahor, 29 to 35 years.  The modern humans in Part 2 had a Neanderthal ancestor four to seven generations back, so the time from one cross to one burial already fills most of the window.  Green himself held that the genealogies have gaps and "cannot properly be used, for the construction of a chronology";44 a young-earth reader who follows him gains centuries, not the tens of thousands of years the dates ask for.  This is the place where the creationist account of Neanderthals is thinnest after the dates themselves:  the model has a slot for them, and nobody has shown that their history fits in it.

The best defensible creationist statement.  Neanderthals and Denisovans were people, for the reasons set out in Parts 1 to 3.  The field's own vocabulary has followed the data:  Sankararaman calls the admixture a mixture of "human populations",45 and Jaubert calls the Bruniquel rings "constructions made by humans".1  The disagreement with mainstream science is not about whether they were human.  It is about when they lived.

What a young-earth model must still show.  Four things, and none has been attempted in print.  A nuclear substitution rate that puts 12.7 percent of the human-chimpanzee distance into a few thousand years on autosomes whose per-generation rate is measured in trios.  A mechanism by which uranium-series on flowstone is wrong by a factor of 39 at Bruniquel while three independent targets agree, and a radiocarbon curve that puts the end of the Mousterian at 40 sites after Babel rather than, as Brown's does, within ten years of the Flood.  A heritable change that raises the mutation rate several-fold on both a maternal and a paternal molecule, that is present in the sequenced genomes, and that does not also inflate within-Neanderthal diversity, which is about 9 percent of what the required rate predicts.  And a dispersal model that produces thirty Neanderthal DNA sites across 6,000 kilometres, an effective population size near 3,000, and deep structure inside the Denisovans, from a founder group leaving Babel a few centuries after the Flood.  Carter's population-growth papers are the natural starting point for the last one.

Objections and responses

"Interbreeding does not make them the same species."  Archaic Admixture answers this, and the sharper objection from the X-chromosome depletion, which no creationist has yet answered.

"Their brains were a different shape, so they did not think like us."  The shape difference is real and complete on Gunz's measure.28  But the earliest Homo sapiens, at Jebel Irhoud, had the same long braincase,28 Neanderthal brains were if anything larger,27 and living people who carry Neanderthal variants on chromosomes 1 and 18 have slightly longer braincases, and they are ordinary adults drawn from population studies.28  Shape may track some difference in how brains grew.  It does not mark a line between human and non-human, and what Neanderthals did, in Part 3, is the direct evidence of how they thought.

"Ancient DNA is contaminated and cannot be trusted."  It was a problem in the 1990s and is now counted at diagnostic positions:  under one percent in every high-coverage archaic genome.  The one example Thomas and Tomkins gave was a mismapping Green's own team found and published.  Two later creationist papers, Line 2019 and Jordan 2024, build on the archaic genomes rather than rejecting them.  A creationist article has to say which creationists it is following.

"Neanderthal dates rest on evolutionary assumptions."  The molecular dates do assume a mutation rate, and Green and Prüfer say so on the page.3  Radiocarbon at Higham's 40 sites, uranium-series at Bruniquel and luminescence at Mandrin assume no evolution at all.  They are physical decay and dose measurements.  A young-earth model that attacks the molecular clock has not touched the other three.

"The cave-art dates are disputed, so the whole chronology is shaky."  The dispute is between 64,800 and under 38,000 years.  Every side of it is at least eight times older than the Flood, and the method the sceptics prefer, radiocarbon, is the one that held up at Nerja.36  Pons-Branchu shows uranium-series on thin carbonate can fail.  She does not show it fails by an order of magnitude.

"Jordan showed the archaic Y chromosomes are in the line of Ham."  He showed that if the tree is rooted at a reconstructed Noah, the archaic branches fall inside haplogroup A and come out long.  The branch lengths are the observation;  the root is the assumption.  Long branches on a re-rooted tree are the same substitutions Petr counted, and calling them hypermutation needs a mechanism that survives reading the genomes.  His own abstract calls the conclusions "tenuous".43

"Then the mainstream chronology is simply right and the article should say so."  This is the objection to the verdict from the other side.  The article says the dates have not been answered, which is not the same as saying they cannot be.  The mtDNA rate was measured and found normal;  the repair genes were read and found intact;  those results went against the young-earth side.  The nuclear substitution rate, the Y-chromosome internal diversity and the U-series physics have not been worked by anyone on the creationist side, and an unworked problem is an open one.

Issues and unanswered questions

Computations that would settle what is open, and nobody has run.

  1. The nuclear rate. Take the measured human-chimpanzee autosomal divergence, multiply by Green's 0.127, divide by twice the trio-measured per-generation rate, and read off the generations. Then state the speed-up a 4,500-year model needs. No creationist paper has printed this arithmetic.
  2. Within-Neanderthal Y diversity. The mtDNA version of this test is done: at the rate the branch demands, the observed spread among 35 Neanderthal mitogenomes implies a common ancestress a few centuries before the last of them. Petr's three Neanderthal Y chromosomes share a common ancestor about 100,000 years back on the mainstream rate,14 which on a post-Babel model has to fit inside a few centuries. Nobody on either side has printed that arithmetic.
  3. A post-Babel dispersal model producing the Neanderthal site geography, the effective population size and the Denisovan substructure.

Sources not read in full.  Slimak 2018, Jaubert 2016 and Higham 2014 are cited from their complete published abstracts, checked word for word against the Europe PMC records for their DOIs;  those abstracts carry every number used here and no body text from the three is quoted.  Hoffmann 2018 is quoted from the published abstract, also checked against Europe PMC;  the 81-page accepted manuscript from the Southampton repository is now in the source library, and its pre-print abstract differs in wording from the published one, which is why the published text is what appears above.  Petr and colleagues 2020 is quoted from the 103-page bioRxiv preprint, which carries the full supplementary information;  the Science version is paywalled and was not obtained, but its abstract agrees with the preprint on both dates used here.  Gargett's 1989 paper is on JSTOR and was not read;  his 1999 abstract states the same argument.

Where the creationist side is weakest.  On the dates, and on fitting Neanderthal history into the years between Babel and Abraham.  No creationist treatment offers a mechanism for the Bruniquel date or answers the X-chromosome result.  Jordan engages the Y-chromosome branch lengths, and the mechanism he proposed for them was looked for in the genomes and was not there.  Radiocarbon has a published young-earth curve, and it puts the last Neanderthals before Babel, where no creationist model places them.  Ross, Brummel and Wood place them after Babel and before Abraham, which leaves about six generations on the Hebrew text for their whole history, and they say themselves that their placement gives "no account" of how modern humans replaced them.

Where the mainstream side is weakest.  The Neanderthal Y-chromosome date moved from 588,000 years to 370,000 when the coverage improved, a 37 percent cut in nine years.  And the current account needs the Neanderthal Y and mtDNA to have been replaced wholesale by an incoming lineage, which is a large unobserved event asked to reconcile two molecules with the autosomes.  The cave-art dates are contested by most of the relevant specialists.  None of these reaches the age question, but each is a reminder that a single published number is not the last word.

Verdict

Neanderthals were people, and the evidence for that is strong.  They interbred with modern humans and with Denisovans, and their descendants are alive in every population on earth.  Fewer than a hundred fixed amino-acid changes separate a Neanderthal from a living human.  Five ancient people with a Neanderthal parent, or a Neanderthal ancestor within about seven generations, have been sequenced.  They buried their dead, built stalagmite rings 336 metres underground, and made jewellery from eagle talons before modern humans reached Europe.  Their brains were as large as ours, and the shape difference is partly carried by Neanderthal genes in living people.  The creationist reading of them as a human population that lived after the Flood is on strong ground here.

The dates have not been answered.  Bruniquel at 176,500 years from three independent targets, a Y-chromosome common ancestor at about 370,000 years, a mitochondrial branch that was measured directly and found to mutate at the normal rate, radiocarbon on 40 sites ending the Mousterian around 40,000 years ago, and nuclear divergences that put the Neanderthal-Denisova split at 190,000 years even on the fastest calibration Prüfer prints:  these are five methods on different physics, and they agree with each other.  Only radiocarbon has a published young-earth conversion, Brown's of 1992, and it puts the last Neanderthals within ten years of the Flood, before Babel, in the range Brown called "highly questionable".  No creationist has computed what compressing the other four would require.  The one mechanism proposed for the genetic clocks, an inherited repair defect, is absent from the genomes.  And the post-Babel model leaves their whole history about six generations on the Hebrew text.  The long-lifespan model is refuted by counted growth lines.

The honest young-earth position is the one Carter wrote in 2010.  Say they were human.  Say that interbreeding and the small protein-coding gap show it.  Then say plainly that no realistic model of their origin, dispersal, or branch lengths has been built, and list what one would have to show.  Sixteen years on, that list is unchanged, and this article prints it.

Companion pages

  • The literature — every source consulted, with what it measured, whether it was read in full, and which way it cuts.
  • Quarantine — quotations and claims held back from the article, and why.
  • Denisovans — the Denisova Cave genomes, the fused chromosome 2 and Denisova 11.
  • Archaic Admixture — the Neanderthal and Denisovan DNA in living people, and the X-chromosome signal.
  • Mitochondrial Eve — the archaic mtDNA branch-length problem, the relative-rate test, and the DNA-repair-gene scan.
  • Y-Chromosome Adam — the paternal clock the Neanderthal Y sits outside.

Sources

  1. 1.

    Jaubert, Jacques et al.  “Early Neanderthal constructions deep in Bruniquel Cave in southwestern France.”  Nature 534(7605):111–114.  Jun 2, 2016.  A dating study of ring-shaped structures of broken stalagmites found deep inside Bruniquel Cave in southwest France.  The authors say the regular shape of the rings, the arrangement of the broken stalagmites and several traces of fire show that people made them.  The article uses it for the age and the depth of these constructions.

    1. 1a.

      Section Abstract:  “Here we report the dating of annular constructions made of broken stalagmites found deep in Bruniquel Cave in southwest France.  The regular geometry of the stalagmite circles, the arrangement of broken stalagmites and several traces of fire demonstrate the anthropogenic origin of these constructions.” ↩

    2. 1b.

      Section Abstract:  “Uranium-series dating of stalagmite regrowths on the structures and on burnt bone, combined with the dating of stalagmite tips in the structures, give a reliable and replicated age of 176.5 thousand years (±2.1 thousand years), making these edifices among the oldest known well-dated constructions made by humans.” ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩

    3. 1c.

      Section Abstract:  “Their presence at 336 metres from the entrance of the cave indicates that humans from this period had already mastered the underground environment, which can be considered a major step in human modernity.” ↩ ↩

  2. 2.

    Carter, Robert W.  “Neanderthal genome like ours.”  Creation Ministries International.  May 19, 2010.  A 2010 web article by Robert Carter, who writes about genetics for Creation Ministries International, updated 1 June 2010.  It says the draft Neanderthal genome, which covers about 60 percent of the genome, strengthens the creationist case that Neanderthals were fully human, and it offers three possible scenarios for who they were.  The article uses it for those three scenarios and for Carter's admission that realistic modeling has yet to be performed.

    1. 2a.

      “Neanderthals are well within the range of diversity of modern man …the Neanderthal genome is incredibly similar to the genome of modern man”.  A pull-quote set apart in the article. ↩

    2. 2b.

      “They may have been our ancestors (the Patriarchs and the early post-Flood generations), living among some of our more recent ancestors for hundreds of years after the Flood.  In this case, their strange features could have been a result of long life spans and delayed maturity, although this is controversial among creationists”. ↩

    3. 2c.

      “Since they appear to be genetically distinct, it is also possible that they are descended from a child that one of the Patriarchs fathered in his old age.  Based on a paper by the evolutionary geneticist James Crow, it appears that mutational load in children increases with the age of the father.” ↩

    4. 2d.

      “Or, they could have been just one tribe of people, dispersed from Babylon with the rest, highly inbred, and pushed out, conquered, or killed as the European ancestors migrated into Europe.  There are many other possible scenarios, but realistic modeling has yet to be performed.” ↩ ↩ ↩

    5. 2e.

      “now that many believe Neanderthals interbred with modern humans on our way out of Africa, the question of Neanderthal origins is suddenly glaring at us, as well as the question of how Neanderthals could have remained able to interbreed with our ancestors after a supposed half a million or so years of separation.” ↩

  3. 3.

    Green, Richard E. et al.  “A draft sequence of the Neandertal genome.”  Science 328(5979):710–722.  May 7, 2010.  A genome paper that sequenced a draft Neanderthal genome of more than 4 billion nucleotides from three bones from Vindija Cave in Croatia.  Its model fit gave the estimate of 1 to 4 percent Neanderthal DNA in people outside Africa, and it counted 78 changes to protein-coding genes that became fixed in modern humans but not in Neanderthals.  The article cites it for those two findings and for the draft genome itself.

    1. 3a.

      Section Abstract:  “We present a draft sequence of the Neandertal genome composed of more than 4 billion nucleotides from three individuals.” ↩

    2. 3b.

      Section Introduction, fourth paragraph:  “A challenge in detecting signals of gene flow between Neandertals and modern human ancestors is that the two groups share common ancestors within the last 500,000 years, which is no deeper than the nuclear DNA sequence variation within present-day humans.” ↩

    3. 3c.

      Section Average DNA divergence between Neandertals and humans:  “Assuming an average DNA divergence of 6.5 million years between the human and chimpanzee genomes ( 52 ), this results in a point estimate for the average divergence of Neandertal and modern human autosomal DNA sequences of 825,000 years.  We caution that this is only a rough estimate because of the uncertainty about the time of divergence of humans and chimpanzees.” ↩ ↩

    4. 3d.

      Section Implications for modern human origins:  “The data suggest that between 1 and 4% of the genomes of people in Eurasia are derived from Neandertals.”  The estimate assumes gene flow 50,000 to 80,000 years ago. ↩

    5. 3e.

      Section A catalog of features unique to the human genome:  “We found 78 nucleotide substitutions that change the protein-coding capacity of genes where modern humans are fixed for a derived state and where Neandertals carry the ancestral (chimpanzee-like) state ( Table 2 and table S28 ).  Thus, relatively few amino acid changes have become fixed in the last few hundred thousand years of human evolution”. ↩ ↩ ↩

    6. 3f.

      Section Estimates of human DNA contamination:  “We conclude that the three bones are all from female Neandertals and that previous suggestions that Vi33.16 was a male ( 40 , 42 ) were due to mismapping of autosomal and X chromosomal reads to the Y chromosome.  We estimate the extent of DNA contamination from modern human males in the combined data to be about 0.60%, with an upper 95% bound of 1.53%.” ↩

  4. 4.

    Prüfer, Kay et al.  “A high-coverage Neandertal genome from Vindija Cave in Croatia.”  Science 358(6363):655–658.  Nov 3, 2017.  A genome paper that sequenced the genome of a female Neanderthal who lived about 50 thousand years ago at Vindija Cave in Croatia, to about 30-fold coverage.  Her two copies of the genome differed less than those of present-day humans do, which the authors read as a sign that Neanderthal populations were small, and she was more closely related to the Neanderthals who mixed with the ancestors of people outside sub-Saharan Africa than the Siberian Neanderthal was.  The article cites it for her heterozygosity, for the 1.8 to 2.6 percent Neanderthal share in non-Africans and for the absence of long homozygous runs.

    1. 4a.

      “We estimated the heterozygosity of the Vindija 33.19 autosomal genome to 1.6×10 −5 ; similar to the Altai Neandertal genome and slightly lower than the Denisovan genome (1.8 ×10 −5 ) ( Fig. 1A ).  Thus, low heterozygosity may be a feature typical of archaic hominins, suggesting that they lived in small and isolated populations with an effective population size of around 3,000 individuals ( 20 ).” ↩ ↩

    2. 4b.

      “We find that non-African populations outside Oceania carry between 1.8-2.6% Neandertal DNA ( Fig. 4A ), higher than previous estimates of 1.5-2.1% ( 2 ).  As described ( 25 ), East Asians carry somewhat more Neandertal DNA (2.3-2.6%) than people in Western Eurasia (1.8-2.4%).” ↩

    3. 4c.

      Passage on runs of homozygosity, immediately after the description of the Altai individual's parents.  “Such segments are almost totally absent in the Vindija genome ( Fig. 1B )”. ↩

  5. 5.

    Chen, Lu et al.  “Identifying and interpreting apparent Neanderthal ancestry in African individuals.”  Cell 180(4):677–687.e16.  Feb 20, 2020.  A genome study that introduced IBDmix, a new probabilistic method that finds Neanderthal DNA in living people without using a modern reference population.  The authors applied it to 2,504 individuals from geographically diverse populations and found a stronger Neanderthal signal in Africans than earlier work had seen.  The article uses it for the finding that remnants of Neanderthal genomes survive in every modern human population studied to date.

    1. 5a.

      Section Summary:  “Our results refine our understanding of Neanderthal ancestry in African and non-African populations and demonstrate that remnants of Neanderthal genomes survive in every modern human population studied to date.” ↩ ↩

  6. 6.

    Fu, Qiaomei et al.  “An early modern human from Romania with a recent Neanderthal ancestor.”  Nature 524(7564):216–219.  Aug 13, 2015.  A genome study of the Oase 1 jaw from Peştera cu Oase in Romania, a modern human 37,000 to 42,000 years old on the conventional scale.  Captured DNA at sites that tell Neanderthal from modern ancestry and measured the length of the Neanderthal segments, which shortens with each generation since the cross.  It is the first early modern human found with a Neanderthal ancestor only a few generations back.  Mirror:  PMC

    1. 6a.

      Section Abstract:  “Neanderthals are thought to have disappeared in Europe ~39,000–41,000 years ago but they have contributed one to three percent of the DNA of present-day people in Eurasia … We find that on the order of six to nine percent of the genome of the Oase individual is derived from Neanderthals, more than any other modern human sequenced to date.  Three chromosomal segments of Neanderthal ancestry are over 50 centimorgans in size, indicating that this individual had a Neanderthal ancestor as recently as four to six generations back.  However, the Oase individual does not share more alleles with later Europeans than with East Asians, suggesting that the Oase population did not contribute substantially to later humans in Europe.” ↩ ↩ ↩

  7. 7.

    Slon, Viviane et al.  “The genome of the offspring of a Neanderthal mother and a Denisovan father.”  Nature 561(7721):113–116.  Sep 6, 2018.  A genome study of a long-bone fragment from Denisova Cave in Siberia.  It shows that the individual, Denisova 11, had a Neanderthal mother and a Denisovan father.  The article uses it as the one first-generation cross so far sequenced.

    1. 7a.

      Section Proportions of matching fragments:  “We conclude that Denisova 11 did not originate from a population carrying equal proportions of Neandertal and Denisovan ancestry.  Rather, she was the offspring of a Neandertal mother, who contributed her mtDNA, and a Denisovan father.” ↩ ↩

  8. 8.

    Hajdinjak, Mateja et al.  “Initial Upper Palaeolithic humans in Europe had recent Neanderthal ancestry.”  Nature 592(7853):253–257.  Apr 7, 2021.  A genome study of three modern humans from Bacho Kiro Cave in Bulgaria, the earliest modern humans so far sequenced in Europe.  It measured their Neanderthal ancestry and the length of their Neanderthal segments, and found a recent Neanderthal ancestor in all three.  The same method and laboratory as the Oase 1 study, which it re-analyses alongside them.  Mirror:  PMC

    1. 8a.

      Section Summary:  “Moreover, we find that all three individuals had Neanderthal ancestors a few generations back in their family history, confirming that the first European modern humans mixed with Neanderthals and suggesting that such mixing could have been common.” ↩ ↩

    2. 8b.

      Section Main text, paragraphs on Neanderthal ancestry:  “We found that the IUP individuals F6-620, BB7-240 and CC7-335 carried 3.8% (95% confidence interval (CI): 3.3–4.4%), 3.0% (95% CI: 2.4–3.6%) and 3.4% (95% CI: 2.8–4.0%) Neanderthal DNA, respectively.”  “On the basis of the distribution of the long Neanderthal segments, we estimate that F6-620 individual had a Neanderthal ancestor less than six generations back in his family tree”.  “Both CC7-335 and BB7-240 individuals had Neanderthal ancestors about seven generations back in their families, with upper confidence intervals of ten and seventeen generations, respectively”. ↩

  9. 9.

    Prüfer, Kay et al.  “The complete genome sequence of a Neanderthal from the Altai Mountains.”  Nature 505(7481):43–49.  Jan 2, 2014.  A genome paper that sequenced the genome of one Neanderthal woman from the Altai Mountains of Siberia to 52-fold coverage.  Its authors found that her parents were related at the level of half-siblings and that close-relative mating was common among her recent ancestors.  The article cites it for the 96 fixed protein changes, the parents' close kinship and the low heterozygosity of the Altai Neanderthal.

    1. 9a.

      Section Genome sequencing:  “In total, these five DNA libraries provided 52-fold sequence coverage of the genome.” ↩

    2. 9b.

      Section Heterozygosity and population size:  “Thus, heterozygosity in Neandertals as well as Denisovans appears to have been lower than in present-day humans and is among the lowest measured for any organism 23 .” ↩

    3. 9c.

      Section Inbreeding:  “We conclude that the parents of this Neandertal individual were either half-siblings who had a mother in common, double first cousins, an uncle and a niece, an aunt and a nephew, a grandfather and a granddaughter, or a grandmother and a grandson ( Fig. 3b ).” ↩

    4. 9d.

      Section Catalog of modern human changes:  “For example, it contains only 96 fixed amino acid substitutions in a total of 87 proteins and in the order of three thousand fixed changes that potentially influence gene expression in present-day humans ( SI 18 ).” ↩ ↩

    5. 9e.

      Table 1:  “This table gives date ranges for two calibrations.  The first assumes human-chimpanzee divergence of 6.5 million years and 1.30% for human-chimp divergence, or a mutation rate of 1 x 10 −9 /bp/year 1 , 2 , 12 .  The second is based on direct measurement of per generation mutation rates 15 – 17 , corresponding to a mutation rate of 0.5 × 10 −9 /bp/year or 13 million years ago for human-chimpanzee divergence, and may fit better with some aspects of the fossil record 45 , 46 .”  Rows, first calibration then second, in thousands of years: Neandertal-Denisova split 190–236 and 381–473; archaic-African split 275–383 and 550–765. ↩

  10. 10.

    Rendu, William et al.  “Evidence supporting an intentional Neandertal burial at La Chapelle-aux-Saints.”  PNAS 111(1):81–86.  Jan 7, 2014.  A field study of the bouffia Bonneval cave at La Chapelle-aux-Saints in France, where the first secure Neandertal burial was found in the early 20th century.  The team spent 12 years re-excavating the site and made a taphonomic analysis of the human remains, which checks what happened to a body after death, and concluded that the pit was dug and the body covered quickly, which supports an intentional burial.  The article uses it for the pit and for the case that the burial was deliberate.

    1. 10a.

      Section The Burial Pit:  “Excavations within the bouffia Bonneval exposed a 39-cm-deep subrectangular depression cut into the substrate marl.  The upper part of the pit is damaged; the lower part is 140 cm long and 85 cm wide”. ↩ ↩

    2. 10b.

      “The lack of evolved karstic morphologies and sedimentation connected to groundwater action in the bouffia Bonneval and in the adjacent La Chapelle-aux-Saints loci reject the hypothesis ( 7 ) of an endokarstic origin for the depression.  Furthermore, the pit does not have the same morphology as the cryoturbation cells, ruling out a periglacial origin.”  Reference 7 is Gargett 1989. ↩

    3. 10c.

      Section Significance:  “This project has concluded that the Neandertal of La Chapelle-aux-Saints was deposit in a pit dug by other members of its group and protected by a rapid covering from any disturbance.  These discoveries attest the existence of West European Neandertal burial and of the Neandertal cognitive capacity to produce it.”  "was deposit" is the published wording. ↩

    4. 10d.

      “It is not clear whether the hollow into the marl was excavated by the resident Neandertals, a natural feature or a natural depression enlarged by them.  No tool marks into the marl were detected.” ↩

  11. 11.

    Pomeroy, Emma et al.  “New Neanderthal remains associated with the 'flower burial' at Shanidar Cave.”  Antiquity 94(373):11–26.  Feb 2020.  A report on new excavations at Shanidar Cave in Iraqi Kurdistan, where the team found the upper body of an adult Neanderthal close to the 'flower burial' location of Ralph Solecki's excavation.  The team says the layers suggest the individual was intentionally buried, and it says the limited excavation could not show the sides or base of the pit.  The article cites it for the case that the grave was dug.

    1. 11a.

      Section Abstract:  “Recent excavations have revealed the articulated upper body of an adult Neanderthal located close to the 'flower burial' location— the first articulated Neanderthal discovered in 25 years.  Stratigraphic evidence suggests that the individual was intentionally buried.” ↩

    2. 11b.

      “The limited extent of the excavation and tight space within which it took place did not allow us to delimit in plan the sides or base of the depression (or scoop) in which the remains are located.  Nor could we gain a view of the depression or scoop in section from another angle, which might have helped to clarify the natural or anthropogenic origin of the feature containing the bones.” ↩

    3. 11c.

      “This evidence, in conjunction with the macroscopic stratigraphic observations, the articulated nature of the remains and the presence of multiple individuals within a small horizontally and vertically confined space, combine to make a strong case for deliberate burial in a cut feature.” ↩

    4. 11d.

      Section Micromorphology:  “The deposits underlying the cut feature comprise predominately well-sorted silts and clays that appear to be compacted just below the base of the cut, again consistent with an anthropogenic cut rather than a natural channel.” ↩ ↩

  12. 12.

    Radovčić, Davorka et al.  “Evidence for Neandertal jewelry: modified white-tailed eagle claws at Krapina.”  PLOS ONE 10(3):e0119802.  Mar 11, 2015.  A study of cut marks, polish and notches on eight white-tailed eagle talons from one level of the Krapina Neanderthal site in Croatia, read as wear from mounting them in a necklace or bracelet.  The level's age comes from earlier spin-resonance and uranium-series work.  It matters here because it puts Neanderthal ornaments before any modern human in Europe.

    1. 12a.

      Section Abstract:  “We describe eight, mostly complete white-tailed eagle (Haliaëtus [Haliaeetus] albicilla) talons from the Krapina Neandertal site in present-day Croatia, dating to approximately 130 kyrs ago. … Some have argued that Neandertals lacked symbolic ability or copied this behavior from modern humans.  These remains clearly show that the Krapina Neandertals made jewelry well before the appearance of modern humans in Europe, extending ornament production and symbolic activity early into the European Mousterian.” ↩ ↩

  13. 13.

    Hublin, Jean-Jacques et al.  “Initial Upper Palaeolithic Homo sapiens from Bacho Kiro Cave, Bulgaria.”  Nature 581(7808):299–302.  May 11, 2020.  A study of human remains found with Initial Upper Palaeolithic stone tools in Bacho Kiro Cave in Bulgaria.  Proteomic screening of the bone fragments, and the morphology of a tooth and its mitochondrial DNA, identify them as Homo sapiens.  The article uses it for the cave-bear-tooth pendants and for the date of the layer.

    1. 13a.

      Section Abstract:  “Here we report the discovery and direct dating of human remains found in association with Initial Upper Palaeolithic artefacts2, from excavations at Bacho Kiro Cave (Bulgaria).  Morphological analysis of a tooth and mitochondrial DNA from several hominin bone fragments, identified through proteomic screening, assign these finds to H. sapiens and link the expansion of Initial Upper Palaeolithic technologies with the spread of H. sapiens into the mid-latitudes of Eurasia before 45 thousand years ago3.”  Layer I is modelled at 45,820 to 43,650 cal. yr BP. ↩ ↩

    2. 13b.

      Section Paragraph on the faunal assemblage:  “We identified 1 perforated ivory bead and 12 perforated or grooved pendants, 11 of which were made from cave bear teeth and 1 from an ungulate tooth (Fig. 3).” ↩

    3. 13c.

      Section Paragraph following the pendant count:  “The IUP pendants of Bacho Kiro Cave (Fig. 3) are notably similar to artefacts produced by late Neanderthals of the Châtelperronian”. ↩ ↩

  14. 14.

    Petr, Martin et al.  “The evolutionary history of Neandertal and Denisovan Y chromosomes.”  bioRxiv, published as Science 369(6511):1653–1656, 25 September 2020, doi 10.1126/science.abb6460.  Mar 9, 2020.  A preprint of a genome study that sequenced the first Denisovan Y chromosomes and the Y chromosomes of three late Neanderthals from ancient bones.  It dates the split between Neanderthal and modern human Y chromosomes to about 370,000 years, well younger than the 588 thousand years that Mendez and colleagues gave in 2016.  The article cites it for that date, for the Neanderthal Y falling outside living men's Y chromosomes, and for the replacement of Neanderthal Y and mitochondrial DNA.

    1. 14a.

      Page 6, lines 129–134:  “We found that the two Denisovan Y chromosomes (Denisova 4 and Denisova 8) split from the modern human lineage around 700 kya (CI: 607-833 kya for the higher coverage Denisova 8, Figure 2B, Table S7.3).  In contrast, the three Neandertal Y chromosomes split from the modern human lineage about 350 kya:  353 kya for Spy 94a (286-449 kya), 369 kya for Mezmaiskaya 2 (326-419 kya) and 339 kya for El Sidrón 1253 (275-408 kya)”. ↩ ↩ ↩

    2. 14b.

      Page 7, section Disagreement with the previous Y chromosome TMRCA, lines 151–158:  Reference (12) is Mendez 2016.  “Our estimates of the Neandertal-modern human TMRCA, including those obtained using the larger amount of data we generated from the same individual (TMRCA of ~339 kya, Figure 2B), are substantially younger than the previous estimate of ~588 kya from the El Sidrón 1253 Neandertal (12).  The previous estimate was based on ~3X coverage of 118 kb of exome capture sequence and, due to the limited amount of data, used SNPs supported even by single reads (12, 17). ...  Indeed, when we applied our stricter filtering criteria to the El Sidrón 1253 data analyzed previously, we arrived at TMRCA estimates for El Sidrón 1253 that are consistent with the other Neandertals in our study (Figure S7.12).” ↩ ↩

    3. 14c.

      Section Abstract:  “This provides strong evidence that gene flow from an early lineage related to modern humans resulted in the replacement of both the mitochondrial and Y chromosomal gene pools in late Neandertals.”  The published Science abstract states the same conclusion in shorter form: "indicating replacement of both the mitochondrial and Y chromosomal gene pools in late Neandertals."  Page 9, lines 202–204:  “Our results show that the Y chromosomes of late Neandertals represent an extinct lineage related to modern human Y chromosomes that introgressed into Neandertals some time between ~370 kya and ~100 kya.” ↩

    4. 14d.

      Page 5, line 111:  The modern-human calibration is the A00 lineage.  “known to have diverged from all other present-day human Y chromosomes around 250 kya”.  Page 6, line 123:  “at ~249 kya (bootstrap CI: 213-293 kya”.  Every archaic TMRCA in the paper is expressed relative to that point, so a young-earth model that speeds up all human Y lineages equally leaves the ratio untouched. ↩

    5. 14e.

      Pages 6–7, lines 134–136:  The sentence straddles the page break.  “Additionally, we used the proportions of sharing of derived alleles with the high-coverage Mezmaiskaya 2 Y chromosome to estimate the TMRCA of the three Neanderthal Y chromosomes at around 100 kya (Figure S7.14 and S7.15).” ↩

  15. 15.

    Mendez, Fernando L. et al.  “The divergence of Neandertal and modern human Y chromosomes.”  American Journal of Human Genetics 98(4):728–734.  Apr 7, 2016.  A genome study that recovered about 120 kilobases of Y-chromosome DNA from one Neanderthal from El Sidrón in Spain and compared it with chimpanzee and modern human sequences.  It put the split between Neanderthal and modern human Y chromosomes at about 588 thousand years, about 2.1 times longer than the common ancestor of A00, the deepest living Y lineage, and the other living lineages, and that date is superseded by Petr and colleagues' 2020 estimate of about 370,000 years.  The article cites it for the 588 thousand year figure that creationist writing still quotes, quotes its wording, and draws on its H-Y antigen changes.

    1. 15a.

      Section Abstract:  “We estimate that the time to the most recent common ancestor (TMRCA) of Neandertal and modern human Y chromosomes is ∼588 thousand years ago (kya) (95% confidence interval [CI]: 447–806 kya).  This is ∼2.1 (95% CI: 1.7–2.9) times longer than the TMRCA of A00 and other extant modern human Y-chromosome lineages.” ↩ ↩

  16. 16.

    Hoffmann, Dirk L. et al.  “U-Th dating of carbonate crusts reveals Neandertal origin of Iberian cave art.”  Science 359(6378):912–915.  Feb 23, 2018.  A dating study of thin carbonate crusts that grew over paintings at three Spanish caves, La Pasiega, Maltravieso and Ardales.  A crust that grew over paint gives a minimum age, and the authors say the oldest dates, above 64.8 thousand years, predate modern humans in Europe by at least 20 thousand years, which implies Neanderthal artists.  The article cites it for the 64,800-year headline date in the cave-art dispute and the 66,700-year minimum for the Maltravieso hand stencil.

    1. 16a.

      Section Abstract:  “Uranium-thorium (U-Th) dates on carbonate crusts overlying paintings provide minimum ages for a red linear motif in La Pasiega (Cantabria), a hand stencil in Maltravieso (Extremadura), and red-painted speleothems in Ardales (Andalucía).  Collectively, these results show that cave art in Iberia is older than 64.8 thousand years (ka).  This cave art is the earliest dated so far and predates, by at least 20 ka, the arrival of modern humans in Europe, which implies Neandertal authorship.” ↩ ↩

    2. 16b.

      Figure 2:  “Hand stencil GS3b in Maltravieso cave (minimum age 66.7 ka).”  Table 1 gives this as sample MAL 13, the oldest of the samples taken from five places on the crusts over this one stencil.  The 64.8 ka minimum is for a red sign at La Pasiega. ↩

  17. 17.

    Slimak, Ludovic et al.  “Comment on 'U-Th dating of carbonate crusts reveals Neandertal origin of Iberian cave art'.”  Science 361(6408):eaau1371.  Sep 21, 2018.  A comment in Science on the Hoffmann paper, by Ludovic Slimak, Jan Fietzke, Jean-Michel Geneste and Roberto Ontañón.  It argues that a critical reading of the same geochronological data gives an age of 47,000 years, which the authors say is much more consistent with the archaeology.  The article cites it for the 47,000-year figure in the cave-art dispute.

    1. 17a.

      Section Abstract:  “Hoffmann et al (Reports, 23 February 2018, p. 912) report the discovery of parietal art older than 64,800 years and attributed to Neanderthals, at least 25 millennia before the oldest parietal art ever found.  Instead, critical evaluation of their geochronological data seems to provide stronger support for an age of 47,000 years, which is much more consistent with the archaeological background in hand.” ↩ ↩

  18. 18.

    White, Randall et al.  “Still no archaeological evidence that Neanderthals created Iberian cave art.”  Journal of Human Evolution 144:102640.  2020.  A News and Views piece by 44 authors, including Ludovic Slimak, arguing that no archaeological evidence yet shows that Neanderthals painted Iberian caves.  It counts the radiocarbon dates on cave paintings, which are all younger than 38 thousand years.  The article cites it for that limit of 38 thousand years.

    1. 18a.

      Section 2.2:  “Today, there exist more than 130 direct 14C dates for paintings in decorated caves and shelters.  None of them are older than 38 ka, even though 14C dating is now able to reach back to 50 ka BP (Cottereau et al., 2007).  Clearly, if such pre-40 ka BP radiocarbon ages were published, they would have to be taken as suggestive of Neanderthal authorship.” ↩ ↩

    2. 18b.

      Section 2.4:  “A minimum age of 65 ka was obtained for the left side of a large rectangular sign on panel 78 in La Pasiega C (PAS 34c), while the right side of the same rectangle yielded a date of less than 3.1 ka (Fig. 2).  Moreover, the age of the outermost layer of sample PAS 34a is 50.5 ka, little different from that of the deepest layer (64.8 ka).” ↩

  19. 19.

    Higham, Tom et al.  “The timing and spatiotemporal patterning of Neanderthal disappearance.”  Nature 512(7514):306–309.  Aug 21, 2014.  A radiocarbon dating study of the period when Neanderthals disappeared, by Tom Higham and 55 co-authors, 56 authors in all.  Its abstract says that dating this period is hard because the radiocarbon method reaches its limit at about 50,000 years ago.  The article cites it for the dates when the Mousterian tool industry ended and for the overlap with the first modern human industries.

    1. 19a.

      Section Abstract:  “Serious technical challenges, however, have hindered reliable dating of the period, as the radiocarbon method reaches its limit at ∼50,000 years ago.” ↩

    2. 19b.

      Section Abstract:  “We show that the Mousterian ended by 41,030-39,260 calibrated years bp (at 95.4% probability) across Europe.” ↩ ↩ ↩

    3. 19c.

      Section Abstract:  “The results reveal a significant overlap of 2,600-5,400 years (at 95.4% probability).  This has important implications for models seeking to explain the cultural, technological and biological elements involved in the replacement of Neanderthals by AMHs.” ↩

  20. 20.

    Carter, Robert.  How carbon dating works.  Creation Ministries International.  2021.  A Creation Ministries International explainer by the geneticist Robert Carter on how carbon-14 dating works and why creationists say it reads ancient samples too old.  The article uses it for the young-earth answer to radiocarbon in its own words:  less carbon-14 in the air after the Flood.

    1. 20a.

      Section How are the dates obtained?:  “If ancient samples started out with less carbon-14 than we expect, they will appear to be older than they really are… This age inflation should also increase as you sample older and older objects. Thus, we might expect samples from ancient Egypt or Jericho to be inflated by a few centuries. The carbon date of any sample that was formed immediately after the Flood would be even more inflated, perhaps by 50,000 years or more.” ↩ ↩

  21. 21.

    Brown, Robert H.  “Correlation of C-14 Age with Real Time.”  Creation Research Society Quarterly 29(1):45–47.  Jun 1992.  A three-page paper deriving an equation that converts radiocarbon ages into calendar dates on a young-earth timeline, by assuming the air's carbon-14 started at about 1 percent of today's level after the Flood and rose exponentially.  It prints a conversion table.  It is the only published young-earth radiocarbon calibration with an equation and table found for this article.

    1. 21a.

      Page 46:  “In my judgment the most suitable value for F is 5350.”  “The fraction of equilibrium activity represented by age 37,650 is 0.011.” ↩ ↩

    2. 21b.

      Page 46:  “Use of Equation 8 for C-14 ages greater than 34,000 is highly questionable.” ↩ ↩

    3. 21c.

      Page 46, table I:  Brown's table pairs real time T with radiocarbon age R, for example T 5000 with R 10,060, T 5200 with R 15,470, T 5300 with R 23,290 and T 5340 with R 33,750.  The equation rebuilt for this article gives 10,055, 15,470, 23,287 and 33,748. ↩

  22. 22.

    Cuozzo, Jack W.  Buried Alive: The Startling Truth about Neanderthal Man.  Master Books, Green Forest, AR.  1998.  A 1998 creationist book on Neanderthal anatomy.  Its author weighs whether Neanderthal growth was very fast or took much longer than in modern children, and gives Pech 4-5 (4.5) years and the Moustier youth 32 years.  The article uses it as the creationist book that explains Neanderthal anatomy by a mechanism rather than by ordinary variation.

    1. 22a.

      Page 185:  “Pech was at least 2-2.5 years old by modern tooth development charts but could have been as old as 4-5, and there were at least 26-28 years between he and Le Moustier, most likely more because of the speed of modern rates.  I am going to tentatively designate Pech 4-5 (4.5) years old and Moustier 32 years old for the sake of discussion and simplicity in the rest of this book.” ↩ ↩

    2. 22b.

      Page 189:  “Therefore, it is easily seen that we are faced with one of two choices as I have said before.  Either the Neanderthals had world-record rates of change in the growth of the face or this process took much more time than it does in modern children.  Le Moustier was either in his thirties or in his teens.” ↩

    3. 22c.

      Page 203:  “Using 0.06mm per year and calculating the number of years it would take Moustier to turn into La Chapelle and La Ferrassie I, we find it would take approximately 283 modern years to reach La Chapelle, which has to translate to over that figure in Neanderthal years since their rate had to be slower, and approximately 267 years to reach La Ferrassie I. ...  In this case I would estimate we are talking about over 300 years in both cases.” ↩

  23. 23.

    Smith, Tanya M. et al.  “Dental evidence for ontogenetic differences between modern humans and Neanderthals.”  PNAS 107(49):20923–20928.  Dec 7, 2010.  A study of tooth microstructure in a varied sample of Middle Palaeolithic juveniles, including Neanderthals, used to estimate their age at death.  Most Neanderthal tooth crowns grew faster than modern human teeth, so the article uses it to test Cuozzo's claim of slow growth.  Jean-Jacques Hublin is the last named author.

    1. 23a.

      Section Abstract:  “We find that most Neanderthal tooth crowns grew more rapidly than modern human teeth, resulting in significantly faster dental maturation.  In contrast, Middle Paleolithic H. sapiens juveniles show greater similarity to recent humans.” ↩ ↩

    2. 23b.

      Table 1:  Le Moustier 1, Le Moustier, France: previous age 12–20 years, new age from tooth histology 11.6–12.1 years.  The legend says:  “Previous ages provided for historical reference only; most sources do not explain their method for determining age.” ↩

    3. 23c.

      Section Results:  “Thus, comparative ontogenetic studies should not use recent human dental standards to assign ages to juvenile Neanderthals.” ↩

  24. 24.

    Ross, Marcus R. et al.  “Human History from Adam to Abraham:  Integrating Paleoanthropology with a Young-age Creation Perspective.”  Proceedings of the International Conference on Creationism 9:66–87.  2023.  The fullest recent young-earth model of the human fossil record, by a palaeontologist and two baraminologists, given at the movement's main technical conference.  It counts Neanderthals as human, argues from the rock their caves are cut into that they lived after the Flood, places them after Babel and before Abraham, and states the cost of each placement of Babel.

    1. 24a.

      Page 75:  “as young-age 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.” ↩ ↩ ↩

    2. 24b.

      Page 73:  “even an elaborate stone construction of unknown purpose inside Bruniquel Cave in southwestern France (Jaubert et al. 2016)”.  Page 75:  “Many hominin sites like Gesher Benot Ya’aqov … 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.” ↩

    3. 24c.

      Page 75:  “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%). … 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.” ↩

    4. 24d.

      Page 76:  “The disadvantage of this model is that it gives no account for either the late appearance of H. sapiens in the fossil record or the voluminous genetic and cultural evidence of H. sapiens coming to dominate and replace all other contemporaneous human forms.”  Said of the second explanation, a Babel with every human form dispersing after it, which the authors go on to prefer. ↩

    5. 24e.

      Page 76:  “Given the importance of the biblical evidence of universality, both in Genesis 11 specifically and as a theme throughout chapters 1-11, we”.  Page 77:  “prefer the second explanation to the first. … The advantages of the first explanation are considerable, however, particularly in the possibility of accounting for the takeover of H. sapiens, and we therefore remain open to being corrected by future studies.” ↩

    6. 24f.

      Page 77:  “our model implies that all of these other human forms, including widespread Neandertals and H. erectus, emerged after the Flood, dispersed after Babel, and were replaced by H. sapiens prior to the time of Abraham.” ↩

  25. 25.

    Reich, David et al.  “Genetic history of an archaic hominin group from Denisova Cave in Siberia.”  Nature 468(7327):1053–1060.  Dec 23, 2010.  A genome paper that sequenced DNA from a finger bone found in Denisova Cave in Siberia to 1.9-fold coverage, meaning each position in the genome was read about 1.9 times on average.  It named the group Denisovans, found that they were not part of the Neanderthal gene flow into Eurasians, and estimated that they contributed 4 to 6 percent of the genome of present-day Melanesians.  The article cites it for that 4 to 6 percent figure, for the mitochondrial DNA of the Denisovans, and for the nuclear genome placing them as a sister group of Neanderthals.

    1. 25a.

      Section Abstract:  “This population was not involved in the putative gene flow from Neanderthals into Eurasians; however, the data suggest that it contributed 4–6% of its genetic material to the genomes of present-day Melanesians.  We designate this hominin population 'Denisovans' and suggest that it may have been widespread in Asia during the Late Pleistocene epoch.” ↩

  26. 26.

    Krause, Johannes et al.  “The derived FOXP2 variant of modern humans was shared with Neandertals.”  Current Biology 17(21):1908–1912.  2007.  An ancient-DNA study of two Neanderthals from El Sidrón Cave, Spain, typing the two FOXP2 positions and nearby markers, with several checks against contamination by modern human DNA, including Y-chromosome markers.

    1. 26a.

      Page 1908:  “Although FOXP2 is among the 5% most conserved proteins among mammals [4], two amino acid substitutions have fixed in the human lineage since our split from the chimpanzee common ancestor.” ↩

    2. 26b.

      Page 1911:  “Whatever function the two amino acid substitutions might have for human language ability, it was present not only in modern humans but also in late Neandertals.” ↩

  27. 27.

    Neubauer, Simon et al.  “The evolution of modern human brain shape.”  Science Advances 4(1):eaao5961.  Jan 2018.  A CT study from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology of 20 fossil Homo sapiens skulls, 8 Neanderthals, 8 Homo erectus and 89 living people, all measured by one method.  It finds that early sapiens already had brains of modern size while the shape of the braincase became modern only gradually.  Mirror:  PMC

    1. 27a.

      Section Results, Relationship of endocranial shape and size:  “The endocranial volumes of early H. sapiens individuals (Jebel Irhoud 1, 1375 ± 6 ml; Jebel Irhoud 2, 1467 ± 6 ml; Omo 2, 1491 ± 4 ml) fall within the range of our samples of present-day humans (mean, 1328 ml; SD, 164 ml) and Neandertals (mean, 1450 ml; SD, 189 ml)”.  Section Materials and methods:  “8 Neandertals, 2 other Middle Pleistocene Homo individuals (Kabwe and Petralona), and 89 cranially diverse present-day humans from all over the world”. ↩ ↩

    2. 27b.

      Section Abstract:  “Brain shape, however, evolved gradually within the H. sapiens lineage, reaching present-day human variation between about 100,000 and 35,000 years ago.  This process started only after other key features of craniofacial morphology appeared modern and paralleled the emergence of behavioral modernity as seen from the archeological record.” ↩

  28. 28.

    Gunz, Philipp et al.  “Neandertal introgression sheds light on modern human endocranial globularity.”  Current Biology 29(1):120–127.  Jan 7, 2019.  A study that turned the difference between Neanderthal and modern braincases into a single roundness score, measured it on brain MRI scans of 4,468 living people of European ancestry, and tested which of the Neanderthal gene variants they carry go with it.  Variants on chromosomes 1 and 18 go with slightly less round braincases.  The effects of single variants are small, as the authors say.  Mirror:  PMC

    1. 28a.

      Section Results and discussion:  “Neandertals ( Figure 1A ) and modern humans ( Figure 1B ) have similar endocranial volumes but distinct endocranial shapes.” ↩

    2. 28b.

      Section Results and discussion:  “A principal component analysis of endocranial shape shows that there is no overlap between the more globular endocrania of modern humans and the more elongated endocrania of Neandertals”. ↩ ↩

    3. 28c.

      Section Results and discussion:  “The evolutionary history of our species can currently be traced back to fossils from Jebel Irhoud (Morocco) dated to about 300,000 years ago … While their faces and teeth look modern, their elongated braincases appear more like older human species and Neandertals”. ↩ ↩

    4. 28d.

      Section Summary:  “We find that Neandertal alleles on chromosomes 1 and 18 are associated with reduced endocranial globularity.”  Section Results and discussion:  “We analyzed five datasets comprising 4,468 individuals with European ancestry for whom both MRI and genotype data were available”.  “effect sizes of individual SNPs were small”.  Section Experimental model and subject details:  “The Nijmegen ‘‘Brain Imaging Genetics’’ (BIG) cohort is a Dutch population-based sample of healthy, unrelated volunteers.” ↩ ↩

  29. 29.

    Meyer, Matthias et al.  “A high-coverage genome sequence from an archaic Denisovan individual.”  Science 338(6104):222–226.  Oct 12, 2012.  A genome paper that sequenced the finger bone of a Denisovan to about 31-fold coverage, using a new way of preparing the DNA that recovered at least 6-fold and 22-fold more DNA molecules than the two earlier preparations from the same bone.  It estimated how much Denisovan DNA is in present-day people and listed the genetic changes that set modern humans apart.  The article cites it for the fused chromosome 2 and for the count of 260 human-specific protein changes.

    1. 29a.

      Page 223:  “From this, we estimate the population divergence between Denisovans and present-day humans to be 170,000 to 700,000 years (8).  This is wider than our previous estimate (1), largely because it takes into account recent studies that broaden the range of plausible estimates for human mutation rates and thus the human-chimpanzee divergence”. ↩

    2. 29b.

      Page 224:  “Several methods indicate that the Denisovan heterozygosity is about 0.022% (8).  This is ~20% of the heterozygosity seen in the Africans, ~26 to 33% of that in the Eurasians, and 36% of that in the Karitiana, a South American population with extremely low heterozygosity (21).” ↩

  30. 30.

    Sankararaman, Sriram et al.  “The genomic landscape of Neanderthal ancestry in present-day humans.”  Nature 507(7492):354–357.  Mar 20, 2014.  A genome study that mapped the Neanderthal DNA in 1,004 present-day people by inferring which stretches of their genomes came from Neanderthals.  It found large regions with almost no Neanderthal DNA, and Neanderthal DNA was depleted near genes, in genes active in the testis and on the X chromosome.  The article cites it for the Neanderthal shares of the European and East Asian populations and for the depletion on the X chromosome.

    1. 30a.

      Section Abstract:  “Neandertal ancestry is significantly reduced in genes specifically expressed in testis, and there is an approximately 5-fold reduction of Neandertal ancestry on chromosome X, which is known to harbor a disproportionate fraction of male hybrid sterility genes 20 – 22 .  These results suggest that part of the reduction in Neandertal ancestry near genes is due to Neandertal alleles that reduced fertility in males when moved to a modern human genetic background.” ↩

  31. 31.

    Gargett, Robert H.  “Middle Palaeolithic burial is not a dead issue: the view from Qafzeh, Saint-Césaire, Kebara, Amud, and Dederiyeh.”  Journal of Human Evolution 37(1):27–90.  Jul 1999.  A re-examination of the post-1960s claims of Middle Palaeolithic burial, focused on five sites.  The author concludes that in each case the remains occur in special depositional circumstances, which by themselves are sufficient to account for their preservation.  The article raises this paper first as the objection to its burial claims.

    1. 31a.

      Section Abstract:  “This re-examination suggests that in all of the post-1960s cases of putative burial, the hominid remains occur in special depositional circumstances, which by themselves are sufficient to account for the preservation in evidence at these sites.  This conclusion severely weakens arguments for purposeful burial at the five sites.  Moreover, the equivocal nature of the evidence in the more recent cases renders even less secure the similar claims made for discoveries of hominid skeletal remains at La Chapelle-aux-Saints, Le Mousterier, La Ferrassie, Teshik-Tash, La Grotte du Régourdou, Shanidar, and several others.” ↩

  32. 32.

    Hoffmann, Dirk L. et al.  “Symbolic use of marine shells and mineral pigments by Iberian Neandertals 115,000 years ago.”  Science Advances 4(2):eaar5255.  Feb 22, 2018.  A uranium-thorium dating study of the flowstone sealing a Neanderthal deposit at Cueva de los Aviones, Spain, which held perforated and pigment-stained sea shells.  The flowstone gives a minimum age for everything beneath it.  The same team dated the disputed Spanish cave art.  Mirror:  PMC

    1. 32a.

      Page 1, section Abstract:  “U-series dating of the flowstone capping the Cueva de los Aviones deposit shows that the symbolic finds made therein are 115,000 to 120,000 years old and predate the earliest known comparable evidence associated with modern humans by 20,000 to 40,000 years.” ↩

  33. 33.

    Slimak, Ludovic et al.  “Modern human incursion into Neanderthal territories 54,000 years ago at Mandrin, France.”  Science Advances 8(6):eabj9496.  Feb 9, 2022.  A study of Grotte Mandrin, a rock shelter in the Rhône valley of France, where the team found hominin teeth from Neanderthals and from modern humans, including a modern human baby tooth in layer E.  The team dated the layers with radiocarbon and luminescence methods and found modern humans there between 56,800 and 51,700 years ago.  The article uses it to show that the two populations took turns using the same shelter.

    1. 33a.

      Section Abstract:  “Here, we report hominin fossils from Grotte Mandrin in France that reveal the earliest known presence of modern humans in Europe between 56,800 and 51,700 years ago.  This early modern human incursion in the Rhône Valley is associated with technologies unknown in any industry of that age outside Africa or the Levant.  Mandrin documents the first alternating occupation of Neanderthals and modern humans”. ↩ ↩

    2. 33b.

      Section Introduction, final paragraph:  “We demonstrate successive replacement phases in occupation at the site—Neanderthals/modern humans/Neanderthals/modern humans—over the last millennia of Neanderthals' existence.” ↩

  34. 34.

    Oktaviana, Adhi Agus et al.  “Rock art from at least 67,800 years ago in Sulawesi.”  Nature 650:652–656.  Jan 21, 2026.  A laser-ablation uranium-series survey of rock art in Southeast Sulawesi, dating eleven motifs at eight sites.  Its oldest result is a calcite crust over a hand stencil on Muna Island.  Mirror:  PMC

    1. 34a.

      Page 652, section Abstract:  “The Muna minimum … is 1.1 kyr greater than the published minimum for a hand stencil from Spain attributed to Neanderthals, which until now represented the oldest demonstrated minimum-age constraint for cave art worldwide.” ↩

  35. 35.

    Hoffmann, Dirk L. et al.  “Response to Comment on 'U-Th dating of carbonate crusts reveals Neandertal origin of Iberian cave art'.”  Science 362(6411):eaau1736.  Oct 12, 2018.  The authors' short technical reply to the Slimak comment, written by the same team as the original paper.  It argues that dates from several sub-samples of the crusts fall in the right order, which shows the crust stayed a closed system.  The article cites it for that answer to the open-system objection.

    1. 35a.

      Page 1, first column:  “When dates for subsamples are in correct stratigraphic order (i.e., from younger to older systematically from the 'outside' of a crust inward toward the pigment), we can be confident that the carbonate has remained a closed system.  In an open system, preservation of the chronological order of subsamples is highly unlikely.  We have published multiple sequences of three or more subsamples with ages in the expected stratigraphic order, including examples from all three caves under consideration; open-system behavior is not an issue here.” ↩

  36. 36.

    Pons-Branchu, Edwige et al.  “U-series and radiocarbon cross dating of speleothems from Nerja Cave (Spain): evidence of open system behavior. Implication for the Spanish rock art chronology.”  Quaternary Science Reviews 290:107634.  2022.  A measurement study of two stalagmites from Nerja Cave in southern Spain, each dated by uranium-thorium and by radiocarbon.  One stalagmite gave consistent results, and the other gave uranium-thorium ages with large inversions and discordant results, while its radiocarbon ages stayed in stratigraphic order.  The article uses it as the measured demonstration of how uranium-thorium dates can fail on thin carbonate.

    1. 36a.

      Section Abstract:  “For the second stalagmite (GN16-7), in contrast, 230Th/234U ages display large significant inversions and discordant results on the upper part and at the base of the stalagmite, suggesting a possible open system behavior for this chronometer.  Interestingly, 14C ages are in stratigraphic order all along the stalagmite and are compatible with 230Th/234U ages only in its central part.” ↩

    2. 36b.

      Section Abstract:  “Our data suggest that in the case of aragonite to calcite transformation as shown here, 230Th/234U ages are biased, but 14C ages seem to remain accurate, as already observed in aragonitic marine bio minerals.” ↩ ↩

  37. 37.

    The conversion is in this article's script research/brown-curve.ts, which reads the IntCal20 calibration curve and solves Brown's equation 5 with his values, a Flood 5,350 years before 1950 and an initial 1.1 percent of today's carbon-14.  Higham's 41,030 and 39,260 calibrated years before 1950 are 35,886 and 34,043 radiocarbon years on IntCal20, and fall 6.6 and 9.5 years after Brown's Flood.  Hublin's Bacho Kiro layer, 45,820 to 43,650 calibrated years, falls 0 to 1.5 years after it.  Babel 101 years after the Flood sits at radiocarbon 18,244 on the same curve.  For a post-Babel end with Ussher's Flood, 2348 BC, the real age of the end of the Mousterian lies between Babel (about 4,200 years ago) and Abraham's birth (about 4,000), and the air must then have held 1.9 to 2.4 percent of today's carbon-14.44211913 ↩ ↩

  38. 38.

    Thomas, Brian, and Jeffrey Tomkins.  “How reliable are genomes from ancient DNA?”  Journal of Creation 28(3):92–98.  2014.  A review article in a creationist journal, by two authors at the Institute for Creation Research.  It compares published ancient DNA results with the longest time that DNA could survive, and argues that the age claims and the contamination of archaic genomes with modern human DNA make them unreliable.  The article uses it as the creationist case against trusting the archaic genomes.

    1. 38a.

      Page 92:  From the abstract.  “Furthermore, the quality of DNA (fragment length and degeneration) recovered in samples allegedly 50,000–300,000 years of age is similar to that recovered from sites assigned an age one or two orders of magnitude younger.” ↩

    2. 38b.

      Page 92:  From the abstract.  “We also show that contamination from modern human DNA in archaic human sequences exists at levels impractical to ascertain.” ↩

  39. 39.

    Lubenow, Marvin L.  Bones of Contention: A Creationist Assessment of Human Fossils.  Baker Books, Grand Rapids.  Revised edition.  2004.  A creationist book that assesses human fossils.  The article uses it as the standard creationist book on human fossils, and takes its test of interbreeding, which the admixture studies later passed, as the test that matters.

    1. 39a.

      Page 84:  “In 1970, Francis Ivanhoe published in Nature an article entitled, 'Was Virchow Right about Neandertal?'  He presented a strong case, based on diagnostic evidence, that the Neandertals were really modern humans who suffered from rickets.” ↩

    2. 39b.

      Page 151:  “In spite of one hundred years of being considered 'animals' and 'missing links,' the Tasmanians continually passed the one and only valid test proving that they were fully human—the test of interfertility with other humans.”  The passage is about the Tasmanians.  The article applies the same test to Neanderthals. ↩

    3. 39c.

      Page 224:  “Whether or not genuine Neandertal mtDNA has been retrieved is impossible for an outside observer to say.  Knowing the unstable nature of the DNA molecule, if DNA was retrieved from that Neandertal fossil, it is evidence that the fossil is not nearly as old as evolutionists claim (30,000 to 40,000 years).” ↩

  40. 40.

    Meyer, Matthias et al.  “Nuclear DNA sequences from the Middle Pleistocene Sima de los Huesos hominins.”  Nature 531(7595):504–507.  Mar 24, 2016.  A 2016 study of nuclear DNA recovered from two specimens at Sima de los Huesos, a site in the Sierra de Atapuerca in Spain.  It found that these hominins were related to Neanderthals rather than to Denisovans, so the article cites it only for the fact that nuclear DNA was recovered from these fossils.  Svante Pääbo is the last named author.

    1. 40a.

      Section Abstract:  “A unique assemblage of 28 hominin individuals, found in Sima de los Huesos in the Sierra de Atapuerca in Spain, has recently been dated to approximately 430,000 years ago.” ↩

  41. 41.

    Slon, Viviane et al.  “Neandertal and Denisovan DNA from Pleistocene sediments.”  Science 356(6338):605–608.  May 12, 2017.  A 2017 study by a team whose last named author is Matthias Meyer, which looked for ancient DNA in cave sediment rather than in bones.  Using targeted enrichment of mitochondrial DNA, it screened numerous sediment samples and detected Neandertal DNA in eight archaeological layers from four caves in Eurasia, and Denisovan DNA in a Middle Pleistocene layer of Denisova Cave.  The article uses it as the second case where Neanderthal DNA was recovered from layers with no hominin bone, against Lubenow's prediction on DNA age.

    1. 41a.

      Section Abstract:  “we show that cave sediments represent a rich source of ancient mammalian DNA that often includes traces of hominin DNA, even at sites and in layers where no hominin remains have been discovered.  By automation-assisted screening of numerous sediment samples, we detected Neandertal DNA in eight archaeological layers from four caves in Eurasia.” ↩

  42. 42.

    Line, Peter.  “An overview of the Denisovan puzzle.”  Creation Ministries International.  May 28, 2019.  A 2019 overview by Peter Line, updated 28 June 2019, that goes through the Denisovan fossils and DNA found up to that date from a non-evolutionary viewpoint.  Line argues that if the evolutionary assumptions and long ages are dropped, the Denisovan, Neanderthal and Sima de los Huesos remains could all belong to fully human populations that interbred.  The article uses it as the creationist survey of the Denisovan evidence.

    1. 42a.

      “Long-age 'dates' herein, such as the above, are given to properly explain the research findings being reported on, but reflect the beliefs/assumptions within evolutionism, not those of the author (recent creation c. 6ka).”  The author disclaims the long ages as the assumptions of evolutionism, and gives his own view as recent creation (c. 6ka). ↩

    2. 42b.

      “However, if the evolutionary assumptions and long ages are dropped, then a simple explanation is that the Denisovan, Neanderthal and SH Homo heidelbergensis remains all belonged to populations that were fully human, and to various degrees interbred with each other”. ↩

  43. 43.

    Jordan, Marshall.  “Ancient DNA Shows Neanderthals and Denisovans Descending from Noah in the Line Ham.”  Answers Research Journal 17:43–61.  2024.  A 2024 paper in Answers Research Journal, a journal tied to Answers in Genesis, that rebuilds a published Neanderthal and Denisovan Y chromosome tree with Noah as its root.  On that root the archaic Y chromosomes fall inside the line of Ham, and their long branches are read as high mutation rates.  The article uses it as the most specific creationist answer to the archaic branch lengths.

    1. 43a.

      Section Abstract:  “The study presented here uses a reconstruction of this Y chromosome tree based on the biblical assumption that all humans have descended from Noah. ...  The long tree branches in this proposed Noah-rooted tree indicate high Y chromosome mutation rates for the Neanderthal, Denisovan, and modern A haplogroup Y chromosomes.” ↩

    2. 43b.

      Section Abstract:  “The conclusions of this analysis remain tenuous due to the small sample size, just a few Neanderthal Y chromosomes have been sequenced, and the difficulty of using ancient DNA.” ↩ ↩

    3. 43c.

      Section Methods:  “A second tree was made using the same FASTA file and the same algorithms, but this tree was rooted in Noah so that the Y chromosome haplogroups are partitioned as follows: haplogroups A–H belonging to Ham, haplogroups I–J belonging to Japheth, and haplogroups K–T belonging to Shem.  This Noah root is according to the proposal of Jeanson (2022, 174).” ↩

    4. 43d.

      Section Discussion:  “Because men of the immediate post-Flood period may have retained some of the longevity of antediluvian men (Carter 2023; Habermehl 2010), patriarchal drive may be a factor in increasing mutations in people born soon after the Flood.  Could the high mutation accumulation found on Neanderthal Y chromosomes be due to patriarchal drive which affected all Y chromosomes for a few generations after the Flood?” ↩

    5. 43e.

      Section Discussion:  “Another possible explanation is that Neanderthals (and perhaps other descendants of Ham) have inherited, early in their descent from Ham, a defect in one of their DNA repair mechanisms. … But a less deleterious mutation to the DNA repair mechanisms may cause a higher, but non-lethal, mutation rate which is passed on in that lineage.” ↩

    6. 43f.

      Section Discussion:  “If the high mutation rate indicated by divergence of the Neanderthal Y chromosome is due to defective DNA repair, it should affect the entire Neanderthal genome.  Perhaps the great divergence of the Neanderthal mitochondrial genome from moderns is also due to hypermutation.” ↩

  44. 44.

    Green, William Henry.  “Primeval Chronology.”  Bibliotheca Sacra 47(186):285–303.  Apr 1890.  A Princeton Old Testament professor's essay on the Genesis genealogies.  It sums the interval from the Flood to Abraham in the three ancient texts and argues that the genealogies have gaps and were not written to give a chronology.

    1. 44a.

      Page 300:  “the interval between the Flood and the birth of Abraham was 292 (Hebrew), 942 (Samaritan), or 1172 years (Septuagint).” ↩ ↩

    2. 44b.

      Page 286:  “were not intended to be used, and cannot properly be used, for the construction of a chronology.” ↩

  45. 45.

    Sankararaman, Sriram et al.  “The combined landscape of Denisovan and Neanderthal ancestry in present-day humans.”  Current Biology 26(9):1241–1247.  May 9, 2016.  A genome study that separated Denisovan DNA from Neanderthal DNA in 257 genomes from 120 populations, 20 of them Oceanian.  It found more Denisovan DNA in South Asia than existing models of history predicted, and it found that Denisovan DNA, like Neanderthal DNA, was depleted near genes.  The article cites it for the South Asian finding and for the claim that reduced male fertility shows in both kinds of archaic DNA.

    1. 45a.

      Section Summary:  “This suggests that reduced male fertility may be a general feature of mixtures of human populations diverged by >500,000 years.” ↩