- Series:Evolution’s Mistakes, Humans, Transcript English
Genesis 1:26
“And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.”
Every so often, popular science news magazines and websites start to talk about new species of supposed hominins. In a recent report, the ScienceDaily website advanced the conjecture that, until 40,000 years ago, there were two other groups of hominins in Eurasia – the Neanderthals in the West and the Denisovans in the East. We have discussed both of these groups many times before in Creation Moments and have consistently concluded that both groups were, in fact, fully human, not actually being any different from modern humans.
Many remains have been found in the Denisova Cave in Russia. One recently found bone fragment appears to be of a 13-year-old individual. It was possible to take DNA analysis of the bone, and this research suggested that the child had a Denisovan father, but that the child’s mother was Neanderthal.
This is, of course, an intriguing find for paleontologists. Evolutionary scientists have already suggested that Denisovans had interbred with homo sapiens and that there had also been interbreeding between “modern” humans and Neanderthals. Our conclusion, as creationists, had been that this was entirely to be expected, given that we do not accept that there were ever differing species of humans. Therefore, all Neanderthals and all Denisovans were, in fact, “modern” humans, and all, therefore, descended from Adam and Eve. A confirmed interbreeding between Neanderthals and Denisovans is entirely consistent with our biblical understanding of the whole history of the human race, all of which was created in the image of God. Author: Paul F. Taylor
Prayer: We are sorry, Lord, if we ever judge those who look different to ourselves as if they were subhuman. Thank You for the special creation of Adam and Eve, and all descended from them, being in the image of God. Amen.
Ref: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. “Neanderthal mother, Denisovan father! Hybrid fossil: Newly-sequenced genome sheds light on interactions between ancient hominins.” ScienceDaily, 22 August 2018. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/08/180822131002.htm>. Image: Russia’s Denisova Cave, CC BY-SA 4.0 International.
