"What is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him? You have made them a little lower than the angels and crowned them with glory and honor."
~Psalm 8:4-5
It may have been while I was in college that the news dropped that Europeans, Asians, and American natives are descended in part from neanderthals. At least, that's when I first heard of it, and the people talking it over seemed to think it was somehow earth shattering. I thought, "huh, I guess that would make sense."
I'm not caught up on my Ancient Ancestors lore, so I can't speak with any authority on what has or has not been determined based on the genomes and other scientific studies. But the news that select humans had "bred" with their genetic cousins appears to elicit different reactions depending on the audience - not all of them nice. A quick google offers suggested-searches of "does White come from Neanderthals?" and "what percent of Neanderthal does each race have?" Even the idea that "all peoples outside Africa have got a little in 'em," though maybe grounded in the data, lends itself easily to narrative spin. The official word appears to be, "Humans moved out of Africa and got it on with the neanderthals," yet based on the suggested searches above, there's a predisposition to lean into the "all races except the Africans."
One assumes (but look where assumptions get us!) that maybe there's a desire for non-Africans to have a little of the degenerate "race" in our genes. And from what I know of popular culture at least, there's the idea that the neanderthals were all killed off in an ancient genocide by their more intelligent human neighbors. One hopes that I am wrong is supposing this, but I suppose that such thought would lend itself to teleological lines of reasoning that elevate certain "races" over others.
Yet I also suppose (unsophisticated luddite that I am) that an alternate view is permissible: that we're all one race, and that our neanderthal cousins were simply another branch in the genetic tree that came out of Eden. We weren't breeding with the most genetically compatible ape-men; our forefathers (of the non-neanderthal sort) gave their daughters in marriage and took to themselves wives from other human neighbors, whom modern science has unkindly labeled "neanderthal." They worshipped God, or didn't, raised children, waged war, and mourned their dead. I should like to have met one, just to see what sort of Man he was and to hear his thoughts about the state of things. One imagines he could educate me a great deal in the ways of the hunt. Probably in architecture, too, and maybe introduce me to a surprising depth of philosophy.
As GK Chesterton wrote about the primitive cave painters: all we can really say about them as people, is that they were artists.
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