Oh, you are such a Neanderthal!

What did I just say? People who use that insult are usually educated, and I didn’t mean that about you, I’m just talking. “Neanderthal” is the sophisticated name for Cave Man, and the insult means you are less evolved; you speak in grunts and hit things with a club.

That was a common insult long ago. Probably don’t use it, now that you know what it means.

Charles Darwin was a young man from a wealthy family, and his father sent him to Cambridge University, to get a career. He is described today, as a “Naturalist” but that was not a profession, at that time. Charles Darwin was trained and qualified to be a minister of the Church of England, what we might call a theologian.

His life work was supposed to be talking about God, but he found a different way. Charles Darwin wrote and published his famous book “The Origin of the Species” and he gave us a universe without God. We can skip some details here, but we know about Darwin’s “Theory of Evolution” which predicted that we humans evolved from monkeys and apes. No God with a creation story was needed.

Darwin’s model was accepted by many people, and scientists searched for evidence to support the model. In Germany, in the valley of the Neander River, remains of ancient hunting people were discovered. Experts suggest that these “Neanderthal” people were less evolved than modern people. They were more ape-like.

That’s where the insult came from.

These Stone Age hunting people were the model for ape-like cavemen. In modern research, Neanderthals appear to be more complicated and human, and less ape-like, but a century ago, they were considered proof of Darwin’s model.

And then there is Stonehenge.

• READ: Stonehenge: English Heritage

This very ancient stone monument, in southern England, was once considered slightly older than the Roman Empire, but researchers learned that it was thousands of years older than that, and it was built by Stone Age people; not quite Neanderthal, but less evolved and more primitive than us.

Experts debated about how primitive the structure was, but recently, the sophisticated side has won the argument, although the publication of some findings was suppressed for many years. So, what do scientists see in Stonehenge?:

• A time-keeping computer that used the sun and stars in the sky to track days and seasons.
• A complex stellar observatory, for tracking the movements of the sun, stars, and possibly planets.
• Possibly an audio amplifier. The stone structure might have amplified voices, singing or speaking, as in stone cathedrals in Europe.

Also, those primitive, less evolved, and illiterate people imported huge stones from the mountains of Wales, 250 km or 150 miles away. We might call that primitive project management, or maybe not so primitive.

What we do not see, is evidence to support Darwin’s model, although the experts told us we had to find that. Those ‘primitive’ and less evolved people were just as intelligent as us. There is also growing evidence that primitive and less-evolved races like the Neanderthals were actually sophisticated humans.

The evidence does not support the no-God model.

The model, in the Bible, presents complex and sophisticated humans, from the beginning; and the beginning was made by God.

There is an odd line in the Bible “At that time people began to call upon the name of the Lord. ” (Genesis 4: 26). That model tells us about a time in history when people got religious. That probably includes temples, pyramids, and sites like Stonehenge. There is clear evidence to support that model, in ancient sites like Stonehenge.

That ancient book, the Bible, is just as interesting and complex as Stonehenge. How did those primitive people, those Stone Age and Bronze Age sheep herders, know about that? Their book is not as old as the stone monument, but it is thousands of years old.

If you see a bumper sticker on a car with a picture of a fish with legs, you are looking at a symbol of Darwinian Evolution. It’s a reminder that life started in the oceans, and migrated onto land, and that’s a reminder that the creation story in the Bible is wrong.

Except, in the first chapter of the Bible, we are told that life in the oceans came before life on land. The record is clear.

How did those primitive people know that, thousands of years ago? How could they read the fossil record?

A theory is not a fact. It is interesting to see what models are supported, as new evidence is discovered.

“The heavens declare the glory of God; the sky displays his handiwork. Day after day it speaks out; night after night it reveals his greatness. There is no actual speech or word, nor is its voice literally heard. Yet its voice echoes throughout the earth; its words carry to the distant horizon.” (Psalm 19: 1 to 4)