A new genetic study confirms that humans and Neanderthals interbred. This is fascinating in its own right, and truly intriguing with respect to the faith-and-science connection.
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A new genetic study confirms that humans and Neanderthals interbred. This is fascinating in its own right, and truly intriguing with respect to the faith-and-science connection.
2 replies on “Humans and Neanderthals Interbred”
So how do you think this fits in with the idea of genealogy vs genetics regarding Adam & Eve? One one hand it seems to push them even further away genetically, but does it also make them more distant genealogically? I wonder if this is somewhat of a slippery slope. At some point having a historic couple as just a tiny drop in the genetic population of the time seems to take away from its importance.
No I think it’s helpful for my speculations about genealogy vs. genetics. It shows that creatures that weren’t “modern humans” in fact contributed to our gene pool. The Bible doesn’t tell us anything about Neanderthals, including about their interactions with modern humans (unless those strange references to the nephilim are remnants of some kind of cultural memory here), and we wouldn’t expect it to, since the Bible just isn’t about that part of the story of natural history.