Neanderthals: So easy a Cro-Magnon can do 'em

Now comes the news that anatomical modern man interbred with the Neanderthal. If the genomists are correct. we must admit that I carry somewhere between one and four percent Neanderthal legacy genes. Let us say 4% in deference to certain social manners. Origen would have us seek the spiritual sense where the historical sense would be a scandal. Grant this if we must accept the fossil record. No coherent picture has emerged of the art or relgion of the Neanderthal. The species is not believed to have representational art and excepting one grave in Northern Iraq, no especial burial rite or religion(the exception in Iraq was a male buried with flowers). Marriage could be only a speculation. Thus three of the foundations of homo sapiens culture that Giambattista Vico posits are far from established. All is not lost however. The method of Origen, if confronted with these 'facts', would seek to allegorize them back into the ground of Sacred Scripture. If we look to the story of Cain and Abel, we will see that the descendants of the murderer Cain, of which we are all, were complicit in the rubbing out of the Abelites - our brother the Neanderthal. We were genocides from the beginning.