Do They Have A Soul?

"But, do they really have a soul?"
The question posed concerning the Neanderthal issue.
We have a series of studies running in Genesis right now, so life the universe and everything are on the table.

You have Man, just like you and me.  Made in the image of God, given a soul, Jesus died for you!

But, we have an ancestor, the Neanderthal.  Oh wait!  Man has been around just as long as the Neanderthal.  They interbred with us.  We are the Neanderthal!  Or what is left of them in any event.

Neanderthal's can be proven to have taken human wives, children were born from these unions (we have the family graves!), they practiced a very telling form of burial - red ochre and the body laid on flowers, they cooked, they ate baked bread, they made weapons, they made music and had flutes, they created cave art!, they sculpted small figures from stone of great delicacy, a sufficient number of pierced shells make one wonder if they wore necklaces, we have even found what appears to be a weapons factory!, one site even has an obvious hot tub built inside a cave!  Outside of their brow ridge, they are as human in their behaviors as you or I.  And concurrent with ancient man.

The Neanderthals were almost worldwide - except for the America's.  No evidence has ever been found of anything Neanderthal in the new world.

Always pictured hairier than most humans (they have to be pictured as ape like), usually with a stupid expression on their face and a slack open mouth (they have to be stupider than us).  Got to look dumber than the ultimate creation after all!  But, what if Neanderthal was smarter than Mankind?

Remember that odd reference in Genesis to the Nephilim?  No?  Then check out Genesis 6:4 for the Bible's almost offhand remark that there was something else at one time ... other than just God's creation running around.

After I became a Christian, I was very happy to equate the Nephilim with the Neanderthal.  It works well.  Man preceded them and archaeology supports that.  Man was not a descendent of the Neanderthal from the aspect of evolution but only from the point of procreation.  And aside from the fact that you and I do carry a percentage of Neanderthal DNA, they were wiped from the Earth.

So, do they have souls?

Well, I assume that their DNA was similar enough to ours to make their babies.  If they are the product of women and angelic beings, then again the DNA issue has to be assumed.  So, if they fall within the classification of MAN - they would have to have a soul!

But, I want to emphasize something here - their burials.  Burials mean that there is some thought of an afterlife, some meaning to life of more than just today is all there is ...  The bodies were buried on beds of flowers and then covered in red ochre.  Burial is not something which happens outside of man.  And as for the flowers?  I am sure there are lots of ideas, even I can think of a few just off the top of my head, but that does not make this practice have those meanings.  To cover the smell of decay, to call for spring and the renewing of life, etc.  However, the red ochre is even more interesting ...

Red Ochre - Red Earth - a symbol of what?  Did you know that ADOM, associated with ADAM, means red?  Was the burial of the dead with the ochre to equate them back to Adam, the first man?  To claim that they were MAN and not an abomination?  One has to wonder.  This practice was even to spread throughout the middle eastern burials of just plain old mankind.  Who started this practice?  We will never know but it seems that the Neanderthal greatly predates the practice by man.

But, this is a Kris-ism, something I think from my own investigations.  I can be wrong, it has happened before, so just sharing what I know and suspect at this time ...

I think the Neanderthal were a variety of humans, created by human women and angles, and ultimately removed by God.