Bones discovered in 1856, later identified as Homo Neanderthalensis, were thought to be from a primitive kind of human. The Neanderthals were a sub-species of the genus Homo, the genus that includes us, Homo sapiens. They were one of many species of the genus Homo dominant from roughly 400,000 years ago until 40,000 to 30,000 years ago when they became extinct. In 2010 a full genome sequencing of Neanderthal DNA was published. It showed that Homo sapiens and Homo Neanderthalensis evolved from a common ancestor who lived about 600,000 years ago.
A brief timeline of the evolution of Homo sapiens
Some 200,000 years ago the evolution of modern humans took place in Sub-Saharan Africa, identifiable from fossil remains. The species Homo sapiens was anatomically the same as present-day humans.
From 200,000 to 40,000 years ago the conscious ability to think reflectively evolved.
The evidence for the evolution of self‐awareness suggests that modern self‐thought developed approximately 60,000 years ago. The emergence of human self consciousness coincided with the origins of language and the first perception of what we call the 'world.'
From 40,000 to 10,000 years ago there is evidence of ritualistic behaviour and religious expression.
From circa 12,000 to 5,000 years ago most Homo sapiens populations transitioned from foragers and semi-nomadic hunter-gatherers to farmers and an agricultural pattern of life. No longer was survival the most dominant element of human life. Life became more settled and secure, heralding a change in human culture that was the precursor of the evolution of human society and civilisation.
The evolution from semi-nomadic hunter-gatherers to farmers resulted in the creation of a new collection of myths to help these more settled groups of Sapiens make sense of their changed relationship with the world they inhabited.
Over the next seven thousand years evolutionary developments continued until, as the archaeological and historical evidence shows, around 3000 BCE a momentous change took place. Six ‘civilisations’ appear to have developed independently or semi-independently of each other, largely in ignorance of similar developments in world beyond their own geographical location.
What does it mean to be human?
When Homo sapiens migrated from Africa into Eurasia they interbred with Neanderthals. Modern Europeans and Asians, but not Africans, have between 1.5 and 2.1% of Neanderthal DNA.
The knowledge we have acquired from sequencing DNA confronts us with a fundamental philosophical question. What exactly does it mean to be “human”? The new research on Neanderthals suggests that we need to reconceptualise what it means, what are the characteristics that determine our diversity, complexity, and distinction as a species. Stereotypes about Neanderthals abound from fiction. They are imagined as primitive, brutal savages, ape-like, inhuman, but archaeology reveals that by the time they became extinct they were far more similar to us than the stereotypes we are presented with. They were not so different from us as we might imagine.
A recent book by Agustin Fuentes, an American primatologist and subject of an article in the Guardian, suggests that the moral lesson of new research on the Neanderthals requires us to recognise that our contemporary diversity, complexity and distinction as a “superior” species is in fact part of a continuous, evolving narrative of the genus Homo. There is enough evidence to be able to say that Neanderthals might also have experienced life as having a magical, mysterious dimension, something akin to what we describe as awe – which gradually evolved into religious practices and belief systems.
The Guardian article suggests that questions about the Neanderthals can serve as proxies for questions about ourselves. They reflect the anxieties about human nature that have haunted us in particular for the last five or six centuries and are responsible for the currently rising levels of anxiety, neurosis, addiction, fear and concern about our future on planet earth. Are we built for war or peace, climate and species crisis or a healthier future?
Anxiety in contemporary global society
I find myself returning to the article I referred to in Tuesday’s blog, the one about young people in the 18 to 24 year old bracket abandoning their dreams and ambitions because of the cost of living crisis, the state of the economy and their mental health concerns. An elderly friend (well, five years older than me) in a phone call on Tuesday evening, a life-long Christian nurtured by John Stott, said listening to or watching or reading about the news was now too depressing to endure. I agree, but I still watch and listen and read. I want to know what is going on; I want to know how events are analysed and interpreted. But I am becoming more and more affected by the insanity of today’s world, the inability of national leaders, politicians, economists, religious leaders, to act with intelligence, integrity, wisdom, consistency and responsibility combined with the inability of politicians, social media stars, footballers, actors, etc. to behave with moral integrity when engaging intimately and sexually.
We have become frighteningly vulnerable to the erratic, irresponsible behaviour of supposed adults who tell lies, distort the truth, declare war, and corrupt morality, integrity and truth. Human behaviour today has come to seem almost “Neanderthal”. We are led by and influenced by people with a primitive level of performance in their professional, public and private lives. We are less civilised today, at least in comparison with what we know the human race at its best to be capable of, and we have both far more evidence of declining performance as well as many more resources from which we could learn how to behave better.
Living in Love and Faith
I evaluate and judge the outcome of the Living in Love and Faith process from this perspective – what is the best that human beings are called to be and how can Christian churches and representatives of all faith traditions model their teachings in a way that enhances our human capacity to live spiritual, moral, ethical, loving, relational lives characterised by wisdom, truth and integrity?
The Church of England is caught in a trap that it seems unable to escape from because it can’t identify, let alone talk about “the trap”.
Not everything we read in the Bible or believe about God or Jesus is literally true. Many of the Biblical ideas about God and human moral and ethical behaviour and values might be described as belonging to a “Neanderthal” culture. In the twenty-first century our attitudes to gender, sexual identity, intimacy, sexual behaviour, the diversities of colour, ethnicity, poverty, abuse, prejudice and justice are very different, if not from Biblical values, then from contemporary Christian teachings and attitudes that claim to be authentically biblical.
The proposals being brought to Synod in November enshrine elements of “Neanderthal” thinking. Some of my friends are victims of this “Neanderthal” pre-Enlightenment construct of Christianity and have left, or been evicted from, the Church.
A Post-Neanderthal Church
There is a constituency in the Church of England longing for far more than justice and equality for women, people of colour, LGBTQIA+ people, the less able, the poor, homeless, refugees, the hungry and lonely, housebound and abandoned. There are people longing for a theological consciousness free from the magical thinking about God and Jesus that is still dominant in Christian teaching.
I’ve included the very brief timeline of human evolution because it sets today’s faith systems and beliefs in context. Ideas about God evolved and are still evolving and will always evolve, like it or not. Once we were not Homo sapiens and once we were not conscious of these things but now we are. We evolved and our contemporary state of consciousness and being has evolved from a state when Homo sapiens wasn’t self-conscious, self-aware, spiritually attuned. The God we worship today, the Jesus we exalt, the divine, sacred, holy presence in life we value, and life itself, are things common to us all. But we are taught about them and model them in religious institutions in very different ways. Many do not distinguish between what came to be called “the Jesus of history” in contrast to “the Christ of faith”. Many are unable to distinguish between Jesus the human being who was born, lived and was crucified, a prophetic, visionary, wisdom teacher, compassionate and fearless, from the later identity created by his followers and elaborated by the early Church, into which mythical elements were soon introduced, enhancing the power of the stories about Jesus. Those who told and compiled and edited the stories formed them into narratives and added beginnings and endings to the stories that were largely myths communicating profound truth.
There is a strong “Neanderthal” dimension to the beliefs, values and truths that constitute Christian faith today. Many Christians are taught that we can trust God because everything in the Bible and everything the Church teaches about God and Jesus is factually, literally true, historical. They do this despite the fact that our perception of truth and reality is vulnerable, susceptible to our fallible minds and memories. They do this, of course, because of their fear of our human weakness and fallibility.
I am part of the movement seeking to create a post-Neanderthal faith. The divine, sacred presence that began to dawn in Neanderthal and Homo sapiens consciousness 40,000 years ago is a seamless reality, a continuously evolving awareness, something that just is as a result of evolution. Once upon a time we didn’t have it but we slowly evolved and it developed. It reveals its presence to us, if you like, or we become aware of its presence. The early Church identified Jesus with this presence and ascribed agency to God. Our awareness continues to evolve and we can, when we awaken to this truth, open to and give ourselves to the evolving process of consciousness. Meanwhile, General Synod will be presented with LLF proposals intended to prioritise unity by ignoring and suppressing elements of human consciousness.