For over a century, secular academia has painted Neanderthals as “brutish, grunting near-humans”—a primitive evolutionary dead-end. But as cutting-edge archaeology and genetics continue to advance, this “settled” narrative is being dismantled by the very evidence once used to support it. From sophisticated tool-making and ritual burials to the presence of their DNA in modern populations, the evidence is becoming impossible to ignore: these were not evolutionary experiments, but fully human image-bearers of God.
In this commentary, we examine how the vanishing myth of the “primitive” caveman is being replaced by a reality that looks remarkably like the world of Genesis. By stripping away evolutionary bias, we find that the archaeological record doesn’t point to a slow ascent from animals, but to the intentional, creative, and compassionate nature of Adam’s descendants. It is time to stop viewing ancient history through the lens of secular mythology and start recognizing the overwhelming evidence that science is finally catching up to the Word of God.