Two archeological finds demonstrate that astronomers and biologists are not the only scientists who sometimes stretch for hypotheses. Australian anthropologists’ exclamations over the discovery of some ancient rock art inspired newspaper reporters worldwide to assert, with characteristic hyperbole, that all theories of human origins will have to be rewritten.(1,2)
Meanwhile, discover of an ancient "flute" has riveted attention for weeks on the World Wide Web. A bone with holes is touted as the oldest musical instrument ever discovered and leads to suggestions that our picture of Neanderthals needs revision.
Let’s take a closer look at the two finds, consider the merits of claims about them, and address the implications for Christian faith. First, the rock art. The world’s previous record holder for art antiquity was the array of 32,000-year-old cave paintings at Chauvet, France. (3). Australian researchers claim to have found art twice that old, an enormous carved wall nearly 300 miles southwest of Darwin (the city). By carved they mean hundreds of circular holes about 3 centimeters across arranged in patterns, one possibly depicting a large, four-footed animal, the others so abstract as to be indecipherable. The dating is based on a fragment of sandstone, apparently a chip off the wall, with circular holes in it. The fragment lay in a stratum determined by thermoluminescence (TL) to be 58,000 to 75,000 years old.
Ian Tattersall of New York’s Museum of Natural History, comments, "[The Australian discovery] offers remarkable early evidence of modern human behavior…if these new dates are accurate."(4) I’m glad he added that "if." TL dating may not provide the most accurate measure of this artwork’s age. Further testing and substantiation will be required for credibility.
For the sake of argument, though, what would the Australian find mean for the Christian faith, if the date were to prove accurate? Given the gaps in some biblical genealogies, the creation of Adam and Eve could possibly be dated as far back as 60,000 years ago, less reasonably, even earlier. The conclusion that art expression can only come from the spirit of man is the one I would debate. Most of us have seen examples of chimpanzee art that compares favorably with modern art. Bower birds are known to decorate their nests. It is possible then that the abstract forms and crude animal outline portrayed on the Australian rocks testify more convincingly of a bipedal primate’s hand, eye, and tool skills than it does of that creature’s spirituality.
?Debate continues among anthropologists over primitive art’s reliability as an indicator of spiritual characteristics. (5) One school of thought hypothesizes that such art occasionally depicts the trance-induced visions of shamans. They say that by looking for repeating symbols, certain geometric patterns, and stylized animal forms, they can determine what part of the art, if any, was induced by trance rituals. Others say that without some independent evidence of the shamanistic activity, conclusions about spirit expression in ancient art remain highly speculative, at best. I find it worth noting that no one in either group suggests that spirit art dates back any earlier than 27,000 years ago. The earliest undisputed evidence for such art dates back no farther than 4,000 years. These dates fit easily in the biblical range of dates for God’s creation of Adam and Eve.
Now for the so-called Neanderthal flute. It was found at a cave site in western Slovenia (formerly the northernmost province of Yugoslavia). (6) This "instrument" is a 4-inch section of a young bear’s femur bone with two holes a little less than a centimeter across and three and a half centimeters apart. It may have had more holes (see photograph). Radio carbon dating in three sediment layers near the bone site yields an age estimate of 35,000 to 47,000 years. This date and the kinds of tools found in the area suggest that it could have been used by Neanderthals. But two big questions remain: Could this bone have been a musical instrument? If it was, how does that affect our view of Neanderthal and Neanderthals relationship to Adam and Eve.
The three Slovenian archeologists who made the discovery addressed, and reasonably dismissed, the idea that he holes might have been bored by the teeth of a large carnivore rather than by a bipedal primate. However, they seem to overlook some obvious considerations. The bone was found near a hearth with charcoal and many burnt fragments of animal bones. One of the holes goes all the way through the bone and the other does not. These facts suggest at least some likelihood that the bone was an instrument for lighting fires & by twirling a twig in or through one of the holes with a bow). The holes may result from the bone’s use as a hammer head or an axe head. Other possibilities abound. Most importantly, the researchers apparently did not construct a bear femur flute according to this bone’s specifications to test whether or not it is capable of producing music.
For the sake of argument, again, if the bone really were a flute, would it require us to abandon our confidence in Genesis or reinterpret Genesis as saying that Neanderthal and Adam were somehow physically related? Because the flute is younger than the earliest biblically plausible date for Adam and Eve, it could have been played by one of their descendants. On the other hand, we may also question to what degree of certainty music can be declared a manifestation of the spirit. Some music may simply express the soulishness we share with bird and mammal species.
Neurobiologists Albert Yu and Daniel Margliash have just published a paper documenting the amazing musical abilities of zebra finches, (7) advancing the them of a recent book on bird songs by C.K. Catchpole and P.J.B. Slater. (8) In my teenage years I had a pet parrot who was a poor singer but an astute music critic. He would sway and coo to recordings of classical music (Bach drew his most favorable response), but he would screech and squawk at my sisters’ rock music until they turned it off. In this context, bipedal primates might simply have imitated birds in producing various musical tones. Again, I see no clash with biblical truth about either animals or humans, no evidence to necessitate a direct link between spirit humans and the bipedal mammals that preceded us.
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