It is one of the most iconic Christmas songs of all time.

Written by Bob Wells and Mel Torme in the summer of 1945, “The Christmas Song” (subtitled “Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire”) was crafted in less than an hour. As the story goes, Wells and Torme were trying to stay cool during the blistering summer heat by thinking cool thoughts and then jotting them down on paper. And, in the process, “The Christmas Song” was born.

Many of the song’s lyrics evoke images of winter, particularly around Christmastime. But none has come to exemplify the quiet peace of a Christmas evening more than the song’s first line, “Chestnuts roasting on an open fire . . . ”

Gathering around the fire to stay warm, to cook food, and to share in a community has been an integral part of the human experience throughout history—including human prehistory. Most certainly our ability to master fire played a role in our survival as a species and in our ability as human beings to occupy and thrive in some of the world’s coldest, harshest climates.

But fire use is not limited only to modern humans. There is strong evidence that Neanderthals made use of fire. But, did these creatures have control over fire in the same way we do? In other words, did Neanderthals master fire? Or, did they merely make opportunistic use of natural fires? These questions are hotly debated by anthropologists today and they contribute to a broader discussion about the cognitive capacity of Neanderthals. Part of that discussion includes whether these creatures were cognitively inferior to us or whether they were our intellectual equals.

In an attempt to answer these questions, a team of researchers from the Netherlands and France characterized the microwear patterns on bifacial (having opposite sides that have been worked on to form an edge) tools made from flint recovered from Neanderthal sites, and concluded that the wear patterns suggest that these hominins used pyrite to repeatedly strike the flint. This process generates sparks that can be used to start fires.¹ To put it another way, the researchers concluded that Neanderthals had mastery over fire because they knew how to start fires.

Figure 1: Biface tools for cutting or scraping. Image credit: Shutterstock

However, a closer examination of the evidence along with results of other studies, including recent insight into the cause of Neanderthal extinction, raises significant doubts about this conclusion.

What Do the Microwear Patterns on Flint Say?

The investigators focused on the microwear patterns of flint bifaces recovered from Neanderthal sites as a marker for fire mastery because of the well-known practice among hunter-gatherers and pastoralists of striking flint with pyrite (an iron disulfide mineral) to generate sparks to start fires. Presumably, the first modern humans also used this technique to start fires.

Figure 2: Starting a fire with pyrite and flint. Image credit: Shutterstock

The research team reasoned that if Neanderthals started fires, they would use a similar tactic. Careful examination of the microwear patterns on the bifaces led the research team to conclude that these tools were repeatedly struck by hard materials, with the strikes all occurring in the same direction along the bifaces’ long axis.

The researchers then tried to experimentally recreate the microwear pattern in a laboratory setting. To do so, they struck biface replicas with a number of different types of materials, including pyrites, and concluded that the patterns produced by the pyrite strikes most closely matched the patterns on the bifaces recovered from Neanderthal sites. On this basis, the researchers claim that they have found evidence that Neanderthals deliberately started fires.

Did Neanderthals Master Fire?

While this conclusion is possible, at best this study provides circumstantial, not direct, evidence for Neanderthal mastery of fire. In fact, other evidence counts against this conclusion. For example, bifaces with the same type of microwear patterns have been found at other Neanderthal sites, locales that show no evidence of fire use. These bifaces would have had a range of usages, including butchery of the remains of dead animals. So, it is possible that these tools were never used to start fires—even at sites with evidence for fire usage.

Another challenge to the conclusion comes from the failure to detect any pyrite on the bifaces recovered from the Neanderthal sites. Flint recovered from modern human sites shows visible evidence of pyrite. And yet the research team failed to detect even trace amounts of pyrite on the Neanderthal bifaces during the course of their microanalysis.

This observation raises further doubt about whether the flint from the Neanderthal sites was used as a fire starter tool. Rather, it points to the possibility that Neanderthals struck the bifaces with materials other than pyrite for reasons not yet understood.

The conclusion that Neanderthals mastered fire also does not square with results from other studies. For example, a careful assessment of archaeological sites in southern France occupied by Neanderthals from about 100,000 to 40,000 years ago indicates that Neanderthals could not create fire. Instead, these hominins made opportunistic use of natural fire when it was available to them.²

These French sites do show clear evidence of Neanderthal fire use, but when researchers correlated the archaeological layers displaying evidence for fire use with the paleoclimate data, they found an unexpected pattern. Neanderthals used fire during warm climate conditions and failed to use fire during cold periods—the opposite of what would be predicted if Neanderthals had mastered fire.

Lightning strikes that would generate natural fires are much more likely to occur during warm periods. Instead of creating fire, Neanderthals most likely harnessed natural fire and cultivated it as long as they could before it extinguished.

Another study also raises questions about the ability of Neanderthals to start fires.³ This research indicates that cold climates triggered Neanderthal extinctions. By studying the chemical composition of stalagmites in two Romanian caves, an international research team concluded that there were two prolonged and extremely cold periods between 44,000 and 40,000 years ago. (The chemical composition of stalagmites varies with temperature.)

The researchers also noted that during these cold periods, the archaeological record for Neanderthals disappears. They interpret this disappearance to reflect a dramatic reduction in Neanderthal population numbers. Researchers speculate that when this population downturn took place during the first cold period, modern humans made their way into Europe. Being better suited for survival in the cold climate, modern human numbers increased. When the cold climate mitigated, Neanderthals were unable to recover their numbers because of the growing populations of modern humans in Europe. Presumably, after the second cold period, Neanderthal numbers dropped to the point that they couldn’t recover, and hence, became extinct.

But why would modern humans be more capable than Neanderthals of surviving under extremely cold conditions? It seems as if it should be the other way around. Neanderthals had a hyper-polar body design that made them ideally suited to withstand cold conditions. Neanderthal bodies were stout and compact, comprised of barrel-shaped torsos and shorter limbs, which helped them retain body heat. Their noses were long and sinus cavities extensive, which helped them warm the cold air they breathed before it reached their lungs. But, despite this advantage, Neanderthals died out and modern humans thrived.

Some anthropologists believe that the survival discrepancy could be due to dietary differences. Some data indicates that modern humans had a more varied diet than Neanderthals. Presumably, these creatures primarily consumed large herbivores—animals that disappeared when the climatic conditions turned cold, thereby threatening Neanderthal survival. On the other hand, modern humans were able to adjust to the cold conditions by shifting their diets.

But could there be a different explanation? Could it be that with their mastery of fire, modern humans were able to survive cold conditions? And did Neanderthals die out because they could not start fires?

Taken in its entirety, the data seems to indicate that Neanderthals lacked mastery of fire but could use it opportunistically. And, in a broader context, the data indicates that Neanderthals were cognitively inferior to humans.

What Difference Does It Make?

One of the most important ideas taught in Scripture is that human beings uniquely bear God’s image. As such, every human being has immeasurable worth and value. And because we bear God’s image, we can enter into a relationship with our Maker.

However, if Neanderthals possessed advanced cognitive ability just like that of modern humans, then it becomes difficult to maintain the view that modern humans are unique and exceptional. If human beings aren’t exceptional, then it becomes a challenge to defend the idea that human beings are made in God’s image.

Yet, claims that Neanderthals are cognitive equals to modern humans fail to withstand scientific scrutiny, time and time, again. Now it’s time to light a fire in my fireplace and enjoy a few contemplative moments thinking about the real meaning of Christmas.

Resources

• Who Was Adam? by Fazale Rana with Hugh Ross (book)
• “Were Neanderthals People, Too? A Response to Jon Mooallem” by Fazale Rana (article)
• “New Research Douses Claim that Neanderthals Mastered Fire” by Fazale Rana (article)
• “One-of-a-Kind: Three Discoveries Affirm Human Uniqueness” by Fazale Rana (article)
• “Neanderthal Brains Make Them Unlikely Social Networkers” by Fazale Rana (article)
• “Differences in Human and Neanderthal Brains Explain Human Exceptionalism” by Fazale Rana (article)
• “Did Neanderthals Have the Brains to Make Art?” by Fazale Rana (article)

We’ve all had journeys of various kinds. Sometimes the conceptual ones are the toughest. They’re fraught with uncertainty, fear, even peril—but the rewards of a satisfying destination make the upheaval more than worthwhile. Such was my case as I sought to understand the truth on the issue of the earth’s age.

As the title suggests, my journey from young-earth creationism (YEC) was indeed “a journey,” a portentous one filled with all the anxiety and expectation of an unforeseen expedition. I imagined myself as the audacious Professor Otto Lidenbrock, from the Jules Verne classic, Journey to the Centre of the Earth, with his indefatigable determination to discover the truth behind the coded note found in his newly purchased runic text. But, in my case it was the original text of Genesis 1, along with other relevant creation passages, which I was determined to understand. While I did not lock my family up without food until I was able to interpret the texts, I did spend countless hours in solitude. I wanted to analyze and understand all the biblical and scientific evidence thoroughly, without presumption or prejudice. I was determined to learn without allowing fear, criticism, relationships, or ministry concerns to influence the outcome of my investigation.¹ I was pursuing the truth, and I knew that calling on “the Spirit of truth” (John 14:17) was the answer. I also knew that he who was “the way and the truth” (John 14:6) would give me the proper understanding of his Word and works.

My Starting Point

Before this fortuitous trek, I was a devoted and ardent defender of YEC. I taught its tenets from the pulpit of my church and on TV and radio, and I produced YEC-related material. My feet were firmly planted in young-earth soil, and I was convinced through the work of others that science supported, and even proved, the earth and universe were only six to ten thousand years old. Further, and more importantly, I was convinced that the only option for a Bible-believing, Southern Baptist inerrantist and thoroughgoing biblicist (who was also a classic dispensationalist by birth right and conviction) was to interpret the days of Genesis as normal 24-hour days, which necessarily implied such an age.

My commitment to YEC was a matter of honoring God’s Word; thus, my championing of this position was a matter of orthodoxy and biblical infallibility. Therefore, to deny YEC was akin to calling God a liar and allowing science to tell us that the Bible was errant and Genesis 1 was myth. I was committed to defending YEC and I considered myself a creation science apologist with ambitions to serve the Lord and evangelize through that message.

A Turning Point

But, a noonday signaling shadow caught my attention, and a journey from the center of a young earth became inevitable. The caverns of my mind were enlightened and the light exposed the epistemological blind spots of my thinking. The shadows of my untested presuppositions were revealed, and I could not remain idle. What were these crucial insights that necessitated the journey from young earth creationism?

After finishing my doctoral studies in 2006, I took the opportunity to further explore the philosophical issues that caught my attention during my study and research. The two most intriguing and relevant matters were in the realm of epistemology and metaphysics. Later these two fundamental themes would serve as (two of three) main divisions in my book, The One Who Is: The Doctrine and Existence of God.

Epistemological Help along the Way

The first and most important factor for any person who desires to know truth and the nature of reality is to acquire the understanding of “how we know what we know.” This is epistemology, and to have “blind spots” here is to be subject to forming premature or erroneous conclusions in a matter. To be more specific, as a pastor and theologian, I have discovered that many Christians will allow unknown and untested presuppositions or preunderstandings to drive their interpretation of a given text of Scripture. And, most of the time they are unaware that they have “packed bags” or “mental luggage” that contributes to their understanding of Scripture and of the nature of reality. Other times, these preunderstandings are not only known, but also are deemed proper due to some otherunknown or untested presumption. In our day, it is not uncommon for someone to come to Scripture with the thought that God can speak to them in such a way that nothing else is needed in the acquisition of knowledge. Further, this view is blind to the fact that reality and reason have contributed to their understanding already, and yet those components are discarded as a source of knowing the truth and/or interpreting Scripture.

This mindset appears to be an honorable, spiritual approach to epistemology but it is beset with problems. A thorough treatment of epistemology is impossible in this short article, but a few important points should be mentioned by way of analogy. Our knowing starts with an input device called “sense perception” and our biosystem comes with a very large preformatted “mind-drive” that is ready to be written on by the experience of reality. The first principle written on our mind is the law of noncontradiction, which is followed by the law of identity and supplemented by the law of the excluded middle (called the laws of thought²). From there, our minds engage in the act of apprehension and judgment. The first act of the mind is simple apprehension (conceptus) where a noun or verb is conceptually understood. The second act of the mind is judgment (judicium), where composite understanding takes place and where the mind composes and/or divides subject and predicate. Here subject and predicate are composed into a sentence and knowledge is obtained. Throughout one’s life and experiences the mind apprehends and judges. That’s how things become known. Correct judgments will keep a person from developing erroneous preunderstandings and/or conclusions, and the simple awareness and intentional application of reason will serve in their discovery of truth.

Metaphysical Help

Now, imagine that a person has not considered “how we know what we know,” and comes to Scripture presupposing the ability to properly interpret a text apart from the input of reality and reason³ (or proper hermeneutics). Moreover, this person does not further investigate issues of metaphysics (nature of reality), and fails to understand how, for example, predications (production of meaningful statements) should be applied to God. As finite creatures with finite words and concepts, should we assume that our words and concepts apply to the infinite (God) in a univocal (one-to-one) manner?⁴ I would say no. Such an approach runs the danger of misinterpreting Scripture through wrong assumptions and epistemological blind spots.

Getting There

God is as much the author of reason as he is of Scripture, and the two must harmonize or we have interpreted either one or both incorrectly. God has designed his creation such that all people will be subject to the nature of reality as he has created it. (Therefore, the related issue of the relationship of faith and reason must be addressed—see part 2). Once I understood that God was the author of creation and the Bible then I knew that they must agree, and that reason could be helpful in understanding Scripture. I was well on my way out of the center of the YEC paradigm and into a better place of understanding.

Physicians possess various tools for determining the health status of your heart. In addition to stethoscopes, physicians possess advanced instruments like electrocardiograms, echocardiograms, and angiograms to determine the health of human hearts. Likewise, astronomers now possess advanced telescope and imaging instruments to determine the health of our Milky Way Galaxy’s heart. These instruments reveal an unusual “health” that speaks of galaxy design.

MeerKAT and the Square Kilometer Array
The latest and most advanced of these tools is the MeerKAT telescope in South Africa (see figure 1). MeerKAT is the first phase of the Square Kilometer Array (SKA).

Figure 1: One of 64 Radio Telescopes Comprising the MeerKAT Array. Each telescope has a collecting area of 15 meters in height and 12 meters in width (49 feet by 40 feet). Image credit: Morganoshell, Creative Commons Attribution

The array will consist of thousands of parabolic dishes like the one in figure 1 plus thousands of dipole antennae (see figure 2). Both the array of parabolic dishes and the dipole antenna array will have a collecting area of one square kilometer. About half of the parabolic dishes and dipole antennae will be located in South Africa and the other half in Australia.

Figure 2: Part of the Dipole Antennae Component of the Square Kilometer Array. Image credit: SKA Project Development Office and Swinburne Astronomy Productions

The enormous collecting area of the SKA will make it fifty times more sensitive than any other radio telescope. The SKA will be built to simultaneously and continuously collect radio light over a very broad frequency range: 50 Hertz to 14 Gigahertz. The amount of data the SKA can collect is greater than the entire global internet traffic as of 2014. The data will be processed by an equally impressive array of supercomputers. Eleven nations are committed to fund and build the SKA: Australia, Canada, China, India, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, and United Kingdom.

Probing the Heart of the Milky Way Galaxy
I explain some technical details in the next section. Feel free to skim as you make your way to Philosophical Implications.

MeerKAT’s first major achievement was the production of the most-detailed radio wavelength map of the region of the center of the Milky Way Galaxy (MWG). MeerKAT astronomers mapped this region with a resolution of 6 arcseconds (1/600th of a degree), more than ten times more precise than any previous attempt.

MeerKAT’s first major discovery was finding two radio bubbles above and below the central core of our galaxy.¹ Astronomers have found gigantic radio bubbles in other galaxies but these bubbles are much smaller. They are, however, by far the largest that astronomers have discovered in our galaxy. Together they stretch out over 430 parsecs (1,400 light-years). Their width is 140 parsecs (460 light-years). For comparison the Sun is 25,900 light-years away from the galactic center.²

From observations of similar radio bubbles in the cores of other large galaxies, astronomers know that such bubbles are the remnants of energetic eruptions of hot gas. The 99 astronomers who published the MeerKAT discovery, led by Ian Heywood, Fernando Camilo, and L. P. Williams, offered two possible explanations for the bubbles.

One explanation is that the 4-million-solar-mass black hole at the galactic center³ injested a large amount of matter in the relatively recent past. When supermassive black holes gobble up matter in this way, they trigger outbursts just outside the black hole’s event horizon that result in large radio bubbles.

The second explanation involves a “starburst” event near the galactic center. A starburst occurs when a hundred or more large and giant stars form all at once within a small region. These stars burn through their nuclear fuel quickly, culminating in supernova eruptions. The near simultaneous supernova eruptions send out enormous, powerful shock waves that blow a big hole in the thick interstellar medium existing in the galactic core.

As the 99 authors point out, a combination of outbursts from outside the supermassive black hole’s event horizon and a starburst event likely would have reinforced the building of the radio bubbles. The team determined that the total energy involved in the bubbles equals 7 x 10⁵² ergs, which is equivalent to the amount of energy emitted by 580 million Suns in one year.

The measured radio spectrum of the bubbles revealed that its energy source is synchrotron radiation (nonthermal radiation generated by fast-moving electrons traveling through magnetic fields), which allowed the astronomers to determine the bubbles’ cooling time. Assuming no substantial deceleration in the bubbles’ growth (a reasonable assumption given the energy in the bubbles), the researchers calculated that the two bubbles are approximately 7 million years old. This age proves interesting to astronomers because a known starburst event occurred just 0.5 parsecs (1.6 light-years) from the MWG’s supermassive black hole about 6 million years ago.⁴

Another extraordinary feature about the two bubbles is that they apparently explain the origin of a network of more than 100 magnetized radio filaments in the galactic center region⁵ that have mystified astronomers since they were first discovered 35 years ago (see figure 3).⁶ These filaments exist nowhere else in the MWG. Like the two radio bubbles, these filaments are polarized and possess a synchrotron radiation spectrum. They are spatially associated with the two radio bubbles.

Figure 3: Some of the Radio Filaments in the Galactic Center Region. The bright region (left center) is the location of the supermassive black hole. The linear radio filaments are above and to the right of this area. This map was produced by a combination of Very Large Array and Greenbank Telescope data. image credit: NRAO/AUI/NSF, Yusef-Zadeh et al.

The team of 99 showed that when their map is viewed in projection, the two “bubble cavities contain an enhanced number of bright and multiple-filament complexes.”⁷ Hence, they concluded “the event that generated the bubbles was also the source of the relativistic particles required to illuminate the filaments on a large scale.”⁸ They further concluded that the two radio-wavelength bubbles they discovered were “a less energetic version of a process similar to that which created the Fermi bubbles”⁹ (which two different teams of astronomers discovered at gamma-ray-wavelengths in 2013).¹⁰

Philosophical Implications
The large team of researchers did not draw any philosophical implications from their discovery other than to comment that the two radio bubbles they discovered are an “example of a series of such intermittent events” that explain “the observed radio, X-ray and γ-ray structures”¹¹ in the region of the galactic center. However, as an astronomer I think their measurements and those by the teams that discovered the Fermi bubbles establish that when these events occur, they are, at best, detrimental to human health and catastrophic to human civilization and, at worst, deadly to all humans.

As I have described in several previous blogs,¹² we live in an exceptionally quiet, undisturbed galaxy. The MWG is the only known large galaxy with no merger events with large-dwarf or medium-sized galaxies over the past 10 billion years and with a small enough supermassive black hole to make advanced life possible somewhere in the galaxy.

In spite of the exceptionally small size of our galaxy’s supermassive black hole, events detrimental or deadly to humans and human civilization frequently occur, as this discovery and other measurements show. The good news is that humans happen to be living in between such events, highlighting the fact that at the present time our galaxy’s heart is conspicuously healthy. Such fortuitous events rank as more evidence that can be added to the abundance that already exists¹³ that the timing of our entry to Earth’s surface was no accident. It must have been planned and orchestrated.

Featured image: Galactic Center Region of the Milky Way Galaxy in the Infrared
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Spitzer Science Center