"Now it came about, when men began to multiply on the face of the land, and daughters were born to them, that the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful; and they took wives for themselves, whomever they chose.... The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men, and they bore children to them. Those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown"

(Genesis)

Long, long ago in the distant past the sages of old remembered a time when the earth were inhabited by three species of man who co-existed. The first were called the Grigori (Watchers) who had left their heaveny bode, a universe of energy and wonders beyond human imagination and senses, who t took human form in order to satisfy their desire for the pleasures of the flesh. They had become infaturated by the beauty of women (the companions of men) and sought to mate with them. The children born from their unnatural union were called Nephilim, hybrids who were described by the sages as mighty men, strong powerful beings, but who were violent and rebellious by nature. Finally, there was man (homo sapien) who according to myth and legend was created by a supernatural entity known by the sages of old as God, the creator of all things.

Long have man spoken of these traditions but as the modern age dawned, there were those who laughed at such foolish notions. Instead, as the industrial age dawned men of learning, of science and reason, discarded such childish ramblings of men who had recorded such myths of old. It was a time of changing ideas and increasing secularisation and more and more scientists were beginning to question those who preached such outdated notions especially with regard to the idea that God had created all animals and plants that were found in nature as they existed now.

One who questioned the idea that living things were constant and unchanging, but occasionally disappeared, Charles Darwin was his name, looked at the natural world and observed that if man could breed different species of plants or animals through "artificial selection" as he called it, then why not nature if given a long time. Why not indeed? So he travelled the world collecting specimens of all kind living things and when he returned he put his findings in a book called "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection".

Darwin's book was published in 1859 while another scientist Alfred Russel Wallace four years earlier had made similar observations which he published in a scientific paper. Whereas Darwin described natural selection as being analogous to the artificial selection practised by animal breeders, and emphasised competition between individuals; Wallace drew no comparison to selective breeding, and focused on ecological pressures that kept different varieties adapted to local conditions. Both though were in agreement. Animals and plants could change depending upon natural circumstances and given a great deal of time. Darwin clearly showed that species had not been separately created (as was claimed by the Church), and to show that natural selection had been the chief agent of change. Little did he realise though that he had planted the seed for a new religion. It would only require a little time and some nurturing for the seed to become a tree that would spread its branches across the world and be worshipped like the religions of old. "A religion is a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe" and this new religion took on shape without the need of supernatural intervention.

Like any religious leader, there gathered followers and worshippers and those of the new religion were no different in thi respect. Freed from the shackles of the old religion followers of Darwin's theory gathered in strength and the new religion waxed great in the eyes of many and a name was given it - Darwinism. One disciple among the growing multitude T.H. Huxley although initially sceptical of Darwin's ideas, was won over and became an ardent follower earning the knickname of "Darwin's Bulldog". He and other like minded people expanded on Darwin's theory and developed it in conjunction with that of the transmutation of species a term used by Jean Baptiste Lamarck in 1809 for his theory that described the altering of one species into another. From "small acorns great oaks grow" and so it was that Darwinism was deified and a new faith emerged like none before - the theory of evolution.

Before long the battle lines were drawn as the prospect that man was nothing more than the natural process of evolution from animals led to much soul searching. Even though Darwin's book had barely hinted at human evolution, it became central to the debate that now began to be fought and the issue could not be more profound. If animals did not have spiritual qualities and man evolved from animals then the mental and moral qualities of man seen as spiritual aspects of the immaterial soul were in fact invalid. In other words, there was no need for God! The Church stuck to it's outdated and often wrong doctrines and fought a last ditch action but to no avail. Charles Lyell and others had demonstrated that the Earth was not created in six twenty-four days, and that God had not created all that was seen in nature but nature itself had been instrumental in changing species just like man could do with artificial selection.

Within two decades there was widespread scientific agreement that evolution was a fact. There was no going back when the evidence clearly showed that evolution had taken place. But in fact there was no evidence to support such a hypothesis. The truth of the matter was, evolution that was now being defined had not happened. All Darwin had shown was that just as man could breed animals and transform them into new species (artificial selection), so could nature (natural selection). A dog though remained a dog even when bred into something quite different from the original breed, and a bird in the wild could change too if environmental pressures were favourable. That was a far cry from the transmutation of species, the balwork for evolutionary theory then and now. The trouble is that once an idea has taken root, one can make a case to support a theory if one interpreted evidence in such a way to fit the case.

From Ape to Man

A picture from Huxley's Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature where various skeletons of apes are compared to man. The drawing was made by Waterhouse Hawkings from specimens in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons. The first skeleton of a Gibbon has purposely been doubled in size to give the illusion that man and the gibbon were similar in stature. It was acknowledged that the Gibbon shown was twice the size than found in nature, but who reads the small print?

Huxley and other naturists championed the idea of evolution and it was inevitable that the origins of man would come into the equation. Since the nearest looking animal that has had some resemblance to man was the ape, attention was focused upon the possibly that there was some kind of connection. So comparisons of anatomy began to be made in earnest.

In 1863 Huxley published a book entitled Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature in which he gave what he considered as evidence for the evolution of man and apes from a common ancestor. It was the first book devoted to the topic of human evolution, and discussed much of the anatomical comparisons between man and ape and other supposed evidence to support his case.

Eight years later Darwin published his Descent of Man and following very much the line of reasoning as his disciple Huxley, he wrote his now famous passage on the birthplace and antiquity of man in Chapter 6, quoting the Chimpanzee and Gorilla as evidence that "...as these two species are now man's nearest allies, it is somewhat more probable that our early progenitors lived on the African continent than elsewhere." As far as Huxley was concerned, "The doctrine that all men are, in any sense, or have been, at any time, free and equal, is an utterly baseless fiction." Man's very soul had been brought into question!

From hence forth the search was on for one of the early progenitors of man as proof that evolution, still only a theory, was a true the mechanism for the origins of man and not God. As it turned out as the search continued across the world a relic of an early man was found nearer home that what had been expected. So it was that a chance discovery in Germany would set in motion a myth that rebounds to this day, when in fact the find could be intepreted another way as we shall see later in this nome.

Stange Human Like Bones are Found and a Myth is born

As the search for a early human ancestor grew in intensity, rumours emerged that a strange skull cap had been dug up by German miners in 1856 working at the Feldhofer Grotto in the Neander valley. It looked somewhat human, but it was remarkably thick and sported a massive brow ridge. It was excavated alongside extinct cave bears and mammoths and so its antiquity was clearly defined. Besides the scullcap dubbed "Neanderthal" after the name of the valley where it was found, were two femora, three bones from the right arm, two from the left arm, part of the left ilium and ribs. The workers who recovered this material originally thought it to be the remains of a bear. They gave the material to amateur naturalist Johann Carl Fuhlrott, who turned the fossils over to anatomist Hermann Schaaffhausen. The discovery was jointly announced in 1857.

A recreation of the skeleton as found at Chapelle-aux-Saints on display at le musée de l'Homme de Néandertal, La Chapelle-aux-Saints

It was soon observed the Neandethal remains resembled the finding of strange skulls excavated in 1829 at Engis, Belgium and another one at Forbes' Quarry, Gibraltar in 1848. The evidence was beginning to pile up and in 1886 two nearly perfect neanderthal like skeletons of a man and woman were found at Spy in Belgium at the depth of 16 ft. with numerous Mousterian-type implements. (Since then the miscellaneous bones of over 400 "Neanderthals" have been unearthed). Neanderthal fossils have to date not been found in Africa, only in Europe and the Middle East including Israel.

Where Neanderthal remains have been found to the present date. Note the distribution.

The following reconstruction of the La Chapelle-aux-Saints Neandertal skeleton, discovered in France in 1908, was published in L'Illustration in 1909, and in the Illustrated London News about a week later. It was done by Frantisek Kupka, based on the work of Marcellin Boule.

It was over fifty years before the debate that man had descended from the apes finally became holy writ.

The general acceptance of evolution of man from the apes in the scientific community was in no small part owed to the work of one man - the famous French anatomist, Marcellin Boule. He carefully studied a recently discovered Neanderthal skeleton found in a cave at La Chapelle-aux-Saints in France. The Neanderthal man who appears to have been intentionally buried.

Boule reconstructed the Neanderthal man and showed him in drawings to be a hunched-over, misshapen creature with bent legs and face thrust forward, not unlike the stance of a gorilla. The APEMAN myth was now born and this depiction of Neanderthal would significantly influence the way people thought about their evolutionary roots. For decades thereafter; this kind of image would be reproduced in textbooks, drawings, and museum displays around the world and generations would believe that they had descended from the apes and Neanderthal was one of the members of the evolutionary tree that evolutionary scientists bandied around during this time in support of their theory. But it was wrong, wrong, wrong! Neanderthal did not look like the image that had been portrayed for so many years and that had brainwashed generations of children who became adults believing the myth. The bones were not the relics of a evolutionary ancestor of man but were in fact the remains of the Nephilim - the might men of old!