Cro Magnon & the Goedel Theogany

Cro Magnon
1600cc







Mathematician
1350cc ?



Britannica Concise Encyclopedia, 2006
Neanderthals were short, stout, and powerful. Cranial capacity equaled or surpassed that of modern humans, though their braincases were long, low, and wide....Cro-Magnons were relatively more robust and powerful than today's humans, with a somewhat larger brain capacity.

Britanica 2004,
Although it appears that at the time of discovery the remains of more than 10 individuals existed at Cro-Magnon, only fragments from some five individuals were preserved and studied, among them the cranium and mandible of a male about 50 years old. "...the Old Man of Cro-Magnon, has been regarded as typical of the Cro-Magnon peoples....The cranial capacity is large, about 1,600 cubic centimetres."

"Encyclopedia Britannica, 1975, Volume V, page 298 reported that the cranial capacity of the Cro-Magnon man was 1,600 cubic centimeters, which is 18.5% larger than the male homo sapiens brain, which is 1,350 cubic centimeters."


The point of stating these primitive capacities is pure entertainment. Even presuming that everything as stated is unassailably true (they may not be), it still does no damage to Darwinian theory; it does do some damage to the preachment of that theory, because the theory in fact is faith, and this particular faith demands an absolute absence of intellect. To explain a reversion, or to explain away what seems to be a reversion, is certainly doable; but it does demand thought, it does cause a pause, and in a pause there can be a question, there can be a skepticism, and if ever Darwinism is faced with skepticism it loses force. Debate could ensue, and that is so...unnecessary.

And so that it will not be such an ill-bred bother for the Darwinians I will make their arguments for them:

--Neanderthal is extinct! Their genetic line, their genetic influence, is gone. They were a separate line, they died out, they're not part of the modern human evolutionary line so there can be no reversion so let me alone! Okay. Of course no one really knows if they were really a totally separate branch and that they passed without leaving a genetic ripple but that is the assertion and in this business assertion is fact and that's that. So no small-brained reversion from them guys.

--But that still leaves Cro Magnon...? Well, who says Cro Magnon had that big a brain? We know that there's individual variation, there aren't nearly so many Cro Magnon specimens as there are Neanderthal, how do we know that we haven't just gotten a few individual variations that were big in the brain? Okay... It is true that the brain size most often cited as representative of the set is taken from only one complete skull called Cro Mag 1. But it is spoken of as representative... It does seem that dismissing it as just an individual variation is going against what has been the anthropological assertion. But let that be. We do know two things: He is fully modern man, and thus is part of our gene pool; and our brains at least are not larger than his. And there is the question of what happened to him. Are we just Cro Magnon 10,000 years later, or did Cro Magnon interbreed somehow with something else...? I've heard it speculated that in fact he was large brained and interbred with a smaller brained human coming in from the East...? The point here probably is just that there's uncertainty.

In sum: Cro Magnon was just individual variation and Neanderthal can be ignored.

But to consider the ape-man a little more:

--We know that on average he had a larger cranial capacity than the modern human. We know that because we have many specimens and if the fossil record is to have any authority this must be so.

--We know that he went extinct and is not part of our gene pool... Of course, we don't know exactly what happened with Cro Magnon but we do know exactly what happened with Neanderthal. He's gone. This is fortunate, otherwise we would have to explain reversion to a smaller brain size, a devolution, and we couldn't quite so easily make fun of the pea-sized brain of the dinosaur when ours seems moving in the same direction.

It still is annoying that he had a larger brain than we have... Good thing he looked like an ape. That's how we know he wasn't smart.

Of course, he didn't look like an ape. He did not have bowed legs and a bent back, he stood upright just as we do, and whether he had hair like a gorilla or was a smooth as porcelain we simply don't know.

"Old Man", Homo sapiens neanderthalensis
Discovered by Amedee and Jean Bouyssonie in 1908 near La-Chapelle-aux-Saints in France. It is about 50,000 years old, with a brain size of 1620 cc. This nearly complete skeleton was reconstructed by Marcellin Boule, who wrote a definitive and highly influential paper on it which managed to be totally wrong in many of its conclusions. It exaggerated the apelike characteristics of the fossil, popularizing the stereotype, which would last for decades, of a stooping ape-man shuffling along on bent knees. This specimen was between about 30 and 40 when he died, but had a healed broken rib, severe arthritis of the hip, lower neck, back and shoulders, and had lost most of his molar teeth. The fact that he survived as long as he did indicates that Neanderthals must have had a complex social structure.

That he was ape-like was a Darwinian fantasy, sort of like Haeckel's embryos. Darwinians do this sort of thing. For the faith to be convincing it's necessary to have an apeman as a progenitor to modern man, and so they got one. This particular skeleton was uniquely suited to the need, for, to restate, it was a man severely crippled with arthritis, this explained the bowed legs and the bent back. The arthritis was ignored and the hairy body was added gratis and we had our first progenitor apeman and church going folks were outraged but put sputtering in their place and Darwinians were delighted. This public image has been allowed to remain but it is simply not true.

So I ask, if indeed Neanderthal were comely, who's to say they didn't interbreed with Cro Magnon? We know that they coexisted for thousands of years, then we know that they disappeared. Who's to say that their disappearance wasn't due to intermarriage rather than extinction? I am quite certain that there is no argument, other than assertion, that they either could or could not have interbred.

And this leaves a nice conundrum: Either we had an "apeman" who had a bigger brain than Einstein and we really can't be certain that he wasn't brighter than Einstein; or we do have Neanderthal in our blood and we have to explain how it is that the evolutionary movement has been from a larger brain to a smaller.


I have neglected Goedel. I had intended to examine his concept of man, in his perception, moving toward the godlike through the inevitable force of a progressive evolution. I guess I just find that concept difficult.

One note, for those entertained by numbers:

Lucy is generally considered our oldest hominid ancestor, at 3.5 million years; about 60lbs, brain 450cc. Making brain/body proportionate to the modern woman at 120lbs, that would make her cranial capacity 900cc, or 450 less than the present-day female. That means that since Lucy the modern brain has evolved in size at the rate of .085cc / 1000 yrs.

If we take Cro Magnon 1 as representative of his type and physically about the same size as modern man and existing as an identifiable type yet as recently as 10,000 years ago, then that means that in 10,000 years our brains have gone from 1600cc to 1350cc, or 250cc lost or 25cc lost per thousand years. That means that in 50 to 60 thousand years we'll have a brain the size of a chipmunk's.

Note: This was a hard post to write. I did a great deal of reading but it's in an area where I have no background and so found it very hard to determine fact. It is not my imagination that many Darwinian believers find this materiel embarrassing and so misstate it or ignore it. However there are straightforward sources, and so I am now pretty sure of the general tenor of fact:
--It was a surprise to me to find that Neanderthal walked upright.
--It was a surprise to discover that he not only did not have a near ape-proportioned brain but in fact had a brain larger than our own.
--I had accepted that he was exterminated by Cro Magnon, now I find that a conjecture.
--I do think that either the large brain passing from the evolutionary tree; or the large brain becoming small, both not to be expected, are challenges to public evolutionary assumptions that publicly have to be addressed.
--And I do believe that if belief in inevitable evolutionary mental progress is to be intellectually credible as a creed, then these are serious objections against that presumption of inevitability and have to be addressed. Goedel can't simply claim "insight" or "intuition" or some mystical awareness of some apriori truth. He has to have an argument.
--In terms of my own creed these are all no more than matters of curiosity.