# Neanderthal fossils: proven false? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [January 2, 2004, 3:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neanderthal-fossils-proven-false/222296 "2004-01-02T15:47:02Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![istara](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e79b87/32.png) [@istara](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/istara)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2004, 3:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neanderthal-fossils-proven-false/222296/1 "2004-01-02T15:47:02Z")
While I’m actually hoping for more scientific feedback on this, GD seems more appropriate as my source is a Creationist one, and the study of fossils seems to be as much interpretation as hard facts. This website - [http://www.faithchild.com/fossils.shtml](http://www.faithchild.com/fossils.shtml) - links to various claims that neanderthal and “early man” fossils are mainly mistakes. I do notice that three of her sources are “Chick” publications - would that perhaps be the same Chick that has those bizarre fundamentalist comic strips? I’m particularly interested in this claim, about Neanderthal Man: > [@](#): > > **Discovered in 1856 in a limestone cave near Dusseldorf, Germany, the skeletal remains were originally stated as human by an anatomist. However, upon the publication of Darwin’s Origin of Species, Evolutionists argued that Neanderthal Man was an ape-like creature. In 1957, it was determined that the man had suffered from severe arthritis, causing the bent posture and affecting his jaw.** Have most “early human” fossils truly been debunked by mainstream science? ---
**Author:** ![photopat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/e95f7d/32.png) [@photopat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/photopat)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2004, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neanderthal-fossils-proven-false/222296/2 "2004-01-02T15:54:06Z")
“Most?” I think not. Some fossils (of early hominids and other creatures) have been reconstructed and corrected from earlier assemblies after more research. I’ll go look for cites now, but I think you’ll find that “mainstream” science, which is to say _science_ has only increased it’s understanding of human evolution and proven it beyond any reasonable (meaning Chick-less) doubt. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2004, 4:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neanderthal-fossils-proven-false/222296/3 "2004-01-02T16:11:46Z")
The whole list of fossils (and the comments about them) there looks like it is pretty much inspired by Chick’s _Big Daddy_\* tract - his website is down right now, so I can’t check. ---
**Author:** ![edwino](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/35a633/32.png) [@edwino](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/edwino)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2004, 4:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neanderthal-fossils-proven-false/222296/4 "2004-01-02T16:34:08Z")
What talk.origins has to say about it: [http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/a\_neands.html](http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/a_neands.html) ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2004, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neanderthal-fossils-proven-false/222296/5 "2004-01-02T16:39:02Z")
[Here](http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0055/0055_01.asp) is the tract in question; the assertions on your linked site seem pretty much lifted from there (this happens all the time). Of course, it is complete bullshit rhetoric; hand-picked examples of hoaxes and misinterpretations (plus some that he just tells lies about). ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2004, 4:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neanderthal-fossils-proven-false/222296/6 "2004-01-02T16:58:28Z")
Yes, it’s true. The entire scientific community is in a massive conspiracy to drum up fake evidence for evolution. Thousands of researchers meet in secret every month and only a few brilliant creationists have been able to crack the cabal. Riiiiiiiight… ---
**Author:** ![flodnak](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/838e76/32.png) [@flodnak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/flodnak)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2004, 5:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neanderthal-fossils-proven-false/222296/7 "2004-01-02T17:13:14Z")
Interesting. I can remember a teacher - not even slightly of a creationist bent - mentioning in class that scientists at first thought Neandertals were stooped, knuckle-dragging ape-ish creatures because one of the first Neandertal skeletons to be studied was of an older man crippled by arthritis. When more skeletons of younger and healthier individuals were studied, it was discovered that they walked upright just like us _H. sapiens_, but by then the popular image of the hunchbacked slack-jawed Neandertal was set and it’s still around to this day. But now that I’ve seen a clearly false creationist claim that’s so similar, I’m getting suspicious. Any truth to this, or was my teacher taken in by a bit of academic folklore? ---
**Author:** ![DanBlather](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/f4b2a3/32.png) [@DanBlather](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DanBlather)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2004, 5:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neanderthal-fossils-proven-false/222296/8 "2004-01-02T17:16:49Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by John Mace \* > \*\*Yes, it’s true. The entire scientific community is in a massive conspiracy to drum up fake evidence for evolution. Thousands of researchers meet in secret every month and only a few brilliant creationists have been able to crack the cabal. Riiiiiiiight… \*\* Shhh!!! You are not supposed to say this to someone without the secret handshake. BTW, why don’t Christians decry Chick for violating the commandment “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor”. Unlike homosexuality, this is explicitly called out in the ten commandments so is presumably a more serious “offense”. ---
**Author:** ![Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/50afbb/32.png) [@Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duck_Duck_Goose)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2004, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neanderthal-fossils-proven-false/222296/9 "2004-01-02T17:36:09Z")
Well, as usual with the Creationists, the main weapons here (on this overtly anti-evolution website) are the sweeping generalization and the vast over-simplification. > [@](#): > > \*Lucy > Dated at 2,900,000 years old, she was once believed to have been the oldest known ancestor of humans. However, most experts now agree that Lucy was merely a 3 foot chimpanzee. \* No. This is not what “most experts” now believe. What Lucy is now understood to be: [http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/cavemen/chronology/contentpage1.shtml](http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/cavemen/chronology/contentpage1.shtml) > [@](#): > > Like a chimpanzee, Lucy had a small brain, long, dangly arms, short legs and a cone-shaped thorax with a large belly. But the structure of her knee and pelvis show that she routinely walked upright on two legs, like us. This form of locomotion, known as ‘bipedalism’, is the single most important difference between humans and apes, placing Lucy firmly within the human family. So, what it is that “most experts” agree is, not that Lucy is merely a chimpanzee, but that Lucy is a sort of intermediate primate, somewhere on the bush that comprises “primate evolution”, but not necessarily a direct **ancestor** of _homo sapiens_. But the way Faithchild has phrased it, it makes it sound like “most experts” have thrown Lucy out of the primate evolution bush altogether, which isn’t true. > [@](#): > > _Heidelberg Man > This ape like creature was built completely from a single jaw bone, thought now to be of human origin._ If by “human origin”, Faithchild means “now they think it was just a a _homo sapiens_ jawbone,” AFAIK this is not correct. Heidelberg Man was based on a single jawbone at first, yes–but then 32 more skeletons were found. AFAIK the jawbone is still currently thought to be of non-_homo sapiens_ origin. [http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/cavemen/factfiles/homo\_heidelbergensis.shtml?evidence](http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/cavemen/factfiles/homo_heidelbergensis.shtml?evidence) And, paleontologists base new species on single specimens all the time, it’s not that big a deal. But Faithchild makes it sound like something stupid, or unreasonable, to have done. > [@](#): > > \*Nebraska Man > Constructed from a single tooth, later discovered to have belonged to an extinct species of pig. \* This is actually true. However, in the biased context, it makes it sound worse than it was. [http://www.cincinnatiskeptics.org/blurbs/nebraska-man.html](http://www.cincinnatiskeptics.org/blurbs/nebraska-man.html) > [@](#): > > This is a story that creationists like to tell to show how absurd scientists are. In 1922, a tooth of a prehistoric pig, discovered in Nebraska, was misidentified as the tooth of a prehistoric man. A whole early man, “Nebraska Man,” was reconstructed from it before the tooth was correctly identified in 1927. Creationists imply that if scientists can’t tell the difference between a pig and a man, how can they be trusted to identify anything correctly? > > Actually, the episode highlights two virtues of science: its openness to possibilities and its self-correcting nature. Pig and human pre-molars look similar, so it was a reasonable mistake. It was two teeth, not a single tooth, that were in question. It was not immediately embraced by the whole scientific community as an early man, but was examined as a possible early anthropoid relative. It was not scientists who reconstructed the whole person from the teeth, but a tabloid, the Illustrated London News. Within five years of the release of the teeth to the scientific community, they had been correctly identified and the early anthropoid hypothesis was discarded. > > Far from showing scientists as absurd, the episode shows that scientists are open-minded about new hypotheses, have processes for testing them, and discard them if they prove wrong. > [@](#): > > _Piltdown Man > Built from a jawbone belonging to an ape._ This is actually true, too, but what Faithchild isn’t telling you is that it was a deliberate hoax, not a “misidentification” by over-eager evolutionary biologists. [http://www.piltdown-man.com/](http://www.piltdown-man.com/) It doesn’t prove anything, but included in the list as it is, it seems to bolster Faithchild’s case, that scientists, in their anxiety to “debunk” God, will rush to identify anything as an “ancestor” of humans. > [@](#): > > \*Neanderthal Man > Discovered in 1856 in a limestone cave near Dusseldorf, Germany, the skeletal remains were originally stated as human by an anatomist. However, upon the publication of Darwin’s Origin of Species, Evolutionists argued that Neanderthal Man was an ape-like creature. In 1957, it was determined that the man had suffered from severe arthritis, causing the bent posture and affecting his jaw. \* Right, that’s all substantially correct, if greatly oversimplified–but what Faithchild isn’t telling you is that the business with the arthritis involved only the one specimen, and that it proved only that that one specimen may have had arthritis. And Fairchild also isn’t telling you that it is still agreed that that one specimen is **still** a Neanderthal, albeit one with arthritis. It doesn’t discredit the entire body of evidence for a human species called _homo neanderthalensis_. And there is a substantial body of evidence for it, DNA and everything. [http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/cavemen/factfiles/homo\_neanderthalensis.shtml?evidence](http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/cavemen/factfiles/homo_neanderthalensis.shtml?evidence) [http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/cavemen/chronology/contentpage5.shtml](http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/cavemen/chronology/contentpage5.shtml) And finally, that last quote from David Pilbeam… > [@](#): > > “Perhaps generations of students of human evolution, including myself, have been flailing about in the dark; that our data base is too sparse, too slippery, for it to be able to mold our theories. Rather the theories are more statements about us and ideology than about the past. Paleoanthropology reveals more about how humans view themselves than it does about how humans came about. But that is heresy.” (who BTW is a [serious scientist, and an evolutionist](http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/information/biography/pqrst/pilbeam_david.html)) doesn’t prove anything. First, it’s the classic example of the quote taken out of context and used to prove a point. Second, it makes it sound like even scientists admit that we don’t know anything about primate evolution. But look at the date– **1978.** That was almost 30 years ago, and we’ve amassed a great deal of information on primate evolution in the last 30 years. Also, as I said, David Pilbeam is a paleoanthropologist, so it’s ludicrous to take a remark of his out of context and use it to suggest, ever so delicately, that maybe even he doesn’t believe in evolution. But this is what they’ve done. [Here’s](http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/1301.asp) an AnswersInGenesis discussion of the 1978 article, in which they make it sound as though a scientist who is actually arguing for keeping an open mind, and who is simply saying “We don’t have all the answers”, is actually saying, “Evolution is not supported by the evidence.” Yes, back in the 1970s the study of primate evolution DID take a major turn away from the “_homo sapiens_ descended in a straightforward linear fashion from apes” theory to the “bush” theory, the one that has many different kinds of apes, including \* homo sapiens\*, branching off from a common primitive primate ancestor. But quoting David Pilbeam in 1978 saying “We don’t really know anything, and I’m rethinking my position on a few things” to support a position of “even scientists admit we didn’t descend from apes and therefore evolution is wrong” is silly. ---
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2004, 5:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neanderthal-fossils-proven-false/222296/10 "2004-01-02T17:55:28Z")
They’ve done the same quoting out of context thing with Stephen Jay Gould, based on his punctuated equilibrium theory. I’ve come to the basic conclusion that Creationists, the ones leading the movement at least, are deliberate liars. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2004, 5:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neanderthal-fossils-proven-false/222296/11 "2004-01-02T17:58:45Z")
It is sometimes hard to tell, among certain Creationists, whether they are deliberately lying or they are truly as ignorant as they seem. (Gish and Hovind, of course, _are_ dishonest.) The whole “arthritis” issue has more to do with early discussions of posture than with actual identification of Neandertal. The “stooped” posture attribued to the earliest complete skeleton _has_ been ascribed to bone disease–by mainstream scientists supporting evolution. However, the distinction between _Homo sapiens sapiens_ and _Homo sapiens neanderthalis_ ( or _Homo sapiens_ and _Homo neanderthalis_ for those who prefer that nomenclature), is not based on posture, but on distinct differences in the jaws, cranial ridges, and lengths and diameters of other bones. Regarding the other bogus claims: Lucy is _not_ regarded as a _chimpanzee_ by any serious paleontologist. Lucy is classified as one example (of several) of _Australopithecus afarensis_. She is placed among the apes, not the humanoid groups, bit is still considred to be one stage in the eventual development of humans. Heidelberg man was not “built completely from a single jaw.” Rather, the jaw of the Heidelberg discovery was found to have an age that falls into the overlapping range of _Homo erectus_ and _Homo sapiens_ and the structure of the jaw is also sufficiently like and unlike both of those species to cause paleontologists to argue over where Heidelberg should be classified. Nebraska Man is the most persistent lie told by Creationists. The discovery of a single tooth in 1921(?) was speculated to be of proto-human origin. In fewer than two years, the paleontological community (including the discoverer) had recognized that the tooth was actually that of an ancestral pig. (Humans and swine each have a couple of teeth that are quite similar in construction.) The original discovery was never held up as an example of any particular ancestral human, although one magazine “punched up” their story on the discovery with a “cave man” drawing that had no connection to the actual report written by the discoverer. Piltdown Man was a deliberate fraud that was never accepted by the paleopontological community, as a whole, and was discovered to have been a fraud by paleontologists. There are many examples of _Homo erectus_, including Java Man and Peking Man. In the late nineteenth and earliest 20th centuries, when the initial discoveries were rare and it was more difficult to recognize the differences between individuals vs the differences between groups, several of the initial discoveries were given different classifications and different names. As the number of fossils accumulated for each group, allowing broader comparison for those groups, most of these individual discoveries have been recognized as belonging to one or another group. This page from [TalkOrigins.org](http://TalkOrigins.org) discusses the entire range of (currently known) [hominid species development](http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/species.html), pointing out issues and overlaps among different species. ---
**Author:** ![istara](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e79b87/32.png) [@istara](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/istara)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2004, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neanderthal-fossils-proven-false/222296/12 "2004-01-02T18:05:50Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by edwino \* > \*\*What talk.origins has to say about it: > [http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/a\_neands.html](http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/a_neands.html) \*\* Cool - that is a great site, thank you. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2004, 6:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neanderthal-fossils-proven-false/222296/13 "2004-01-02T18:08:40Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by tomndebb \* > Lucy is _not_ regarded as a _chimpanzee_ by any serious paleontologist. Lucy is classified as one example (of several) of _Australopithecus afarensis_. She is placed among the apes, not the humanoid groups, bit is still considred to be one stage in the eventual development of humans. You might want to clarify this. _A. afarensis_ is no more “placed among the apes” than we are. Luci is a hominid (upright ape), as are we. Whether Lucy’s kind represent a direct ancestor of ours, or a side branch is not known. But if you **had** to pick an ancestor from among the fossils, she’d be at least as good as any. > [@](#): > > Piltdown Man was a deliberate fraud that was never accepted by the paleopontological community, as a whole, and was discovered to have been a fraud by paleontologists. Do you have a cite for this? I was under the impression that Piltdown was pretty well accepted when it was first “discovered” and only gradually marginalized until it was finally debunked many years afterwards. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2004, 7:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neanderthal-fossils-proven-false/222296/14 "2004-01-02T19:28:59Z")
> [@](#): > > A. afarensis is no more “placed among the apes” Based on the genus, _Australopithecus_, I guess it is a matter of perspective. I do agree that Australopithecus\* (literall, southern ape) is included in _Hominidae_ (“our” family) rather than among _Pongidae_, the current apes. I guess I have been reading too many paleos who want to merge the pongids and hominids. My memory of Piltdown has been that those who simply accepted Dawson, accepted Piltdown, but that those who looked at the evidence began raising objections almost immediately. I am not claiming that no one was ever taken in by the hoax, only that acceptance led to pie-in-the-sky speculation rather than serious investigation. There did tend to be a more general acceptance of Piltdown in Britain, (owing either to the rerspect acorded Dawson or the delight in finding an earlier ancestor on the island), but the French, the Americans, and the Germans never really gave much credence to the find. The American Museum of Natural History, for example, labeled the fossils as being from separate species. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2004, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neanderthal-fossils-proven-false/222296/15 "2004-01-02T19:41:33Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by tomndebb \* > Based on the genus, _Australopithecus_, I guess it is a matter of perspective. I do agree that _Australopithecus_ (literall, southern ape) is included in _Hominidae_ (“our” family) rather than among _Pongidae_, the current apes. I guess I have been reading too many paleos who want to merge the pongids and hominids. Yeah, it’s hard to call taxonomy “real” science. I was more reacting to the impication of your original post that Lucy and her kind were “apes” but that we aren’t. _Australopithicus_, as a genus, was created long before our current understanding of the underlying genetics. Then you have Walpoff who wants to put pretty much everything into _Homo sapiens_… ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2004, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neanderthal-fossils-proven-false/222296/16 "2004-01-02T19:55:18Z")
We must also realize that the existence of an “elderly” (by the standards of before the 20th century–IIRC he was nearly 40!), arthritic, nearly crippled, Neanderthal indicates a supportive group structure that kept Gramps around long after he was particularly useful as a hunter, not the crazed, animalistic view of Neanderthal society promulgated in the 19th century. The story of “Nebraska Man” is also kept alive in Anthropology courses as a lesson in not theorizing from only a couple teeth. We (“Whadya mean ‘we’? You’ve been out of the business since 1976!”) try to learn from our mistakes. Finally, as for Lucy, that ain’t no chimp pelvis. ---
**Author:** ![MEBuckner](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mebuckner/32/2896_2.png) [@MEBuckner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MEBuckner)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2004, 8:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neanderthal-fossils-proven-false/222296/17 "2004-01-02T20:08:12Z")
**tomndebb** and **John Mace** : The problem (as both of you probably already know) is that “ape” is pretty well impossible to defend as a taxonomic classification anymore. The relationships between existing apes looks something like this: **(Gibbon Siamang)** **(**{[Gorilla] [(Bonobo Chimpanzee) (Human)]} {Orangutan}**)** With the species labeled in blue classified as “apes”, and the species labeled in red commonly _not_ classified as an “ape”, which is really not tenable. Lucy _was_ an ape. So are we. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2004, 8:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neanderthal-fossils-proven-false/222296/18 "2004-01-02T20:17:25Z")
Of course, by cladistic theory there can be no such family as “Pongidae”, unless it contains only the orangutan, with the common chimp, gorilla, bonobo and human placed in Hominidae. I don’t see why the orang is so different from chimps that it warrants its own family, so I’d lump it in with the hominids. The reason Pongidae is an artificial group is that chimpanzees are included in a group with their distant relatives the gorillas and orangs, but excluded from a group with their closer relatives, the humans. Not kosher. ---
**Author:** ![Aldebaran](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c6cbf5/32.png) [@Aldebaran](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aldebaran)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2004, 8:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neanderthal-fossils-proven-false/222296/19 "2004-01-02T20:17:36Z")
One could also say that “apes” need to be classified under “human”. Salaam. A ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2004, 8:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neanderthal-fossils-proven-false/222296/20 "2004-01-02T20:22:25Z")
But as MEBuckner indirectly points out, Hylobatidae IS a valid family, since all of the half-dozen species of gibbons are more closely related to each other than any is to any other Anthropoids. I’d give Anthropoids only two families, Hylobatidae and Hominidae, gibbons in one, and everyone else including humans in the other. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neanderthal-fossils-proven-false/222296.md?page=2)