“If one were to read Young Earth sites like Answers In Genesis and Institute for Creation Research, one would learn that have been saying for decades that Neanderthals were normal human beings with Rickets disease and existed as separate colonies from humans, much like leper colonies.”
—If the standard Neanderthal physique is from rickets, than I need to stop drinking milk.
One of the most easily identifiable differences between Neanderthals and Homo sapiens is how incredibly massive their bones are and how powerfully built they are. The very opposite of rickets. The vast majority of the Neanderthal diet was meat; in other words they hunted for almost all their food, a lifestyle next to impossible for people with rickets.
It’s a rather odd idea to have people who have a disease that’s completely non-contagious, and makes it very difficult to walk, travel hundreds or thousands of miles north – to a land with relatively little sunlight. Of course, lack of sunlight is a main cause of rickets. It would be like sending people suffering from scurvy to the Island of No Fruit, when all they need to get better is to eat an orange.
While Neanderthal probably did not consume milk other than from their mothers, they probably crunched a lot of bones and marrow. Also, their pale skin, redhead, blue eyed traits made it especially easy for them to utilize what little sun their were exposed to to form Vitamin D in their skin and absorb it for bone building. When our European ancestors, had a white skin gene mutation, it accelerated their ability to move north, but some also probably bred with Neanderthals and got the redhead, pale skin gene which also facillitated their move north. Thus there are probably two distinct classes of “white” people. Would be interesting to see genetic research on that. I think my late husband probably had some of those Neanderthal genes. Scotish ancestry, acute sun sensitivity.