According to Stan Gooch, a late British psychologist, considered by many one of the top experts on the influence of Neanderthal man on humanity, Neanderthal man had a sophisticated, magical culture that is at the core, at the root of all our present day so called ancient knowledge and wisdom. Simply put, Gooch argued all his life that Neanderthal was the original creator, the innovator of a high culture, of symbolic values and religious sense that early modern humans (Cro-Magnon) fundamentally copied without much understanding of any of it. Neanderthal was not a civilization of high technologies, but one of the mind and spirit (shall we call it a spiritual society?) that survives today all over the world in our beliefs, myths, folklore, religious practices and language. The reason why it survives, Gooch is convinced, is that we, modern humans alive today, are not a unique human species, but we are a hybrid- formed by the coming together of Cro-Magnon man (early modern human) and Neanderthal Man through the act of interbreeding. The implications, Gooch says are immense and of extreme relevance today as the Neanderthal influence still dominates and underlies our modern society.

Gooch believes that we are missing today fifty percent of our psychology and fifty percent of our history, as Neanderthal man in the meantime had gone extinct, leaving his side of the story forever silenced. We, so far it seems, have not done too good of a job at understanding the depths of his culture, and rather went on to feel superior, belittling him in various ways throughout this century, picturing him as a hunched back brute, an ape like creature that we can barely see as human. Gooch was one of the first to see and comprehend the profound Man that was Neanderthal, so far away from this biased, simplistic portrayal. To read Gooch is to open your mind to a new kind of world, a world that is very unfamiliar and quite strange to us modern humans. What we might gain though, us modern humans is a different kind of experience of a different kind of past. This could prove invaluable.

'A biological supernova occurred when Cro-Magnon and Neanderthal man met. We can if we still listen clearly hear the echoes of that explosion and observe its after effects. Behind these echoes we can also detect the faint traces of Neanderthal civilization itself, and hear the still fainter echoes of falling cities of dreams.'

British author Colin Wilson talks about Stan Gooch's achievements: http://www.aulis.com/twothirds_colin_wilson.htm

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