Neanderthals And Denisovans & The Islamic Narrative | Mufti Abu Layth

mufti what is where do neanderthals and denisovan fit in the islamic narrative [Laughter] where do the neanderthals fit in what uh what group and denomination is this what we're trying to figure out [Laughter] no neanderthals and denisovans and there's arguably another x um species which we're not sure who they are yet but we know that they've contributed to

our dna as well and so they must have existed and so right where do they fit in i don't know what that means in the sense that um they obviously weren't around when islam is around they fit into the islamic narrative if that's what you mean or if you mean by the question what does islam say about them islam doesn't say anything about them but islam isn't here to to speak as islam isn't an archaeological or an anthropological manual

or a study guide on how to approach the human genome structure or it isn't a book on physics or isn't a book on biology or isn't it's a message to connect people to the divine the quran hints towards um other homonyms that preceded adam ali salam and i thought with this previously i mean there's different ways to look at it so the quran hints towards this that there were other homonyms that

preceded adam alaihissalam it doesn't clearly state it but it hints towards it now some people say well that hint could have no like they don't for let's say they don't feel comfortable with that so they interpret that hint oh you don't need to interpret it's a hint so it's not being very clear in in expressing it because it's not pertinent to the message that islam the quran did not come to teach you know the arabs for example about neanderthals and denisovans and and all

this you know and other hominins or heidelbergensis or you know homo rectus or astrolopithecus it didn't come for these things so well you know there's no point kind of extrapolating on this and plus this these people wouldn't understand that at the time the the arabs of arabia there's no point talking to them about you know and do you know what happened to astrolopythicus it's like what what are you talking about so uh but it hints so allah mentions in the quran that um things about adam

being a type of bashar so see a type of bashar and some people um you know they're not that convinced that the hint is referring to that then this allah mentions in the quran this questioning that there is you know almost this and and and one can ask why is this even mentioned in the quran like what is the purpose that allah mentions the angels ask this question that

that are you creating an insane who will you know uh you've said yes will just spread corruption and just all he will do is just do bloodshed they'll just go about like beasts and the question is that what were they basing this knowledge on because otherwise it doesn't make because if if there's just a new prototype of something that doesn't look like anything like it's it's just new like if i get a cube here or i get something and i say ah so you're not going to say well oh my god have you done that so this great

mischief behind this great trouble now you you'll probably ask what is it so for them to question as their first question that oh this is just another this is just something that will once again spread bloodshed on the earth the question is where were they getting they were basing this on something so some people have said they were basing this on other forms of creation

i the jinn possibly which is unseen creation unseen forces at play that's one way some people said they just based this on creatures so like let's say dinosaurs and other things that have lived and roamed the earth that these things that have just killed each other and just been beasts of prey that's what they're basing it on what seems more apt is that it's actually based on the fact that it resembles other homonyms that this homonym looks like are the hominins before it

even if it's slightly diff but it resembles them so what's so special about this hominin and that kind of seems much more apt also another uh you know amazing and beautiful way of looking at this verse of the quran if you think about it inin and one of the amazing you know this is the arabic language is that

one of the amazing connotations of what this word means because there's no point you see khalifa now means like a ruler but that word of ruler developed after islam so pre-islam the arabs never used to use the word khalifa to mean a king guru ruler but this came this is a post-islamic occurrence so there's no point reading the quran with post-islamic language that's like saying so for example when when the quran was being revealed there were no ulama

like clergy or scholars so when you read the word in the quran you can't think it's referring to clergy i mean by extension it could be so you could say look one of them this is one of the amazing features of the quran that it can by extension be referring to things but by default it couldn't be speaking about the clergy or the scholarly class because there were no scholarly class in the time of the prophet salallahu is being revealed so you have to think how was it when in the prophet's lifetime so in the prophet's lifetime khalifa couldn't have meant king or ruler because the arabs never used it like that

now one thing what it did mean is something that comes after now you see or something that comes at the end of because half the word half in arabic means behind something that comes so this thing comes then behind it or at the end of it khalifa comes this thing and it would make sense that in a chain a series of manifestations the final succession to all of that all of these homonyms is the ultimate which will result in the

cognitive revolution which will result with mankind as we know it i think that's a an amazing beautiful way to read these verses of the quran right so let's move on inject humans with massive bones neanderthals weren't stupid by the way they were i know we used that term to say you neanderthal but neanderthals were you know they were

more intelligent than we think obviously they weren't more intelligent than us today as humans but they were more intelligent than humans think they were so humans think of them like chimpanzees or gorillas they weren't like that they were much more intelligent than that so they were probably as intelligent as maybe like an eight nine year old child which is pretty intelligent so you know that's that's quite sophisticated so don't don't think that

whereas chimpanzees may be about as intelligent as maybe like a three-year-old child so it's not you know there's quite a substantial difference obviously a eight-year-old child nine-year-old child with a sophisticated mature man or woman let's say who 40 year old with the kind of sophistication of the brain that we have is is incredibly complex and we can think in immense abstraction that a child just can't comprehend even you know concepts yet so but they're not

stupid either you know an eight nine year old isn't dumb by any measure right so um the prehistoric timeline is fascinating neanderthals loved making love with humans resulting in an offspring wipe them out um you know that seems to be i don't buy the uh we kind of out we absorbed them i don't buy that they did obviously interbreed i don't think they excessively interbred

i don't think so because you see creatures have a different scent to them and i think they would generally homo sapiens and neanderthals would recognize a kind of difference in scent that would not that would be kind of somewhat off-putting like i don't think they would um like obviously they can see similarities between us and them but they don't see they wouldn't be a kind of like a sexual appeal because we we are just totally different humans and and we would have like i'm

saying we would have fundamental sense to us that maybe we can't smell because we're humans we're hot we're all kind of homo sapiens so we must all have it but they have so like the way animals have a scent or an odor they they would have had an odor that would i'm sure that homo sapiens would have found somewhat repulsive um i'm not saying it would have been totally like you can't totally stand it at all but i'm pretty sure it would have been somewhat repulsive they wouldn't have

found it appealing so hence i think it was the other way i think it was more so neandertal men with some homo sapien women and i think i don't think it was excessively happening but i think it happened on some occasions of obviously you're going to get some and the homo sapien woman is then still with her tribe and she gives birth to the child so the birth so the child carries on and the child has then neanderthal dna but then that child would carry mate with a normal human and so it'll kind of rinse it it'll kind of like

clean it out filter it out so hence today we only have one to four percent um this is non-africans africans don't have any usually neanderthal dna but non-africans i think europeans having the most and then other people as well so all non-africans have some neanderthal dna but it's it's a small amount it's probably anything between one percent to about four percent in between there and it actually contributes for also check this out it contributes for the weakness that humans have to for smoking

so those of you that smoke and you can't seem to give up smoking i am part of that is as a result of what was inherited by the neanderthal dna part of that i mean i'm sure obviously even if you didn't have you could still get affected by smoking but it i think it gives a greater propensity um to being addicted to it that's all right so what is going on

homo sapien women and tourists [Laughter] i'm sure it was all a very long time ago and yeah well not much you can do about it you can just embrace the genes now um mufti going all dr omar okay i don't know doctor i never heard africans don't have neanderthal dna this is not dr um or this is anthropology okay so that's generally how it is it doesn't mean that no person

who you may deem today to be african will have that because it could be that who you come across today and is african somewhere in the ancestry had someone that wasn't african so it could be that because people have migrated all the time so you don't know like when i did my ancestry dna 13 came through as gaelic um which is like what like irish welsh and scottish like 13 of you think what the hell is 13 of it doing all the way

in over there but it's it's like that so you're going to see that because people move around so you may have somewhere an ancestor that has contributed a certain dna so just because doesn't mean today but in essence people who have only had african ancestry they won't have any uh neanderthal dna that's the the science behind it it's not just a statement because neanderthals were not in africa so how the hell are they gonna get so where are the genes gonna come from so