My Tribute to Jack Cuozzo
(Sept. 1, 1937 ― March 23, 2017)

By Anne Habermehl, B.Sc.

I picked up Jack Cuozzo's book, Buried Alive, in the bookstore at the 2003 ICC (International Conference on Creationism). At the previous ICC in 1998, he had presented a paper on this subject of the Neanderthals, but there were three concurrent presenters and I had instead gone to hear a presentation on Biblical Chronology and Egyptian History. Chronology was a subject that interested me, and at that time I had no idea how important Cuozzo's paper was.

On reading his book, I realized that Cuozzo had scientifically developed a truly astounding thesis: Neanderthals were people who had lived a very long time ― hundreds of years. They had to have been the post-Flood long-lived people of the Bible. This had huge implications for our human history. And it clearly explained the real reason why eventually the Neanderthals "died out," as the secular world describes it. I have to laugh at the never-ending stream of drivel that continues to appear from secular scientists on this subject, which seems to fascinate them no end. Clearly Cuozzo's thesis showed that the Neanderthals had disappeared because, as time went on, eventually people did not live long enough anymore to develop Neanderthal characteristics such as those huge eye bumps.

Jack's training as an orthodontist made him eminently qualified to measure Neanderthal skulls and show how slowly these people had developed from birth on to adulthood and old age. To back up his thesis, he used statistics on modern people's skull growth over their lifetime, and then projected how their skulls would look if they lived to be hundreds of years old. Amazingly, the projected skulls looked just like those of the Neanderthals. (His son-in-law wrote the computer program for this extrapolation.) What Jack had done was develop his thesis from two independent angles ― measuring of the Neanderthal skulls, and extrapolation of known human skull growth. In the scientific world, this is powerful support of a thesis.

As it has turned out, not everyone in our creationist circles has understood his work, and this must have been something that was difficult for him to accept. It has certainly been a source of frustration for me. I still do not see how creationists can go on trying to explain Neanderthals, and continue trying to decide which early beings were and were not human. His work seems so clear and scientific.

Well, I saw that the very slow maturation of the Neanderthals had implications for my timeline research, and for the Septuagint genealogies. I took a side tour from the subject of timeline to research and write a paper, "Those Enigmatic Neanderthals: What Are They Saying? Are We Listening?" It was published in the Answers Research Journal and is online here: https://answersingenesis.org/human-evolution/neanderthal/those-enigmatic-neanderthals/ . Jack was very patient about allowing me to consult with him during the writing of that paper. And he paid me the very fine compliment of saying that it was a great work.

I had hoped that he would write at least a paper on the matter of Homo erectus, which his work shows to have been an early superior bipedal ape. (Erectus was barely mentioned in his book, unfortunately.) I tried to convince him that this paper was really important because there is so much confusion on this matter still. And I tried to persuade him that his book needed to be revised and updated. But these things have not happened. Who will continue his very important work now?

His web site continues on: http://www.jackcuozzo.com/ . There are links to many articles and interviews, and his book and CD are for sale there as well.

I mourn the passing of a great scientist and a great creationist who has left an important legacy behind him. He will not be forgotten.