Is there an explanation for pre-humans from a biblical point of view?
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There is the classic question of where Cain's wife came from and who the people he feared would kill him were. One answer to that question is that they were other hominids alive at the time.
Some, like Hugh Ross and his ministry Reasons to Believe (RTB), suggest that God used hominids to prepare the way and help other species adapt and that if he had not done so, h*m* sapiens would have burst on the scene and wreaked havoc with the ecosystem balance.
Here's a blurb from RTB:
RTB’s biblical creation model views the hominids found in the fossil record as animals created by God’s direct intervention. These creatures existed for a time and then went extinct. RTB’s model considers the hominids to be remarkable creatures that walked erect and possessed some level of limited intelligence and emotional capacity. This ability allowed these animals to employ crude tools and even adopt some level of “culture” much like baboons, gorillas, and chimpanzees. While the RTB creation model posits that the hominids were created by God’s divine fiat, they were not spiritual beings made in His image. The RTB model reserves this status exclusively for modern humans.
The model treats the hominids as analogous to, but distinct from, the great apes. Because of this, the RTB model predicts that anatomical, physiological, biochemical, and genetic similarities will exist among the hominids and modern humans to varying degrees. But since the hominids were not made in God’s image, they are expected to be clearly distinct from modern humans, particularly in their cognitive capacity, behavior, “technology,” and “culture.”
Their more detailed speculations are in the book Who Was Adam? (I should note I don't buy all of RTB's views about creation, but I'm just reporting what they say.)
Theistic evolutionists typically see God as working in and through the natural world to bring about his desired end, viz. humans who are in his image. Some think God did something new and special with Adam or that Adam crossed some evolutionary threshold that distinguished him from his predecessors, while others think there was no historical Adam at all, often identifying the first eleven chapters of Genesis as mytho-poetic rather than strictly historical. (Biologos.org has readings on both of these views.)
Young Earth Creationists typically see the hominids as not so different from us, or no more different than, say, an Aborigine from New Guinea is from Shaquille O'Neal.
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