In order to interpret archeological excavations according to Biblical guidelines, we need to challenge a number of strong, popular assumptions that have led secular archeology astray. This is the only way that we can find harmony between Biblical history and archeological facts and correctly describe the first people and their environment.
- The Stone Age was not primitive. C. J. Thomsen published the three-age system of classification in 1837 in order to organize a museum. But a museum is not real life. Some of the greatest artwork has been created in stone, from early times to modern times. Consider Roman statues. Flint, obsidian, alabaster, and granite are stones that have been useful in all times. Besides, bronze and iron were famous long before the Flood (Gen 5:22). Stone was merely the material of choice for migrating tribes. Also, recognize that stone tools generally got simpler the farther away people migrated from the Fertile Crescent. The idea of dating humans by the tools they used should be thrown out or at least used most judiciously!
- The Flood has not been disproven. Charles Lyell and others convinced the Royal Society, on May 26th, 1858, that human artifacts could be found below mammoths and other extinct animals. Since they falsely assumed that extinct animals were before Noah’s Flood, they proclaimed that they had disproven the Flood story. They incorrectly identified the Flood layer, so they proved nothing. Many capable voices still insist that most of the geologic column was laid down quickly by a divine catastrophe. Archeological dating is based on the assumption that the Flood did not happen. If it did, then all the early dates that have been assigned in museums are wrong.
- Neanderthals, etc., were not inferior to modern man. Neanderthals were quite human, strong, and ingenious. You yourself might have Neanderthal DNA. We are still learning to correct long-established prejudices. It took great technical skills and social collaboration for Neanderthals to entrap and kill herds of giant mastodons. Both Neanderthals and early man are found in post-Flood geological layers (Pleistocene and Holocene). All human skeletons that have ever been discovered are descendants of Noah and thus no older than 2350 BC.
- Humans are breaking down, not evolving. Every generation accumulates 2 to 3 mutations that makes a child’s body inferior to the parents’ bodies. Medicine cannot correct this. Diseases and deformities result from this. Adam and Eve had no mutations. Noah only had nine generations of accumulated mutations, so he was much closer to having a perfect body than we are. We have had somewhere between 125 and 300 generations of mutations since Noah. No wonder they were able to live much longer than we can. They were nearly perfect.
- Carbon dating must be corrected by history. Around 1950, Libby started using nuclear decay to date historical objects. It was quickly discovered that the results disagreed with history and had to be correct by measuring the radiocarbon levels of historical objects in the known past. Dendrochronology (tree-ring dating) was used, but the results still differed from historical data by several centuries when measuring the second millennium BC. Tree ring segments from before the second millennium BC are dated and placed in the master chronologies by carbon dating them, which is circular reasoning and invalid. The Flood skews early radiocarbon dates. The Flood should be considered an historical event that calibrates early carbon dating readings and limits them to the time of the Flood.
- Ice cores represent about 500 years. After the American and European master tree ring chronologies were put together to describe timelines supposedly going back over ten thousand years, ice cores and varves (lake deposits) were used to create a timescale going back fifty thousand years for varves and 800,000 years for ice cores. The problem is that you can’t validly extend a timescale that is invalid to begin with. Furthermore, ice compacts under pressure, so there are no layers to count. It’s less reliable than counting tree rings. Time is calculated based on the assumption that ice was laid down slowly at the same rate as the present. Millions of years of past existence has been assumed, not proven. The Flood would have laid down all the ice in the 500 years after the Flood. Climate change is based upon the ice core readings and timescale, which is why it is so controversial. It’s an unproven model.
- Man did not evolve out of Africa. Once upon a time, the oldest hominid skeletons were thought to have been in southern Africa. Recently, older skeletons have been found in Morocco, China, and Israel. Theories are breaking down and changing. Early Homo Sapiens have been found in Israel at Skhul, Qafzeh, and Misliya Cave. Secular theory would have us believe that man evolved from apes in Morocco and China and moved to Israel to live in caves before going to Europe to replace Neanderthals, then back to the Upper Euphrates to build the first settlements, then back to Europe as farmers. Really?!!
- Mankind did begin in the Near East. The most certain and traceable migration was farmers moving out of the Fertile Crescent into Europe and the rest of the world. The quantity of artifacts and skeletons is enormous. There is no question or debate about the migration of farming people at the time popularly called Neolithic. Only, the dates are inflated. Questionable are the relatively few human skeletons found elsewhere that are dated earlier by questionable methods. Basing a world view on assumptions and theories is not scientific. Nothing was earlier than the settlements along the Euphrates!
- Hunter-Gatherers did not precede settlers. Noah was a farmer who lived in a tent (Gen. 9:20,21). He had access to all the clean animals, because he offered some of them in sacrifice (Gen. 8:20), so he was a herdsman as well. In the third generation after Noah, Nimrod is recognized as a hunter (Gen 10:9), after God had given direction for man to start using animals as food (Gen. 9:3). The current idea that farming began four thousand years after hunter-gatherers from Europe built the first settlements is wild speculation that should be ignored. It can’t be substantiated.
We must look along the Upper Euphrates River for the first settlement. Ten were listed in the previous article. The first one would have been small. Only eight people are sure to have lived together before they had children and split into numerous settlements. They could have lived in tents, so there might not be any record before families separated. As world explorers, every family would have built primitive campsites every day’s journey as they travelled. This would give the appearance of a greater population than really existed. We will probably never have enough information about the lowest strata to see details about the first generation.
We can, however, identify succeeding periods of time by linking together similarities in strata. For instance, Çayönü has five clear, successive building periods that can be linked to other settlements. We can then fit the relative sequences into a Biblical timetable. This has never really been done before, which is surprising. I propose breaking the century from Noah to Babel into seven generations. Remember that this is all prehistoric, or before cuneiform writing. Future articles will describe population growth, settlements, and migrations as we walk through the generations from Noah to Peleg and the dispersion from Babel.
Points 1, 2, 5, 8, and 9 are based on my current unpublished writing, which of course references many sources.
#3 Neandertal Man – the changing picture
#4 Genetic Entropy by Sanford
#6 Ice cores vs the Flood
#7‘Out of Africa’ theory problems are growing
Fossil evidence for alleged apemen—Part 1: the genus Homo