MAN’S EARLY HISTORY
By Brooks A. Harris
In this article I will be using modern scientific evidence, secular history and history recorded in Genesis chapters 1-11 in the Holy Bible to explain what I understand to be our true early history. This article will take you from the creation of all things in nature through explanations of the dinosaurs' role in history, cavemen, the ark and effects of Noah's world-wide flood, the Tower of Babel's aftermath, and finally to early civilizations around the world.
Many people who were brought up with traditional secular views of our origins will have trouble accepting many of the views which I will be presenting. Therefore if you want to learn much more about the subjects in this article, see several articles at
http://www.answersingenesis.org/ (Select "Get Answers") and read other suggested articles offered throughout this article. Also see the articles "Evidence For Biblical Reliability" and "Creative Views Of Science" at this blog site.
Unique Creation
"In the beginning, God created... ." The Bible does not try to explain the existence of God. To the writer, who was inspired by God to write the record of our beginnings, the eternal existence of God was understood. God had no beginning. He has always existed.
So, in the beginning God created all of nature in six days. Now was this a literal six days or just figurative? Many people believe that the world and universe are billions of years old, but this idea is only a theory based on man’s imagination and evidence which has been interpreted with many assumptions which now contradict modern scientific evidences. Only man’s theories and experiments, based on many unprovable assumptions, suggest an age of billions of years. These theories are quickly being disproved by advanced modern scientific evidences. The ancient past cannot be "proven" scientifically since the conditions of the past cannot be directly observed. Also reliable experiments cannot be performed on items from the ancient past without making many assumptions of the past conditions as: climate, radiation levels, geologic activity and the beginning composition of items being tested.
There is much evidence to show that the "Days of Creation" were literal 24 hour days and that the earth and universe are only a few thousand years old. For example, the Old Testament was originally written in Hebrew. The Hebrew word for "day" is "yom" and although it can mean long periods of time, as our word for day, it always means a 24 hour day when used with the words "evening’ or "morning" or used with a numeral as is done in Genesis and throughout the Bible.
There are several other evidences for a young earth and universe. According to present rates, our moon is far too close to earth, the erosion rate of earth is far too fast, the sodium level and sedimentation in our oceans is far too little, helium in the atmosphere is far too little, and comets, galaxies and earth’s magnetic field degrade far too fast for earth and the universe to be more than a few thousand years old. Even the speed of light has been shown to be slowing down. This helps explain the presence of star light in a young universe from stars millions of light years away. Of course, God could have created the light rays from the stars when He created the stars too. (See
http://www.evolution-facts.org/ Select: "3 Vol. Encyclopedia" then "6 The Age of the Earth" - (59 evidences that the earth is only a few thousand years old - about 20 pages) and
www.icr.org/article/1842/ for "Evidence For a Young World" (14 natural phenomena evidences that the universe is only a few thousand years old - 5 pages)
We must be very careful not to limit God when trying to interpret His miracles. "With God, all things are possible." Why did God use six days for his creation? He could have created all things in six months, six minutes or even six seconds or less. He created in six days and rested on the seventh day in order to set a pattern for us to remember. God wants us to constantly remember Him and His creation. We are to work six days, but on the seventh day of every week (the Sabbath day) we are to rest and worship God. Throughout the centuries it has been demonstrated that this seven day cycle allows for people to be more productive, allowing for enough rest, than any longer work period tried. Also this seven day cycle (one week) is a memorial to us of God’s creation week. Although the idea of a day, a month, and a year can be observed in nature, the idea of a week is not demonstrated anywhere in nature. God gave us the idea of a week and it has been observed by basically all nations ever since.
In God’s six days of creating, He created areas during the first three days then He put things in those areas on the next three days. On day one, He created a water covered earth and empty space around earth called heaven; and on the forth day he created all the heavenly bodies (the sun, the moon, other planets, and the stars with their galaxies) to fill the space. On day two, He split the water creating sky, or atmosphere, and on day five He created fish and birds to fill the water and the sky. On day three He created dry land and plants then created on day six animals and man to fill the rest of the earth. Man was the last thing He created because man was to be the climax of His creation, the ultimate reason for His creation. He created all things for His glory and for man’s pleasure.
So in the beginning God created paradise on earth. All living things, including man, were created mature and perfect with no defects. Man and all animals were designed to live in peace with one another and therefore be vegetarians and live forever. There was no disease, decay, deterioration, mutations, pain, suffering, struggle for survival, or death of any animals before God’s later curse on the earth. Unlike any other known planet, earth was created just right to meet the strict limits to support all life on it. It had just the right composition and amount of elements for life to exist and thrive. (See
http://www.creationevidence.org/ - Under "Main Menu" select "Scientific Evidence for Creation" then "Evidence For Creation - 10 brief reasons" & "Our Created Earth: Uniquely Designed for Life" (1page each)
Pre-Flood Conditions
When God separated the waters on day two of His creation, He created liquid water on the surface of the earth and probably a very thick, dense, transparent, water-vapor layer high above the earth with atmosphere in between. This water vapor layer, which may have been frozen, would have allowed a greenhouse effect keeping a fairly uniform temperature world-wide. This would have allowed constant fair weather with possibly no clouds (separate from the water vapor layer), no storms and possibly even no rain. Moisture from the ground and air would have kept the vegetation watered. On day three of God’s creation, all land emerged possibly as one large continent. All land was probably covered with a thick layer of nutrient-rich topsoil for the abundant tropical vegetation created to support man and all animal life. Remember, man and all animals were to have been plant eaters only, before God’s curse on man and the entire earth. We can only imagine what the plant and animal life must have been like in this early environment.
Today’s modern scientific evidences strongly indicate that the earth is only a few thousand years old and that all creatures originated at about the same time instead of thousands to millions of years apart. There is popular belief in our secular society that over millions of years organisms slowly and progressively evolved from "simple" one-celled organisms into invertebrates, then into fish, then into amphibians, then into reptiles which eventually evolved into mammals and birds. If this were so, we should have found many fossilized and living organisms which are halfway between two separate kinds of organisms, but as of yet there has been no confirmation of any such transitional organisms - dead or alive. Also science shows that all living things, even a single cell, are so complex and so well structured and so well organized that they indicate special, intelligent design of each kind verses the possibility of random, chance, progressive occurrences. (In the article "Creative Views of Science - Origins Lecture" read the chapters on "Origin of Life" and "Origin of The Species" for more information)
Adam and Eve’s sin, their rebellion against God, led to God’s curse on man and God’s entire creation. Due to sin, man immediately suffered spiritual death - separation from God, and all life would begin to deteriorate, suffer and eventually physically die. Most people who lived before the world-wide flood lived to be over 900 years old due to their still nearly defect-free bodies and environment, their perfect nutrient-rich foods, and probably due to the water vapor layer which would have limited the defect-causing solar radiation (and very likely due to increased levels of humidity and barometric pressure levels). Although some recent evidence suggest that some dinosaurs grew quickly then leveled off, some dinosaurs could have reached gigantic sizes if they continue to grow throughout their life like other reptiles and if they also lived several hundred years.
Unlike the concept of early man being very primitive, brutish and ignorant, first men were very intelligent according to Biblical records. Before Eve was made from Adam’s side, Adam was given the responsibility of naming all the cattle, birds of the air, and beasts of the field. What is more important than his ability to quickly name all those animals, is why he was commanded to do this. After reviewing all the different animals Adam would have noticed that all of these animals were paired - male and female. They all had suitable mates. He realized that none were suitable for him and that he needed a suitable female partner to fulfill his needs. So God created Eve to be Adam’s helper, his companion. Man’s high intelligence was also demonstrated with man’s ability to build cities and make musical instruments as the flute and harp, and by their skills of metallurgy, farming and animal husbandry all within seven generations from Adam.
The recent Human Genome Project and studies of mitochondrial DNA support the biblical teaching that there is only one biological race of humans and all people trace back to a single mother living only a few thousand years ago. For all people to be linked to a common human ancestor, that ancestor would have to have all the genes (dominant & recessive) in their DNA that are found in all people who have ever lived. Therefore Adam and Eve were probably mid-brown in color (having all the dominant and recessive genes for coloration) and would have had all the genetic information in their genes to produce all the physical (as racial) characteristics that we see in all people groups today.
All the originally created "kinds" of animals would also have had all the genes (dominant & recessive) in their DNA that are found in all animals of their same kind. Although God created each kind of animal on days 5 & 6 of His creation, gene reshuffling and damage to original genes over time in each kind allowed for tremendous variations within each kind. What we actually see evidence of today is that many different specific kinds (similar to what we might think of as "genuses") of organisms were created at about the same time (not millions of years apart), with the ability to reproduce only within their own kind. In each kind of animal’s DNA, there are strict limits as to what it can breed with to produce offspring. Over tens to hundreds of years, each kind (genus-like) eventually developed many varieties (species-like) within its own kind, due to gene reshuffling and mutations.
If all animals were created at the same time (in literally two days - days 5 & 6 of God’s creation) they would have all lived together. This includes the dinosaurs and man living together. To many people this sounds preposterous, believing that dinosaurs died out long before man was around. But there is much evidence that dinosaurs did live with mankind and that they did not die out millions of years before man lived. Many reports of sightings and encounters with dinosaur-like creatures have been recorded in many cultures throughout the past few centuries. (See
www.answersingenesis.org/articles/1999/11/05/dinosaurs-and-the-bible for "Dinosaurs and the Bible" (6 pages)
www.apologeticspress.org/articles/3647 "What Happened to the Dinosaurs?" (6 pages)
www.apologeticspress.org/articles/15 "Walking Amidst the Dinosaurs" (15 pages) &
http://www.rae.org/ the entire book:
After The Flood by Bill Cooper, is online and shows Records of Dinosaur/dragon legends) The Bible even mentions dinosaur-like creatures - "behemoth & leviathan" (in Job) and dragons. The King James Bible does not mention the word "dinosaur" because the word "dinosaur" was not invented until 1841 long after the Bible was translated into English in 1611.
After about 1500 years since the creation of Adam and Eve, the population of mankind had grow greatly but man’s rebellion against God had also grown rampant world-wide. God had given man free-will to make his own decisions about how he wanted to live - did he want to live a life with God or without Him. Most people decided to be pagan worshipers, worshiping God’s created things, as astrological bodies and idols and other gods rather than worshiping the Creator Himself. They were living very immoral lives, living to please themselves any way they wanted to. This brought on God’s judgement of a world-wide flood to destroy all living creatures on the face of the earth except for God’s faithful believer: Noah (and his family).
Noah’s Day
God commanded Noah, 120 years before the flood, to build a boat out of gopherwood (possibly cypress or even a now extinct species of tree). God also had Noah warn the people of that time to repent (turn from their evil ways and worship God). Noah was to be responsible for repopulating the earth with all kinds of organisms after the year-long, world-wide flood. All he had to do was to build the huge barge-like ark to God’s given dimensions of 300 cubits (about 450 feet) long, by 50 cubits (about 75 feet) wide, by 30 cubits (about 45 feet) tall, with three decks on the inside. Modern day ship builders have determined that these dimensions make for a perfect seaworthy design. It was also to be waterproofed with pitch on the inside and out. The ark would have had a volume equivalent to that of 522 railroad cars (about 1.52 million cubic feet). Once Noah finished building the ark he was to load representatives (one male and one female) of each original kind of land-dwelling, air-breathing animal. He was also to load seven of each "clean" animal kind - probably for food and later sacrifices.
It would only have been necessary to use about 16,000 individual animals - one pair of each "kind" (genus-like) and not every species-like which had arisen from the original kinds. This is because each original kind of creature had all the genetic information in their DNA to produce all the different species of that kind up to this point. Therefore one pair of each kind of creature (having genes as close as possible to the original kinds) would be able to reproduce, within a few generations, through gene reshuffling and eventual mutations, all or most of the species which died in the flood plus new species. The specific pairs of creatures were probably chosen by God and led onto the ark by God and controlled by God while on the ark. While many may have hibernated or been in a state of stupor, God would have provided a way for Noah and his family to completely care for His creatures. The medium size of all the animals on the ark would have been that of a large mouse, with only about 11% of the animals being much larger than sheep.
As to the matter of dinosaurs on the ark, instead of loading the huge, full-grown, large animals (like some of the dinosaurs - most dinosaurs were no bigger than sheep) God probably chose smaller "teenage" specimens, just old enough to breed after the flood. This way small dinosaurs, as well as other animals, would have begun repopulating earth soon after they exited the ark after the flood had receded.
It is recorded in the Bible that at the beginning of the flood the fountains of the great deep broke open. It makes me wonder how widespread this breaking open was and what caused it. Obviously, God could have caused it in an instant if He desired, but there is a possible cause I am curious about. This is something that could have been caused by God too. It is now believed by many people that there is evidence that there was once a planet located between Mars and Jupiter. The Sumerians were one of the very first civilizations after the flood. They were located in the Mesopotamian region where the Tower of Babel was built. Excavations of ancient Sumerian records showed this extra planet. Now, whether the drawing were made after the flood or stored on the ark before the flood noone knows. Evidence indicates that this planet somehow exploded. Debris would have flown in all directions probably creating the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter as some debris probably stayed in the orbit of the original planet, while other debris may have created comets. Such an explosion would have pelted every existing planet and moon in our solar system. Interestingly, all solid planets and moons in our solar system have many large craters on one side much more that the other. I think that it is possible that this explosion could have occurred at the beginning of the flood. The asteroids could have broken through a water-vapor canopy, frozen or not, and cracked earth’s surface releasing fountains from the deep and creating the tectonic plates and massive earth quakes, tsunami waves and volcanic activity. Such a massive impact could have caused the earth to tilt to its current 23.5 degrees needed now for our seasons to be possible (Seasons would not have been necessary before the flood in a greenhouse environment). Again God could have created the earth to be at the 23.5 degrees tilt to begin with too. This idea of the asteroids hitting earth is only my idea and I know it could change as more evidence is discovered.
It is now known too that vast amounts of water are below the earth’s surface today, so there is no telling how much there was before the flood. So when God caused the earth to crack open with probably several massive earthquakes and volcanoes all around the world, several things would have begun to happen. First, the water would have been released onto the land and into the oceans. As the water emptied from the underground reservoirs and covered the land, the land probably began to sink from the added weight of the water and empty reservoirs. The Bible says that the water was in excess of 15 cubits (about 22.5 feet) over the top of the tallest mountain. Now the mountains of the early world may not have been as tall as we have today (noone knows for sure), but nevertheless water that high would have certainly covered the entire earth and not just a region. Today we know that if the surface of the entire world were flat, the water in our oceans, lakes and rivers would cover the surface by 1.7 miles. This much water would have quickly saturated all land including hills and mountains. Today we see how rain-saturated hills and mountains often cause massive mud- or land-slides. So imagine what would have happened if these hills and mountains were covered with water, especially with waves and water rushing over the land as the water rose and moved from higher areas to lower ones. Underwater land-slides would have created massive amounts of layering sedimentation, quickly and deeply covering everything in its way, including dead or alive plants and animals. Heavier, denser organisms and debris would have settled first with lighter matter settling down later.
As numerous volcanoes continued to erupt (for who knows how long) they would have spewed massive amounts of ash into air and water, creating massive amounts of air pollution and sediment. Due to the land-slides and volcanic debris and ash, all around the world representatives of all creatures which lived before the flood were now buried deeply in sediment. Hundreds of feet of layered sedimentation could be quickly formed this way, trapping and preserving millions of organisms which formed the fossils and fossil fuels of today. Fossils only indicate the order of the burial of organisms and not the order of their emergence into the world as evolutionists teach. What we find in nature today is what we would expect from Noah’s world-wide flood: millions of dead things (fossilized plants and animals), buried in hundreds of layers of sedimentary rock which were laid down by water all over the earth. Fossils of more "complex" organisms are often found positioned below more "simple" organisms in undisturbed rock layers, therefore they are out of place according to evolutionary teaching. But if organisms died in such a catastrophic event, they could have been buried in any order. Oil and coal deposits would have been caused by burials of vast forests and mass accumulations of animals caught in water currents and whirl pools (this would explain the findings of vertically positioned fossilized whales and trees). For organisms to avoid decay and be able to fossilize, they must be completely and quickly covered in deep sediment to keep decomposing elements out: as air, bacteria and other living organisms.
The idea that it had to take one year to form each thin layer of soil or rock in the ancient past and millions of years to form millions of layers, is no longer a valid belief. Even the relatively small volcanic eruption of Mount Saint Helens in 1980 created over 600 feet (thousands of layers) of layered sedimentary rock (most within just a few days). If sedimentation rates were slow over thousands to millions of years , how could fossils form, especially in such detail, without the organism decaying first, and why are rock layers so straight (as seen at the Grand Canyon and roadside cutaways) with no signs of expected plant and animal activity or erosion between layers? Why are fossils, like petrified trees and even whales, found vertically positioned penetrating through hundreds of layers of undisturbed rock?
Fossil evidence, as ferns and palm trees in Greenland, indicate that the pre-flood world probably had a much warmer climate and a world-wide, uniform tropical temperature and environment. This was probably due to a very thick, transparent, water-vapor layer in the upper atmosphere which would have created a world-wide greenhouse effect. Apparently this water-vapor layer was depleted at the beginning of Noah’s flood. Whether this depletion was caused by the added heat of the many volcanoes, by asteroids or just a direct action by God, we do not know. But the Bible states that at the beginning of the flood it rained for forty days and forty nights.
Underwater volcanoes would have heated the oceans causing massive evaporation, clouds and plentiful rainfall which aided in the forty day deluge; it did not all have to come from the water-vapor layer. Now that the greenhouse effect was gone, the poles would have become cold. The heavy volcanic ash and probably world-wide cloud cover would have shaded the land masses causing them to cool down while the oceans heated up causing the precipitation to fall off and on for much longer than the forty days alone. At the now cold North and South poles massive amounts of snow and ice would have begun to accumulate. If the volcanic ash and clouds remained heavy for several years keeping the land masses cold, the ice from the poles could have grown toward the equator for several hundred years. This would have been the beginning of the Ice Age.
With the breaking up of the earth’s crust at the beginning of the flood, this probably created the tectonic plates that we see today around the world. Throughout the flood, the cataclysmic earthquakes and volcanoes could have probably caused these tectonic plates to move quickly toward and away from each other - bending, without cracking, soft newly forming rock and colliding with each other to create several new mountain ranges, often with exposed jagged rock, around the world. Today we still see much earthquake and volcanic activity along the junction of these tectonic plates, although it is to a much lesser degree.
Post-Flood
Some changes which would have occurred after the flood would be the now sparse vegetation growing on land that has had its nutrient-rich top soil eroded away, and a drastic increase in radiometric conditions, such as Carbon-14 caused by a large increase in UV radiation now penetrating through the atmosphere which was once protected by the water-vapor layer. Therefore carbon containing organisms before the flood probably had very little, in any, Carbon-14 in their system since it was probably lacking in their environment. (see Chapter 6 "Inaccurate Dating Methods - why the non-historical dating techniques are not reliable" in
The Evolution Handbook by Vance Ferrell. This entire 992 page book may be viewed at
http://www.evolution-facts.org./ Chapter 6 lists in detail the top 20 methods of dating materials, supposedly older than a few thousand years, and shows how they are all notoriously unreliable.)
After the flood, all the animals left the ark and began spreading to all parts of the world. This new world would have been drastically changed from what they were used to in the old pre-flood world. Unfortunately after the flood many kinds of animals, including many kinds of dinosaurs, probably became extinct being unable to adapt to the new harsh, cold environment and climate, and now limited food supply. Also man and other large predators probably hunted many animals heavily for food and protection which would have also led to the extinction of many dinosaurs and other animals. Even in recent times, many animals have been hunted by man to extinction or near-extinction. Being cold-blooded, dinosaurs which left the ark could have become very sluggish and unable to defend themselves or even forage for food. Unlike reptiles today, some were too large to hibernate, so many of the large dinosaurs may have died out from starvation, predators, and freezing to death. Also many cultures have legends of dragon-slayers. Dragons were probably dinosaurs and man probably killed them as stated before for food and protection but possibly also for trophies as is done today with big game animals.
Although it is believed by many people that mankind has existed for a million or more years, including "primitive" Stone-age men for 100,000 years, reliable written historical records extend back only four to five thousand years. Secular, non-Biblical accounts indicate that man’s earliest civilization began in about 3500 B.C. in Mesopotamia - an area about 300 miles wide by 800 miles long located about 200 miles south of Mount Ararat (in today’s Turkey) and roughly between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers from near the Black Sea to the Persian Gulf. Biblical history indicates that Adam and Eve were created about 4000 B.C. with man’s civilization starting shortly afterwards. The Biblical genealogical record indicates that there was only about 4000 years from the creation of Adam to the birth of Jesus Christ. It appears to me that the only reason the Bible records how old each man was when his son was begat is so we can add up those years to see how long ago the creation was.
Noah’s world-wide flood would have destroyed all evidence of man’s previous pre-flood civilization except for any evidence which was stored on the ark and in the memory of Noah and his family. The resurgence of man’s civilization would have begun shortly after the flood at about 2350 B.C. These Biblical dates of civilization starting are remarkably close to the secular date of man’s earliest civilization beginning in about 3500 B.C. Present human population is far too few for man to have existed more than a few thousand years. At 1/4 of the present growth rate, to account for wars, plagues, etc., our present population could have been obtained within four to five thousand years - basically the same amount of time since Noah and his family departed the ark after the flood. Imagine what the present population would be today if man has been around for a million years or more.
After the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat (in today’s Turkey), Noah’s family would have traveled south through the mountainous terrain to the Shinar Plains which later became known as Mesopotamia. Mesopotamians are known by secular scholars for being a farming community which used irrigation for their crops and for their developments of pictograph writings and later cuneiform writings, mathematics, astronomical science and ideas of law. Therefore it is obvious that these people were not brutish ignorant post-ape men. They were direct descendants of pre-flood men who were highly intelligent. With pre-flood civilization knowledge, Noah’s family and their descendants would have been able to quickly develop a new civilization. There is a good chance that they may have used some or all of the wood from the ark to build homes since there were no grown trees to cut down immediately after the flood. So although there have been reports of possible sightings of the ark in the mountains of Ararat, the fact remains to be seen whether it still exists.
Pre-Babel
The people of this new civilization chose to stay mostly in one area for several years and did not scatter across the earth as God commanded. All people were part of one large gene pool and all spoke the same language. Up to this point in time there probably had never been more than one language. Although the flood had wiped out all the disobedient evil people of the world, it did not take long for people to learn and practice disobedience again. Finally, about 100 years after the flood, the people of Mesopotamia united in rebellion against God’s command to scatter and multiply across the earth and they began to erect a single great world empire with its capital at the first Babylon. Noah and his family would have been highly intelligent and would have retained much knowledge of the pre-flood culture, technology, and achievements through their memory of the old world and possibly through written records stored on the ark. Since people lived such long life spans before the flood, people like Methuselah, who lived the oldest recorded life of 969 years, would have had life spans which overlapped many generations of people. Therefore Methuselah could have personally known Adam and Noah and even Noah’s sons. Methuselah could easily have passed down written and / or verbal records from Adam to Noah and his family. Moses, who is given credit for writing and/or compiling the first five books of the Bible, could have received his information from Adam within only six links of people passing the information down from one person to the next.
After the flood, life spans began to dwindle down from 900 plus years to only a few hundred years, due to the changed living environment and its effects on the body and other factors. For example Adam lived 930 years, Methuselah -969, Noah -951, Shem (Noah’s son) - 600, Eber - 464, Peleg (who lived at the dispersion at Babel) - 239, Nahor - 158, and Abram (Abraham) - 120. These continued semi-long life spans immediately after the flood, would have allowed Noah’s descendants to begin to rapidly multiply. There is no telling how long women were able to birth children and no telling how many children each woman would have bore if they stilled lived for a few hundred years.
Their many descendants would have used such great knowledge in building their new empire. They eventually began erecting a gigantic temple tower, or ziggurat, which had a 1/4 mile square base, was eight stories (650 feet) high and at its apex was to be a shrine dedicated "unto heaven," very possibly inscribed with the signs of the zodiac and other astrological emblems. The great "Tower of Babel" was essentially a temple dedicated to Satan worship and evolutionary pantheism. Man had begun worshiping God’s created things again instead of praising God Himself.
Tower of Babel Incident
About 100 years after the flood, in order to scatter people across the earth as God had commanded at the end of the flood, God suddenly, in an instant, caused each major family group (several families) to speak a different language than any other family group. By changing the centers of each person’s brain which controls speech and understanding, only members of a family could now understand only other members of their family. Although we have thousands of different languages today, there are fewer than 20 distinct language "families" which gave rise to other languages as groups of people broke away and lived centuries separated from their original family groups. The confusion and incoherent communication probably led to arguments and fighting between different family groups. This would have led to each family group going its own way, getting away from other family groups for protection. Since marrying between families and even political unions were no longer possible, each family group eventually established its own national or linguistic identity. People were forced to marry within their own family. Now you may be thinking, "marrying close relatives is ‘incest’ so how could this be allowed?" Today we all have defects in our genetic code so if two closely related people have children there is a good chance that both people will have the same defective gene thereby causing their children to be defective. But Adam and Eve were created perfect without any defects therefore they had no defective genes to pass down to their children. Their children would have had to marry each other at first and later they could have married their nieces and nephews. Several generations could have passed before defects began to occur and then several more generations before it was a problem for close relatives to have children. So after the flood Noah’s close relatives would also have had to marry each other as well as members in these isolated family groups 100 years later. Abraham even married his half sister about 400 years after the flood. It was not until Moses’ time that it was forbidden by God for close relatives to marry.
Many families probably had to scatter quickly in all directions from their homes in or near the city, possibly leaving all they owned behind. The distance each family group had to travel would have depended on the size and strength of the family and the resources needed for each family. Most probably had to travel to distant uninhabited lands to find a suitable place to live. Now, if you had to move to a place where noone had ever lived before, how would you and your family live? Do you know how to build a house, forage for food, make metal for tools and weapons? Artifacts from the new lifestyle of these newly displaced families would look very primitive to us. Many may have lived in caves, under cliffs, in huts or tents and used crude stone and wood tools and weapons. These would have been our first "cavemen’ and "stone-age men" - regular people, like us, living in harsh conditions. Cavemen were not hairy, hunched over, ape-men as depicted by evolutionists; that idea came about when people started incorrectly believing that man evolved from the apes. If living conditions remained harsh for many years, many families may have remained "primitive" while others which may have remained in the city could have retained much of the technologically advanced knowledge which was used to build Babylon and lived in areas with plenty of resources. Therefore they may have lived an advanced lifestyle at the same time others lived harsh caveman lifestyles. Even today we have tribal families living in remote areas with "primitive" lifestyles.
If it weren’t for caves we would not have cavemen, so where did the caves come from. As water receded after the flood (and /or melted at the end of the Ice-Age), water would have gotten trapped behind land-slide/sediment dams. This water could have created canyons when the soft sediment dams broke under the weight of the water or as water poured over the top of the dams eroding and weakening them. (See the article "How Much Time?" to see how this happened in 1980 after the Mount Saint Helens explosion created a dam) Also as water drained from the land and into the oceans, the erosion of the water seeping through the new soft sedimentary rock would have quickly created caves all around the world. Stalactites and stalagmites would have quickly formed in the past as water above the caves would have dissolved minerals and carried them through cracks in the rock to the caves. As the rocks hardened and the seepage slowed, the formation of stalactites and stalagmites would have drastically slowed down. Today they form very slowly in most caves.
Before the great dispersion at Babel, everyone belonged to a single non-distinct "race" of people and shared a common language and history and the largest common gene pool ever. (Actually the people before the flood would have had the largest variety of genes in one people group. Noah and his wife, his three sons and their wives would have had a wide variety of genes, but possibly not all the genes that Adam and Eve had. To retain all the possible genetic combinations each family group would have had to have both dominant and recessive traits of each characteristic.) If all people were able to marry anyone in this large diverse group of people, then all families had access to the same genetic stock (a large variety of gene combinations) for variations in skin color, stature, hair texture, facial features, etc.
But after God’s intervention at Babel, the language barrier caused isolated groups of people, no longer having access to the large gene pool, therefore causing isolated inbreeding which would have led to a loss of different genes in each family group’s gene pool. Also genetic mutations would have increased with time which would have further differentiated one family group from others. Eventually certain characteristics in each new family group would have become dominant and preferred while others would be less preferred and possibly looked down upon causing racism and discrimination. Our culture today does the same thing with people who have different shades of skin, or are very fat, ugly, short, etc. It is known that some existing pygmy tribes began when pygmy tribe members were kicked out of their tribe. They started living amongst other pygmies to form a new family group. Other people with undesirable traits could have started new colonies too if they were not destroyed first.
As mentioned before, the post-flood climate was vastly different from the pre-flood world. Heavy evaporation from continuing volcanic activity in the oceans would have caused more and more ice and snow to build up in the colder far North and South regions. It is believed by many that this is when the Ice-Age started. It is believed that the snow, ice and glaciers built up for about 500 years then took about 200 years to melt away. This melting would have caused several smaller floods which could have created further burial and fossilizing of more organisms.
Civilizations Spread
Some family groups, especially those who were small or weak, would have moved far North and South to get away from other family groups. Here they would have had to contend with the encroaching, very cold, cloudy, Ice-Age conditions. Such conditions required heavily clothed skin and allowed very little sun exposure. This would have limited the growth of vegetation to only certain types, therefore limiting what people could eat. Sun exposure is also required for the skin to make vitamin D. Therefore people living in very cold climates with very little, if any, sun exposure could have suffered from "rickets" - a vitamin D deficiency which causes severe crippling arthritis. People with dark skin would have been even more prone to rickets since dark pigment in the skin blocks the sun exposure even further. Research of Neanderthal people has revealed that they had rickets giving them the supposed ape-man, hunched over stance. Neanderthal people were apparently very intelligent too since they had brain cavities 13% larger than our present skulls.
Therefore severe climate conditions, cultural preferences, and isolated inbreeding would have caused families or nations to have begun to have unique physical (racial) characteristics as well as language ones. Also they would have eventually began to develop new and separate currency, technology, religious practices, and separate histories from this point on. As these family groups grew they became nations of people groups. This explains why we see differences in appearances between the Caucasians from Europe, the Negroids from Africa, the Asians, the Indians, the Eskimos, etc.
Here it is interesting to note that until the discovery of America, all the world had been pretty much isolated into their own separate nations with their own cultures and unique external "racial" physical appearances due to their breeding within their isolated gene pools. As people began to migrate to and spread across America over the past few centuries, they began blending their cultures with others. The United States of America has been called "The Melting Pot of the World". Today we see a wide variety of "races", languages, religious groups, and histories. With inter-racial marriages or living arrangements and their offspring, we are quickly returning to a single non-distinct "race" of people. Also today due to our rapid growth in technology, people (races) all over the world are able to travel vast distances quickly, and are able to communicate with many other people all over the world, thereby sharing each others cultures. We, as a world race, are beginning to share a common history and even similarities in our cultures. We are also seeing a push by some individuals toward a common language, common currency, and even a common world religion. I find it very interesting to see how we are returning to a "race" of people similar to that which lived before the flood. It makes me wonder how close we are to God’s next destruction as prophecized in the Bible.
Now, back to ancient times. As families dispersed, some would have migrated to many distant lands by way of sea travel, or crossing ice and land bridges between lands. If the warm oceans continued to evaporate and the moisture continued to accumulate as snow and ice in the colder regions, without melting, the ocean levels could have dropped quite a bit. This would have exposed the continental shelves around each continent creating land bridges between some continents and some islands. As temperatures dropped during the Ice-Age, ice bridges would also have formed. These bridges would have allowed a way for people and animals to spread from one continent to another. As these families spread around the world they would have taken with them their religious beliefs and customs. By now many families had again developed pagan, multi-god beliefs and rituals. Some family groups could have retained superior architectural and technological skills as were used to build the "Tower of Babel" in Babylon. With these skills and a desire to please their gods, they could have built temples to their gods as demonstrated by the different temples seen around the world: ziggurats, pyramids, massive desert drawings, and Stonehenge. Stonehenge appears to be an extremely accurate astronomical calculator, with some stones weighing about 100 tons and quarried over 75 miles away. Our present day technology could not accomplish such a feat.
As populations began to grow and civilizations began to spread, empires began to develop such as the Babylonians, Gauls, Medes, Goths, Phoenicians, Egyptians, Chinese, Greeks, Franks, Romans, Britons, Saxons, Bavarians, Lombards, and many more. These are definitely not listed here in the order in which they emerged. (See
http://www.rae.org/ - the entire book:
After The Flood by Bill Cooper is online. It contains evidence showing European genealogies from Noah through Japheth and Ancient Chronologies and Records.) With the growth of such nations, we also saw the beginning of armies, wars, barbarians, fortresses, and castles. What is really interesting is that families, tribes, individuals, and peoples listed in the Table of Nations in Genesis have been traced (from Noah to modern times) through ancient non-Biblical genealogies and chronicles of the peoples of the Middle East and Europe. Recent archaeological findings are confirming more and more such cultures and places which are listed in Genesis.
Other evidence which indicates that ancient man was highly intelligent with high levels of technology are the discovery of copper and iron "electric" batteries (possibly used for electroplating), and the finding of an ancient, analog computer with differential gears found on a sunken 1st century ship (apparently used for navigation). If civilizations were so technologically advanced in ancient times, why has mankind been so technologically deprived over the last several centuries? As civilizations around the world suffered loss of lives through plaques, invasions, wars, and had to endure possibly many evacuations, they would have gradually or quickly lost their previously advanced cultural technology. Harsh living conditions probably lasted several generations for some families such as during the Dark-Ages. It is hard to be technologically advanced if for a long time you are living with few numbers of people, off a bare minimum of resources and trying to meet your basic requirements for life - food, shelter and protection. It was not until the past few centuries, after the Dark-Ages, that civilizations began to flourish again.
I hope this article has raised your curiosity for the evidence of man’s true origins and early history. Although there is no way to scientifically "prove" any theory of origins or man’s early history, I believe that modern scientific evidence indicates the above account to be true. There are many books with much more detailed evidences not mentioned in this article which strongly support the historical accounts of God’s creation, Adam and Eve, Noah’s flood, and the dispersion of families at the Tower of Babel as recorded in Genesis in the Bible. Due to this and much more evidences I have studied, I have learned to trust in the reliability of the entire Bible. (See the article "Evidence for Biblical Reliability" with links to several different web articles, including the ones listed in this article, for much more information and strong evidences for the reliability of the Bible)
