This timeline begins with the end of the flood and the beginning of the ice age. To a secular scientist that means from about 2.5 million years ago to about 12,000 years ago. This is the start of the Paleolithic ... the Old Stone Age. Homo sapiens hasn't come about yet, but the closest ancestors of man are present and are using crude stone tools. Homo sapiens, or archaic humans, appeared about 500,000 years ago and modern man, or Homo sapiens sapiens dates from about 200,000 years ago. During this time the skills in making stone tools develop.
This timeline begins at the end of the ice age and takes us to modern day man. At the end of the ice age, about 12,000 years ago, modern man is the only remaining Homo species left. Man still uses stone tools but his skills are advancing. He begins to develop agricultural skills and makes pottery.
About 4000 years ago he discovers how to work copper and after 1000 years, learns how to alloy that with tin to make bronze. By this time he lives in villages and cities and is pretty much settled. The first major civilizations appear about 3200-3000 BC. It is only about 1000 BC when he discovers how to work iron.
Needless to say, this story of man and the biblical story of man don't agree. We saw that cities were something that were an early development, with Cain being the first to build a city. We also have a shorter time line in general. This timeline requires a very slow development of man's skills and learning. And that doesn't agree with scripture.
So how are we going to reconcile this picture with what we read in the Bible? This period of time is more difficult... not because the evidence is scanty, but because it is more readily available. The problem comes because events are not in the same order in the two timelines. Let's see if I can give you a visual for what I mean.
Here's the two timelines. (The secular one on top is not to scale, by the way.) Both begin with the beginning of the ice age and end in 1000 BC. This is roughly the time of David and is a time when the two timelines agree, at least to within a few years.
First, notice the ice age. The secular timeline on top has the ice age beginning 2.5 million years ago and ending 12,000 years ago. The ice age peak is marked...it's about 18,000 years ago, by the way. The biblical timeline is similar but has different dating. It began about 2519 BC and ended about 900 years later. The peak was at about 1800 BC.
At the peak of ice volume during the ice age the sea levels would be at their lowest. At the end of the ice age, the sea level would have risen to its current levels. Both events are marked on both timelines.
The biblical timeline is marked with the Tower of Babel and the subsequent beginnings of civilizations. The secular timeline is also marked with the beginnings of civilizations.
Here is where you see the major difference. Notice that civilizations begin nearly 9000 years after the end of the ice age in the secular timeline, while the biblical timeline has civilization beginning during the ice age.
Even with no additional evidence being presented, these two timelines give a totally different picture of the history of man. At this point we can ask the following questions (Do you remember the questions we asked when evaluating the accuracy of a model...way back when we were talking about the flood? Those same questions can be asked here as well.)
- Does the biblical timeline explain the evidence better than the secular timeline?
- Does the biblical timeline require less assumptions to support its validity?
- Does the biblical timeline allow us to make predictions as to what we would find in future evidences? Have there been any accurate predictions made in the past?
We will now begin to look at evidences. First it will be evidences that the timeframe for the beginnings of civilizations needs to be changed. Then we will begin to explore the evidence that man has left behind. Prepare to have your paradigm for man's history challenged!
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