Crustal Displacement and
Biblical Chronology
There are many theories about the exact
geological history of the world. Those which come from the Uniformitarian
point of view maintain that most of the present land forms were caused by small
forces acting over long periods - millions of years. Those which come from the
Creationist point of view maintain that the same landforms are largely the
result of large forces acting over short periods - thousands of years. The
division is between slow and steady, or fast and sudden.
These two points of view stand at opposite
sides of a line, and there is no way they can be reconciled. Because of the
many in-built assumptions within each point of view there is no bridge between
them, no agreement, no synthesis. Either the world is
young or it is extremely old. Either there have been global catastrophes or
there have not.
There is a theory, which has been promoted
by many scientists and writers, that Mankind’s history goes back tens of
thousands of years, and that, at some time in the distant past, the south
magnetic pole slipped, or the land mass itself slipped, causing global flooding
and vast amounts of damage and death. One such theorist is Graham Hancock,
author of ‘Fingerprints of the Gods’, a book in which he suggests that many
huge-stone ruins in Egypt (i.e. the three main pyramids, etc) and South
America, (Aztec, Olmec, Inca) and elsewhere, are the
remains of an ancient civilisation which was
destroyed by a sudden disaster, caused by the continent of Antarctica slipping
south, or something else equally devastating.
This theory tries to combine the
ancient-Earth view, with the periodic-disaster view. Despite its many
interesting features, it goes against the Biblical chronology, and undermines
many of the Bible’s basic teachings.
Before dealing with the many aspects of the
debate, we will summarise the sequence of geological
history of planet Earth as it is presented by the Bible. After that we will
look at the opposing views, as presented by those who think in terms of
millions of years.
Biblical chronology covering the very early
history of Man is not absolutely clear. There is some leeway as to exact dates
and years - the Bible has not gone to any great lengths to describe landforms
or geological processes, nor has it listed the exact direction of human
migrations, or the cultures, architecture or skills of these people. Yet despite the brief and general account,
every detail in the inspired text which we do
have is exact and full of meaning.
1. Creation week (started about 4004
BC - Bullinger’s Companion Bible date)
2. The family line from Adam to Noah.
3. The global Flood (about 2350 BC)
4. The repopulation of the world in
one area from Noah’s descendants.
5. The
6. Somewhere during the post-flood
time an Ice Age occurred which lasted about 500 years.
7. Nations grew and developed from
then on, in their separate lands, sometimes thriving, sometimes decaying and
disappearing.
8. About the year 1000 AD world
population began to burgeon.
Every single part of the above summary is
currently being attacked by Uniformitarian views.
Working with what we know (or from what we
can safely assume to be true) we will now consider some of the Bible details.
1. Creation week (started about 4004
BC - Bullinger’s Companion Bible date)
Adam and Eve were created by God. They were
supremely perfect and pure. There was no slow development of their minds, no
educational process. They were instantly able to think, speak and behave like
their Creator.
Adam spoke to God immediately. We know this
because when God created the animals on day six, He brought them to Adam “to
see what he would call them” (Gen. 2:19). Naming animals implies creative
thinking, also scientific classification, and memory. It is one thing to invent
a few thousand names, it another thing to remember all those names. Yet Adam,
and presumably Eve, were able to establish their own
order on Nature.
That God can impart knowledge without the
need for someone to learn it is also clear from the case of Solomon, who was
given wisdom. “And God gave Solomon wisdom and understanding exceeding much,
and largeness of heart, even as the sand that is on the sea shore.” 1 Kings
4:29. When the queen of
Working from this revealed truth, we may
conjecture that Adam and Eve were brilliant intellectuals. All the sciences
were open to them. Either by examination or thought processes they were able to
understand a vast amount of what we call science.
When they sinned they fell, spiritually,
morally and intellectually, but a huge amount of this original store of
understanding remained with them. They lived for centuries after that, which
enabled them to teach new generations. This implies that the pre-Flood civilisation was highly-advanced - perhaps more advanced
than any civilization after the Flood up to today.
There is an intriguing thought, found in
Ecclesiastes, that “The thing that has been, it is that which shall be; and
that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under
the sun.
Is there any thing whereof it may be said,
See, this is new? it has been already of old time,
which was before us.
There is no remembrance of former things;
neither shall there be any remembrance of things that are to come with those
that shall come after.” Ecclesiastes 1:9,10,11
When Adam and Eve were driven from the
Garden, or orchard, God posted a guard. “So he drove out the man; and he placed
at the east of the
We are not told why the Garden had only one
entrance, nor what cherubim are, or what the flaming sword looked like, but the
memory of that method of eviction must have been unforgettable for those who
saw it. Obviously anyone who tried to enter the Garden again would be killed -
something which relates to the death of the Saviour
for all of Adam’s offspring in approx. 30 AD.
What did the Earth look like at that time?
One view is that the land was clumped
together into a single vast continent. “And God said, Let
the waters under the heaven be gathered together to one place, and let the dry
land appear: and it was so.” Genesis 1:9
There is no clue given as to the shape or
size of this single land mass. It could have been 90% of the surface, or 50%.
It could have been entirely low-lying hills and gently rolling countryside, or
something quite radical, like a southern hemisphere only comprising land and a
northern hemisphere of water.
Before Adam and Eve sinned many of today’s
laws of physics did not operate the way they do now. We can only guess at the
pre-sin conditions.
Miracles give us a hint as to how life on
Earth may have been before sin. In all miracles God intervenes and reverses or
cancels ‘natural’ laws. As C.S.Lewis said of the
resurrection “Death working backwards” - quite the opposite direction to the
direction which all processes in living things move today.
Two notable miracles :
the Israelites wore clothes and shoes for 40 years without wearing them out
- “And I have led you forty years in the
wilderness: your clothes are not waxen old upon you, and your shoe is not waxen
old upon your foot.” Deuteronomy 29:5
Regeneration of atrophied or non-existent cells : “Then Abraham fell upon his face, and laughed, and
said in his heart, Shall a child be born to him that is an hundred years old? and shall Sarah, that is ninety years old, bear?” Genesis
17:17
2. The family line from Adam to Noah.
Adam and Eve had “sons and daughters” (Gen.
5:4). In fact every male named in the family tree is said to have had “sons and
daughters”, except Noah, whom are told, had three sons. The fact that he alone had only 3 sons and no
other children, is significant, because it is pointed
out several times.
Cain married one of his sisters. At that
time there were no laws against incest because the genetically pure, but laws
were brought in later by God, because post-Flood life was in the process of
disintegration, as it still is today.
The pre-Flood average age, based on the list
of names between Adam and Noah is impressive.
Adam 800
Seth 807
Enosh 905
Cainan 910
Mahalaleel 895
Jared 962
Enoch 365 (cut short)
Methuselah 969
Lamech 777
Noah 950. He was 500 before the Flood, and
lived 350 years after it.
The average
age was 834, but the effect of all
this longevity was an overlap of
generations. We assume that all these men had children who also lived to
similar ages. This would mean that Adam
was still alive during the lives of Seth, Enosh, Cainan, Mahalaleel, Jared, Enoch,
Methuselah and Lamech. In fact, going on the Biblical
ages, When Adam was 950 he could have spoken to Methuselah, who lived right
through to the Flood. This means that Methuselah could have met and spoken to
Noah, Shem, Ham and Japeth, as well as many of the
other people who had met the other men in the list.
The fact that generations lived longer is
important. It is also important that many people in those days had the
opportunity to learn straight from the very people who had met Adam and Eve.
The sons and daughters of this mighty race were intellectually developed,
genetically healthy, and they all lived in a world which was conducive to
prosperity. The population had every advantage, and, I am sure, burgeoned.
Given that conditions were extremely
conducive to population growth in pre-Flood times, we can make some reasonable
assumptions.
Man has always been a tool-maker.
He has always sought technologies which will
make his life easier.
He tends to build things which reflect his
values or needs.
Man tends to turn away from God to religion
or other substitutes.
Pre-Flood civilisation
was a technologically advanced, highly sophisticated ‘modern’ culture, which
increased rapidly in the arts and sciences, astrology and superstition,
secularism and anti-God behaviour. It was a civilisation
which had everything materially, but which had no love or God or interest in
obeying him.
“And as it was in the days of Noe, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man.
They
did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the
day that Noe entered into the ark, and the flood
came, and destroyed them all.” Luke 17:26,27
Genesis 4 provides further insights into the
technologies of pre-Flood times.
Cain “built a city”
Jabal was the
“father of such as dwell in tents, and of such as have cattle” - this implies
weaving, manufacture of ropes, cords and connecting devices. Animal
husbandry, livestock management, breeding programs.
Jubal was “the
father of all such as handle the harp and organ (pipes). To make such
instruments one needs to understand shaping of objects, vibration distances, tones,
composition, perhaps notation. The fashioning of musical instruments implies
creative dance and musical events.
Tubal-cain was “an
instructor of every artificer in brass and iron”. This implies knowledge of
ore-extraction, smelting, refining, the making of
alloys.
There is divided thought over the word
“brass”.
Unger says the word is likely to be “bronze”
- an alloy of copper and tin, while brass is an alloy of copper and zinc. The
fact remains however that this metal was produced and used long before the
Flood.
“Iron” is undisputed. Unfortunately, iron oxidises rapidly when it is wet, which means that all but
the purest iron made by past civilisations has
disappeared.
The next very significant point to notice
about this pre-Flood civilisation is the fact that
one man and three sons were able to build a colossal, ocean-going vessel called
an
To build an
Trees had to be selected, felled, and
milled. Wood had to be
measured, shaped, cut, fastened and interlocked. Scaffolding had
to be raised. Metal was probably used in many different ways too. We assume
that nails were used.
The ability to make fire is also assumed
because Noah made a sacrifice after the Flood and offered “burnt offerings” to
God (Gen. 8:20)
The point I am making here is that the Flood
did not necessarily wipe out the intelligence, memories and abilities of the
human race, reducing them to ‘stone age’ subsistence. There was probably a
strong continuity through the Flood year, and a re-establishment of similar
skills and technology straight after the Flood. Shem Ham and Japeth, and their wives, and Noah, were all part of the
pre-Flood generation. We are not told whether any of Noah’s family were godly, though we would like to think they were. (
3. The global Flood (about 2350 BC)
The evidence
for a global Flood is quite easy to find, and there are many books which lay
this evidence out clearly. Sedimentary rocks, billions of fossils, vast areas
of volcanic material, riverbeds which go down into the sea, oil and coal
deposits . . . there is no shortage
of evidence.
The question is, however, in what way and to
what extent did the pre-Flood geological appearance and the post-Flood
geological appearance differ?
If the sea
before the Flood was “gathered together into one place” was there a time when
the land, which was also gathered together in another place, separated, split
into pieces, and moved to its present position - to become the continents we are
familiar with today? The Bible does not say this happened, but the seas are not
presently gathered together into one place, so something must have happened
during or after the Flood.
There is a view (that the land moved), in
Genesis 10:25 - “And to Eber were born two sons: the
name of one was Peleg;
for in his days was the earth divided.”
Peleg means ‘division’. Divided
means ‘to cleave’. But what the verse probably means is that during Peleg’s lifetime the different nations were separated and
began to settle in what they came to regard as their own lands. (Territories)
This is the first indication of post-Flood nationalism, a later cause of many
political and religious wars.
If
the continents moved rapidly, sliding on the softer material under them (magma)
they would have generated enormous waves. These tidal mountains of water,
perhaps as high as 2 miles, would have crashed over the land, pulverising and destroying virtually everything in their
path. Is it likely that God would describe this ‘second Flood’ in one small, and ambiguous verse about one of Shem’s sons?
We are not ruling out the possibility of the
continents moving, but perhaps their speed was such that catastrophic waves
were avoided?
4. The repopulation of the world in
one area from Noah’s descendants.
Following the Flood, the population of the
world began again. Noah’s family produced the first generation. Noah live another 350 years. If this was the normal lifespan at
this time, many of the children would have seen the children of several more
generations before they died. This would have been similar to pre-Flood times,
except now the average age limit was dropping fast. Very few people after the Flood
made it past 300 years.
Shem’s
line :
Shem
500
Arphaxad 403
Salah 403
Eber 430
Peleg 209
Reu 207
Serug 200
Nahor 119
Terah 205
Abraham
175
An average age of 285 as
compared to a pre-Flood average of 834 years. Today the average age seems
to have levelled out at about 75-80, which shows that
the human race is not what it used to be. The deterioration may be due to diet,
climate, genes or some other factor, or a combination of factors.
From this time on some historical records are
available, be they clay tablets, inscriptions in stone, artefacts,
buildings or oral traditions carried by myth and legend.
Giants.
One other important ingredient in the Bible
account is the mention that, before the Flood, angels cohabited with humans and
produced “giants”. It is not within the scope of this essay to examine whether
angels and humans can interbreed, or to look in detail at the matter. The main
thing is the Bible says that the offspring of this deliberate angelic
interbreeding program were beings called “Nephilim” -
men of great power, physically, intellectually and spiritually. ( There were giants
(Nephilim) in the earth in those days; and
also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of
men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of
old, men of renown.” Genesis 6:4)
The “and also after that” supplies the basis
for the Canaanite opposition to
Now if the view that these “giants” were
living amongst the human race before and after the Flood is correct, we have to
revise our understanding of the history of the early world. Just as we have to
include dinosaurs in the
5. The
The
evolutionary view of the origin of languages is that at some stage millions of
years ago animals turned grunts into words, and from these
crude sounds all the different languages and dialects in the world have sprung.
The evidence does not support this view. What we find in the world are many
extremely different language ‘families’, each with its own set of grammatical
rules, words and meanings, but with very little in common between each ‘family’ of language. This is exactly what we would expect to find
if the original language ‘families’ were created as separate and distinct
entities.
Genesis 10:32 seems to indicate that the
dispersion of people across the earth was generally along extended family
lines. Since very little time had elapsed since the Flood there would not have
been many clans, so there would not be a need for a huge number of new
languages - perhaps only a few dozen.
As each language group spread over the
planet, generation by generation, they became isolated from each other. Each
separate language group developed its own culture, and civilisation,
with a slow change in the language - as happens today. Different dialects
developed and new words were added all the time.
6. Somewhere during the post-flood
time an Ice Age occurred which lasted about 500 years.
Creationist literature usually insists that
there is evidence for only one ice age, and that it was of short duration. Its
likely cause was a combination of several factors:
1. During the Flood a large amount of water
came up from underground. This would have heated the oceans and increased the
evaporation rate, which would have led to more snow and the rapid build up of
ice.
2. There was also volcanic activity, which
would have added to the heating of the oceans, and a large amount of
atmospheric dust. The dust would have reflected sunlight and added to the
cooling of the planet’s atmosphere.
Before the Flood it seems (?) That there was a canopy of water surrounding the planet, (Gen.
1:6-8) which would have distributed heat reasonably well to all parts.
After the Flood this canopy seems to have collapsed, leading to rapid freezing
of north and south poles.
Based on this theory, we may have a scenario
in which Noah’s descendants live through a cold period, with slowly retreating
oceans as the water is lifted from the oceans and converted into vast ice
sheets. This would have exposed land-bridges between land-masses, helping
humans and animals migrate to distant parts of the world. (It is interesting to
note that almost every land area in the world is connected to the
At the end of the Ice Age, a great deal of
water would have run off the land north and south, forming huge lakes and
causing flooding as ice dams broke. There is a lot of evidence to support this.
That the oceans have been higher and lower
than they are at present is supported by a lot of evidence. There are many
cases of the ruins of human buildings and roads which are now found under sea
water. The edges of continents and inland lakes bear the marks of different
water-levels - ‘steps’- horizontal planes. There is a lot of evidence to show
that huge areas of what is now desert used to be lakes and rivers, such as
inland Australia. The Great Lakes of America show signs of having once been
part of a single super-lake, and limestone in
7. Nations grew and developed from
then on, in their separate lands, sometimes thriving, sometimes decaying and
disappearing.
The Readers Digest ‘The World’s Last
Mysteries’ lists many civilisations which have come and gone, or risen and
dwindled away. Chapter headings include ‘Strange stones of western Europe’,
‘Soul-statues of Corsica’, ‘The secrets of Stonehenge’, ‘The giants of Easter
Island’, ‘Teotihuacan . . .’ ‘The lost empire of the
Indus Valley’, ‘The silent stones of Tiahuanaco’,
‘The last refuge of the Incas’, ‘Pyramids in the Americas’, ‘When the Sahara
was green’, 'Splendour in the jungle at Angkor’, ‘The
Olmecs . . .’, ‘The magnificent realm of the Mayas’,
‘Enigmatic messages of the Nazcas” and so on. At the
back of the book are many mysterious finds, dating back to some time when
humans built cities and then abandoned them. For example “It is now clear that
Bahrain was the centre of a vanished empire . . .” And “ . . .in this
inhospitable region at the mouth of the Amazon there are traces of a developed civilisation of Andean character . . .”, and ‘The culture
of the Eskimos who now inhabit the region (Ungava
Bay) appears to have nothing in common with the people who raised these stones
. . .” and “It is now more than a hundred years since a priest, walking in a
remote part of Hierro Island, discovered signs of
writing engraved on the side of a cliff . . .” There are dozens of similar
examples of the remains of human activity, found in odd places and remote parts
of the planet - all evidence that humans migrated and settled everywhere after
the dispersal from Babel.
8. About the year 1000 AD world
population began to burgeon.
Given the right conditions - food, fertile
soil, abundance of food, peace, etc, a human population can grow quickly.
Quoting from ‘In the Minds of Men’ by Ian
Taylor:
“If humanity is really 3,5
million years old . . . then today’s world population can be predicted . . . . for example, with a modest estimate
of 2.2 children per average family, and an equally modest average generation
life span of twenty years, and parents never living long enough to see their
grandchildren, then the world population would have grown from a single family
to 10 to the power of 2070 people alive at the end of the first million years . .”
But demographers will say that, for millions
of years the human population remains static. For example, when the bones of an
Australian were found in
In other words, even though a logical
calculation shows that world population could not possibly be as low as it is
today, given that humans have been living on this planet for so long, there must
have been zero population growth for 3
million years. This, of course, is absurd. However, if we accept the Bible
chronology, starting about 4,500 years ago with a family of eight, and given
good conditions, we come to approximately the population we have today.
Some theories about early civilisations.
It has long puzzled many people as to how
supposedly ‘primitive’ societies could build and invent with such vigour. The evidence is coming forward all the time that
the further back we go, the more sophisticated the people were. Huge buildings,
massive blocks of stone carved and drilled with apparent ease, ornate jewellery, machinery, metalworking, calendars, weapons, inventions of many kinds, art, music and astronomy.
The list is almost endless.
Some explanations for this include :
1.
Aliens from another planet came and ‘seeded’ the earth with humans.
2.
Aliens tampered with primate DNA to produce humans.
3.
Life came from somewhere in space, landed on earth, and from it all life evolved,
with humans eventually emerging as a variety of ape with more intelligence.
4.
Life evolved over millions of years, producing humans, who lived for millions
of years before suddenly exploding into progress, science and so on.
However, none of these explanations stands
up to scrutiny. The best explanation is the one the Bible gives
:
God
created humans and gave them dominion over Nature. The humans disobeyed God and
lost their dominion. The humans reproduced and their offspring became a highly
developed civilisation (with some crossbreeding with
angels). God destroyed this primary colony, but the knowledge and skills were
carried through by the survivors, giving them a head start in their own
individual colonies around the world. But as generations came and went, the
initial high beginnings gradually decayed and successive generations began to
remember their ‘golden beginnings’ in terms of myths and stories, which they
passed on to their children.
The evidence for this scenario is seen in the
amazing buildings and technology which archaeologists are constantly finding in
such places as
Where
does Crustal Displacement fit into this?
Crustal
displacement could have occurred during the Flood. It seems likely that the
land masses were once joined into a single area, which later shifted and split
apart. If this is the case, then the first crustal
displacement took place during the Flood.
After
the Flood, the land was quickly repopulated by plants and animals. Life
developed on the fertile layer on top of the sedimentary rock laid down by the
Flood - life lived on the surface of the world-wide 'cemetery' comprising past
generations of plants, animals and humans. Scientists have discovered many
types of bacteria living in the rock too - which could have got there as it was
being laid down.
Post-Flood populations were not primitive.
They began as highly intelligent, highly skilled groups, and then gradually
degenerated, as knowledge they had brought with them from before the Flood was
lost. Science was replaced by superstition and each civilisation
crumbled and collapsed - leaving the enigmatic ruins for archaeologists to dig
through today.
The continent of
Who drew these maps, and how did the
map-makers know how to draw them, and how to navigate so well? It seems most
likely that the cartographers were post-Flood humans. We already know that they
were intelligent, technological, and scientific. Other groups of post-Flood
humans settled in other parts of the world, doing equally sophisticated things.
There is no need to postulate tens of thousands of years, or ancient civilisations. Compare the rate at which humans have
developed between the 1800’s and the 1900’s. We have gone from horse and cart
to atomic bomb in less than a single generation.
The Bible chronology allows very little time
between the end of the Flood and the onset Ice Age for ‘snap-freezing’ a
continent. If, on the other hand, the ‘snap-freezing’ took place after the Ice
Age, we come to about 4000 years ago, or 2000 BC, which is within historical
records.
There
are two ways (as far as I can see) by which
1. Move the entire continent. But if this
happened, the enormous waves generated would sweep around the world like a
second Flood - a thing which God promised never to send again.
If this happened, there would probably be a
domino effect, with other land-masses moving, and huge volcanic eruptions,
leading to a frozen world, and the extinction of most of the life.
2. Shift the polar axis.
As to (1)
the Bible tells us several things about the stability of the land-masses:
“While the earth remains, seed time and
harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.” Genesis 8:22
“And I will establish my covenant with you;
neither shall all flesh be cut off any more by the waters of a flood; neither shall there any more be a flood
to destroy the earth.” Genesis 9:11
“Fear before him, all the earth: the world
also shall be stable, that it be not
moved.” 1 Chronicles 16:30
“Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if you have understanding.
Who has laid the measures thereof, if you
know? or who has stretched the line upon it?”
Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened? or
who laid the corner stone thereof” Job 38:4,5,6
“Who laid the
foundations of the earth, that it should
not be removed for ever.
You covered it with the deep as with a
garment: the waters stood above the mountains.
At Thy rebuke they fled; at the voice of
Thy thunder they hastened away. They go up by the mountains; they go down by
the valleys to the place which you have founded for them.
You have set a bound that they may not pass
over; that they turn not again to
cover the earth.” Psalm 104:5-9
Obviously, the Bible makes it clear that the
land-masses are stable and secure. There is no chance that they might suddenly
go skidding away across the softer magma underneath. God has fastened them, or
given them foundations, to prevent this very thing.
However Einstein and others have postulated
that the land is not securely fixed :
“Albert Einstein investigated the
possibility that the weight of the ice-caps, which are not symmetrically
distributed about the pole, might cause (a displacement). Einstein wrote ‘The
earth’s rotation acts on these unsymmetrically
deposited masses, and produces centrifugal momentum that is transmitted to the
rigid crust of the Earth. The constantly increasing centrifugal momentum
produced this way will, when it reaches a certain point, produce a movement of
the Earth’s crust over the Earth’s body, and this will displace the polar
regions towards the equator’” (‘Fingerprints of the gods’ page 495)
2.
Polar shift.
The post-Flood planet was very different to
the pre-Flood planet. For one thing, the climate was different. Before the
Flood there was no rain. All life apparently grew larger and lived longer.
There is much fossil evidence of giant creatures which are related to their
present-day diminutive relatives. Genetically humans were superior, being so
close to their original perfect parents. The age-limits of pre-Flood humans
reflects this. And there were giants, or hybrid humans, who probably possessed
supernatural abilities, perhaps high IQ’s and probably
great physical strength, which might explain why so many early buildings are so
large.
For example, Og of
Bashan - “For only Og king of
Bullinger also
notes that the dimensions of Og’s
bedstead (or couch) are exactly the same as the measurement of Marduk in
The geography was different. Mountains were
pushed up rapidly. There is strong evidence that this is so. One evidence is
the fact that where there is folding of strata, the folds re not cracked and
shattered, as you might expect if the layers were bent while dry and hard. The
fact that cracking is not seen indicates that the folding took place rapidly
while the layers were still malleable. It also indicates that the layers were
produced rapidly, and not over millions of years.
The language was different. Before the Flood
all the people shared a common language, but soon after the Flood the Lord
divided the people into language groups and sent them across the world to
settle in different lands.
The theories which Graham Hancock puts
forward in his book ‘Fingerprints of the gods’ are based on several assumptions :
1.
Man is an evolved ape,
2.
The Earth is millions of years old,
3.
About 10,000 years ago a civilisation flourished in
temperate
4.
That civilisation tried to share its technology and
science with other civilisations
5.
At some point in ancient history a near-global flood occurred, from which only
a few humans survived, along with some animals and birds
6.
Crustal displacement destroyed that flourishing civilisation, and sweeping the world with chaos and
destruction
7.
Many of the earliest monuments are remnants of this former civilisation.
8.
Several Ice Ages followed a crustal displacement
which also caused huge floods and volcanic devastation. The history of the
world is a succession of disasters, reaching back into the remote past.
Problems
with the theory:
1.
Man was originally created perfect by God
2.
The Earth is not much older than 6000 years
3.
A pre-Flood civilisation flourished up to about 4,500
years ago.
4.
After the Flood many highly sophisticated civilisations
flourished in different parts of the world, all of them sprung from the same
place - the mountains of Ararat. The
common thread which runs through many early civilisations
is their common origin and sharing of common knowledge and beliefs
God
has fixed the continents firmly to stop them from moving
5.
A global Flood occurred, from which only 8 humans survived, along with some
animals and birds
6.
God has promised never to destroy the world again with water,
however, a shift in the polar axis appears to have ‘snap-frozen’
7.
Early monuments could have been built by post-Flood civilisations
within the time-frame of Biblical chronology
8.
The Bible doesn’t even mention any Ice Age, but there is evidence that ice
sheets did, at one time, cover a huge area of the planet. However, the ice has
retreated, and where it used to be, cities and people are now flourishing. The
Bible does not allow for any ‘remote past’ for civilisation.
All that has happened has happened within the last 4 and half thousand years.
Conclusion
There are many theories about the history of
Man, and the sequence of events since he first began to leave his mark on the
planet is difficult to unravel. Even the Bible leaves many areas undescribed. The only two things we have to go on are the
Bible chronology and the evidence. If the two match, then we have a correct
view. We know that the Bible is always accurate, so any findings we uncover
must be placed within the Bible framework.
As a lay person, I am very aware of my
almost complete lack of understanding on secular archaeology, history and so
on, but I have the Bible. Through the years I have found that it has always proved itself
right on any matter on which it speaks, and I expect it will continue to do so.
Just because Graham Hancock’s book raises
many questions as to the antiquity of Man, and poses many unanswerable
questions, does not in itself prove the Bible incorrect.
Over the last 2000 years many people have raised similar questions and produced
many equally interesting theories, but all of them have fallen into line under
the power of the accurate word of God. I have no doubt that Mr. Hancock’s
theory, of a highly sophisticated race, who originated from Antarctica’s once
temperate continent, who then built sophisticated monuments, navigated the
world using accurate latitude and longitude, who mapped lands now buried under
ice, who seemed to indicate that they were at least 10,000 years old, who
worked stone as if it was soft clay or putty, who understood the precession of
the constellations to an incredibly fine degree, who apparently mapped the
world and represented highly significant mathematical principles in the
dimensions of the oldest pyramids, whose homeland skidded south and stopped at
the pole . . . has many features which need to be evaluated. But most of his
conclusions do not fit with Bible chronology.
If anything, much of the evidence (apart from his theories) confirms the Bible, because it has been
saying, since it was written, that Man began perfect and then fell. It has been
saying that “there is nothing new under the sun” for thousands of years. It
describes technology before the Flood, and explains the extent of the Flood,
and the aftermath. It gives the origin of nations, and languages, the reason
why the people migrated, and it hints at their high degree of inventiveness and
ability. It also relates the influence of hybrids - the giants. All these
things can explain the theories put forward by Mr. Hancock, without damaging
the Bible chronology.
Many mysteries remain.