In a message dated 95-11-12 16:51:40 EST, Stephen writes:
>Glenn started of by trying to refute our view that Adam was "within
>the past 50,000 years". The evidence he cited for modern man was
>indeed "within the past 50,000 years". Glenn then changed tack to
>argue against a straw man that claimed that Adam was "50,000 years".
>
>There is in fact no "mismatch". I am quite happy with Adam having
>been created within a range of 10,000 - 50,000 years.
As I mention in another post, I obtained Pearce's book Friday and read it
yesterday. I think I understand the 2 Adam approach better and find it
violated by all sorts of observational data.
Pearce views Adam as having been specifically formed 12,000 years ago and
Adam was the first farmer:
" Actually, the much-maligned Ussher might be less wide of the
mark than anthropologists in view of the evidence that Adam was
Neolithic Man of 12,000 years ago. Ussher placed Adam 6,000
years ago, thus making it a matter of thousands of years rather
than millions."E.K. Victor Pearce, Who was Adam? (Exeter: The
Paternoster Press, Ltd., 1969), p. 33
and
"The Lord God took man and put him in the Garden of Eden to
till it and keep it." (Gene. 2:15). The particular connection of
Adam and Eden with tillage -agriculture- is specifically
mentioned three times. Garden farming, or horticulture, began
in the Near East about 12,000 years ago. This is also where the
Bible places its origin. This epoch-making event, the invention
of farming, is called the New Stone Age Revolution. The term
'mesolithic' is really obsolete. Before this, there had been
types of man on earth for half a million years, but they were all
Old Stone Age men who had never discovered the secret of farming
and of a settled existence."~E.K. Victor Pearce, Who was Adam?
(Exeter: The Paternoster Press, Ltd., 1969), p. 17
and
"Adam is represented as being formed for the specific
purpose of carrying out this New Stone Age gardening. The British
Museum Handbook by Sonia Cole on the Neolithic Revolution says,
"Corn was planted first in small plots, thus beginning as a
garden rather than a field crop."~E.K. Victor Pearce, Who was
Adam? (Exeter: The Paternoster Press, Ltd., 1969), p. 54
To Pearce, the creation of Adam represents a break with the past. Adam was
created with the purpose of farming and his descendents filled an empty
world, carrying their technology with them. I could not find what Pearce
thought happened to the Genesis 1 man but he clearly says that the world was
empty prior to the agricultural revolution instigated by Adam. He talks
about hiatus' in the archaeological record between 11,000 and 14,000 years
ago.Pearce also believes that we can follow the spread of farming from Catal
Huyuk in Turkey to all parts of the world. Pearce writes
"Some take it for granted that when New Stone Age man migrated he
intermarried with the earlier Stone Age peoples, and indeed this
could be inferred concerning Cain and his wife, or it could be a
possible explanation of the intermarriage referred to in Genesis
6 between the 'sons of God' (the Adamic race) and the 'daughters
of men' (surviving members of earlier creations). But this would
not make Eve 'the mother of all living'. That there is no
genetic connection between Adamites and former races gains
support from the remarkable emptiness of the lands into which the
migrating farmers came. The first Danubians feared no attack
from any earlier inhabitants of Europe. had they disappeared?
Likewise, Africa seemed to be empty in the West, Central and
Southern areas, according to their ethnological history until
very late. The Bushmen are an exception, but like the Australian
Aborignines they were probably an early Neolithic migration which
became isolated. Melanesian tradition depicts their ancestors as
entering empty lands. In Northern Europe the axes of the
Mesolithic migrants reveal a conection with the early Natufian
farmer-hunters of the Near East. They arrived with the knowledge
of farming but reverted to secondary hunter-gathering.
"The archaeological break (hiatus) before the Mesolithic or
Natufian seems widely general in cave stratigraphy. This would
indicate that the Adamic race was a fresh start eleven thousand
years ago.
"Thus to all parts of the World the new revolutionary mode
of subsistence was diffused. Farmers moving east, west, north
and south brought their techniques and even their animals, from
the area described as the Garden of Eden, where Adam was made in
order to farm.
"It seems, therefore, a reasonable inference, by correlating
science with Scripture, that Adam under God's direction started
this New Stone Age Revolution.
"It answers the prehistorian's enigma on what could have
caused this momentous long-awaited advance."~E.K. Victor Pearce,
Who was Adam? (Exeter: The Paternoster Press, Ltd., 1969), p. 63
The first problem Pearce's view has it that he believes that God created Adam
12,000 years ago, but admits that modern Homo sapiens appear in rocks of
30,000 years. Thus, there is no evidence of the creation of Adam and no
physical difference between Genesis 1 man and us. Thus, if some of them
still live, we would never know it, but the plan of salvation would not apply
to them.
The first evidence of farming in North America comes from the southern
latitudes not from Alaska, as Pearce's view would require. Adam's
descendants are supposed to be farmers and the path into the New World is
through Alaska.
Unfortunately, Pearce does not document the source for this concept of a
hiatus in stratigraphy. I have never heard of it. Has anyone else? All of
my anthro books clearly show a continuity in the old world with the first
occupants of North America prior to when Pearce has Adam being created.
Their skulls are not unlike modern indian skulls. There is NO evidence of
any world-wide catastrophe which wiped out Genesis 1 man either. The stone
tools of 14,000 years ago are mostly the same as the stone tools of 11,000
years ago.
Pearce defines Adam's descendants as
"Can we be sure, however, that in the vast period of half-a-
million years before New Stone Age farming no type of man
cultivated crops or kept sheep and cattle? For the evidence, we
must look at the tools and mode of living of these Old Stone Age
men. Evidence that Old Stone Age man did not cultivate wheat and
crops is demonstrated archaeologically by the complete lack of
digging-stick weights, gardening hoes, corn grinding querns,
flint sickles polished by reaping, storage jars and baking ovens.
It is demonstrated socially also by the lack of settled
communities,. All these, the New Stone Age men had. Old Stone
Age implements were for hunting or digging up roots. Their
roving life took them from cave to cave, and for clothes they
wore skins, sewen together with bone needles."~E.K. Victor
Pearce, Who was Adam? (Exeter: The Paternoster Press, Ltd.,
1969), p. 23
So why are there modern men, like the bushmen of the Kalahari, who do not
have some of these implements which mark New Stone Age man? Are these men
not descendents of Adam? How can I be sure. Pearce admits that
physiologically modern men lived prior to Adam's creation. (Pearce, p. 26)
Pearce also believes that science says that the racial differences
accumulated in 6,000 years, but (Science News, 144:418) reports that Asians
and Europeans split from the African population about 100,000 years ago.
This modern mtDNA evidence disproves the concept that Adam's descendants
replaced all paleolithic men with a new type.
This replacement is quite critical to Pearce's view because if the
replacement does not occur, then not all of us are descended from Adam. It
would seem that no one but those of Middle East extraction could claim such a
lineage. Certainly, my ancestors did not come from there.
I did not take the time to look up the earliest fossil man in Australia known
today, but in 1965, the earliest was from 14,000 years B. C. (16,000 B. P).
Their skull types are the same as modern Aborigines. (Grahame Clark and
Stuart Piggott, Prehistoric Societies, (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1965), p.
108) This means that the Aborigines existed prior to Adam and thus they can
not be descendents of Adam. (At least according to a strict interpretation of
Pearce's view.) Unless we are to believe that the identical racial features
arose in Genesis 1 man as in Genesis 2 man in the same geographic locale.
This is unlikely. The effect of the aborigine's existence means that
Pearce's view was invalid when he published it.
Most puzzling of all, is Pearce's view of the Flood in relation to
archaeological sites. Pearce's view forces him to believe in a global flood,
due to where he thinks Adam lived (Turkey). He writes:
"First, the opening phrase 'In the beginning' and the first
two verses of Genesis sum up the astro-physical origin of the
universe of some nine billion years ago. Second, the days (ages)
of creation which follow, alighn as we have seen, with the
geophysics of earth history and with its geology and biology.
Third, at the end of the sixth age-day of Gen. 1:26-30, we have
Old Stone Age Man. This culture lasted either 500,000 years or
two million years. Fourth, in Gen. 2:5 to chapter 4, we have New
Stone Age Man with his agricultural revolution in the 'Garden of
Eden' 10,000 years B. C. This is followed by surprising New
Stone Age city developments of Catal Huyuk in Turkey, and
Jericho, 8000 to 5000 B.C. Fifth, the Chalcolithic period is
referred to in 4:22, when native copper and iron are used 5000 B.
C., long before the Bronze Age. Then we have the Flood of
Genesis 6-9, between 5000 and 4000 B. C.
"The Flood is followed by a new centre of urban
civilization. This is the period of the Bronze Age cities of S.
Mesopotamian flood valleys, 3,500 B. C., with with ziggurats like
the Tower of Babel. Sumer and Uruk of archaeology, and Shinar of
Gen. 10-11, correlate here.
"In addition to the chronological alignment between Genesis
and science we also have the geographical agreement. The plateau
heights of Turkey and Iran before the flood, give place in the
story to the alluvial mud-flats of S. Mesopotamia after the
flood."
"These correlations give an answer to an objection which
might be given to account for Adam being represented as Neolithic
Man. It is that the writer would take it for granted that men
had always known the art of farming. A writer long after the
time of Adam, it migh be contended could make this mistake
because he would not know of the absence of farming before 10,000
B. C.
"This explanation for representing Adam as a Neolithic
farmer could be valid were it not that it fitted into the
correct order of culture progress given in the story as
outlined."~E.K. Victor Pearce, Who was Adam? (Exeter: The
Paternoster Press, Ltd., 1969), p. 78-79
and
"This aligning of Genesis with prehistory has an interesting
bearing upon the Flood. It demonstrates that evidence for the
Flood does not rest upon the identification of a particular
waterlaid stratum of clay. It places the time of the Flood as
occurring between the two city-building eras and explains the
hiatus between them. The first cities were built in the plateau
heights (with the exception of Jericho) which brings a new factor
to the question of whether the Flood was local or more
widespread. The story of the Flood used to be regarded by many
as a tradition arising from an unusually severe flooding of low-
lying Mesopotamia. The inhabitants of this alluvial plain
experienced many floods, and it was thought that a greater
inundation than usual occurred from great waters rushing from the
mountain plateaux to the plains.
"We see now, however, that the early neolithic farmers had
their habitat in the heights of these very plateau lands
stretching from Turkey to India. The average altitude was 5,000
ft. with mountains rising to 17,000 ft. It cannot be argued that
knowledge was limited to local geography. Trade and travel were
widespread. Volcanic glass from Catal Huyuk and other
commodities were carried along the trade routes from Turkey to
Iran, along the heights to Jarmo and down into the valleys.
Stories of local floods would deceive nobody. Moreover, the
setting of those figuring in the story is the horticultural
gardens of the New Stone Age farmers in the heights. They were
those affected. Field farming on a large scale in the low mud
flats of South Mesopotamia was of a later era after the Flood.
It was this plateau system of which the Bible must be speaking,
when it says the mountains and high hills were covered by the
Flood. The Bible says also that it was ocean water which invaded
the land. Geophysics shows there are a number of ways in which
this could happen, but it is not the purpose of this book to give
the evidence.
"All the descriptions of the second city-building era match
the Genesis story after the Flood. Genesis 11 describes ho
Noah's descendants migrated from the Iranian Plateau into the
South Mesopotamian mud flats of Sumer (Shinar), and began to
build a ziggurat (Tower of Babel)."
~E.K. Victor Pearce, Who was Adam? (Exeter: The Paternoster
Press, Ltd., 1969), p. 79-80
This means that Catal Huyuk is pre-flood and Sumer post flood.
Thus he must believe in a tranquil flood. His Flood is the ancient
equivalent of the Neutron Bomb. All the people die but the buildings remain.
Once again, he claims a hiatus in city building, but I have never run into
this hiatus either. Has anyone else?
The scientific problems I find are
1. Modern man prior to Adam's creation.
2. I find no evidence of a hiatus in the human fossil record prior to 12,000
years ago but before 14,000 years ago.
3. The mtDNA evidence does not support his view that man's racial types arose
within the past 12,000 years.
4. Farming technology does not seem to have been spread in the manner he
suggests.
5. His flood did no damage to Catal Huyuk which he regards as pre-Flood.
6. The identical morphological features must have arisen in Genesis 1 man as
in Genesis 2 man in Australia. This seems unlikely.
7. He defines modern humanity by one of the poorest of criteria--possesion of
a particular technology. What if God chose to form a new man to give earth
some brand new technology of which we have been unable to invent?
I hope this helps in understanding the 2-Adam view. I find a lack of
evidence for it from science.
glenn