Facts About Evolution

This human footprint found in Kenya dates to 1.5 million years ago.

Dr. Alice C. Linsley

Bible-believing people often argue against "evolution" without specifying which aspect of evolution concerns them. Which of these basic points of evolution is a direct contradiction to what the Bible says about humans as a special creation? 

1. mutation
2. adaptation
3. natural selection
4. common ancestry of apes and humans

Touching on the first two points there is no doubt. Mutation and adaptation are the Creator's gifts to insure the survival of humans and other organisms.

Natural selection takes place, but it cannot be stated as a law since there exist some poorly adapted species which nevertheless thrive in their environments. If we are honest, we must admit that there are factors in survival that we don't understand, and which may pertain to supernatural oversight, something beyond the realm of science.

Common ancestry of apes and humans is what the late biologist Jonathan Wells famously called an “icon of evolution.” However, this theory lacks material evidence. It is a hypothesis and contrary to what Genesis asserts about humans as a special creation. Christians who take Scripture as our first authority cannot assume that human exceptionalism represents ignorance on the part of the ancient biblical writers.

Evolution refers to changes over time. The changes are within species. Further, rates of change vary greatly from group to group, and even among closely related lineages. The genetic codes of living organisms appear to have set boundaries beyond which the organism cannot change. The Bible refers to these as "types."

Some changes improve the organism's ability to survive. Some changes result in the organism being less well adapted to changing environments. This can lead to extinction.

Christians should try to understand what the data indicates about humans. To simply criticize anything that may be considered "evolution" exposes us to criticism by even fair-minded scientists. Consider this statement by Sabine Hossenfelder: "...scientists who claim, as Stephen Hawking did, that 'there is no possibility of a creator,' or as Victor Stenger has, that God is a 'falsified hypothesis,' demonstrate that they don’t understand the limits of their knowledge. When prominent scientists make such overconfident proclamations, they make me cringe." (An excerpt from Hossenfelder's Existential Physics, page 218.)

Further, ignorant statements about evolution reinforce the notion that the sciences and the Bible are in conflict. The sciences have a story to tell. The Messianic Faith expressed in Scripture also has a story to tell. Some are listening to the harmony and others are deaf.

Consider the data:

No material evidence has been found to prove that humans and apes have a common ancestry. Early or archaic human dentition is easily distinguished from that of apes. In humans, the back teeth are larger than the front teeth, and the canines are not pointed. Humans also lack the characteristic diastema or tooth gap found in apes.

When Jeremy DeSilva, a British anthropologist, compared the ankle joint, the tibia and the talus fossils of human ancestors ("hominins") between 4.12 million to 1.53 million years old, he discovered that all of the ankle joints resembled those of modern humans rather than those of apes. Chimpanzees flex their ankles 45 degrees from normal resting position. This makes it possible for apes to climb trees with great ease. While walking, humans flex their ankles a maximum of 20 degrees. The human ankle bones are quite distinct from those of apes.

The discovery of a complete fourth metatarsal of A. afarensis at Hadar that shows the deep, flat base and tarsal facets that "imply that its midfoot had no ape-like midtarsal break. These features show that the A. afarensis foot was functionally like that of modern humans." (Carol Ward, William H. Kimbel, Donald C. Johanson, Feb. 2011)

 

Humans have been on the earth for at least 3.4 million years. The range of physical features found among archaic humans is the same as the features found in modern human populations. Therefore, it is more accurate to speak simply of "archaic humans" (before about 300,000 years ago) and "modern humans" (more recent than 300,000 years ago).

"Homo" refers to humans. There were many groups of archaic humans and the oldest human fossils have been found in East Africa.

Neanderthals were fully human. The physical features associated with them have been found very widely, well beyond the Neander Valley of Germany where the first fossils were found.

Human innovation and technologies are evident in the record of human artifacts. This includes evidence of butchering as early as 3.4 million years ago.

The Rising Star Expedition retrieved and cataloged over 1000 early human fossils dating 236,000 to 335,000 years ago. These were buried ritually, expressing a religious nature among the Homo naledi community. The recovered fossils show the full range of anatomical features found in modern humans. The cave chambers had small hearths where well-preserved charcoal, ash, and discolored clay were found. The excavations also turned up many fragments of animal bone.

Related reading: Conscious of Our Uniqueness as Humans; Ethics Forum: The Reality of Human Exceptionalism; What Paleoanthropologists Want to Discover; Artifacts of Great Antiquity; Richard Leakey: Many Groups of Archaic Humans; How Homo naledi got into the Dinaledi Chamber; Darwin for Everyman | TLS

Ego's role in presentation of human origins

John Hawks is one of the world's leading paleoanthropologists. He wrote:

For some people who follow human evolution news, recognizing “species” is really just about whether you’re a lumper or a splitter. Many people assume that the names of species are about ego, not evidence.

But nature presents us with real challenges, which still cause different scientists to approach the past with different assumptions. Let me give some examples.

Just today, I got notification of a new paper by Walter Neves and colleagues, in which they suggest that Australopithecus sediba and Homo naledi are actually South African representatives of Homo habilis. Some people might scoff at this—after all, the Dinaledi fossils are only 236,000–335,000 years old, while the latest-known H. habilis is around 1.6 million. But a young date for some fossils doesn’t bar them from from membership in a species with much older fossil representatives. Identity is tested with morphological evidence, not geological age.

Read more in this post "Arguing about species: Is it evidence, or ego?"

Read Don Johanson vs. The Leakeys to understand how ego and competition for headlines plays a role in paleontology.

Fully Human.. from the beginning

Alice C. Linsley

Regular readers of Just Genesis know that I am an "old Earth" creationist. I also recognize the reality of genetic mutation and species adaptation. However, I find no physical support for the Darwinian theory of common ancestry of humans and apes. In fact, the material evidence supports the biblical assertion that humans are a "special creation" and were fully human from the beginning.

 Image by John Hawks, one of the co-authors of the paper describing these bones.

The bones from the cave in South Africa were recovered by the Rising Star Expedition. The bones were found in a chamber named Dinaledi, accessible through a narrow chute about a hundred yards from the entrance of the Rising Star Cave. The cavern in which the fossils were found has only fine sediment and no evidence of water transport of material from any outside source.

Parts of the skeletons resemble modern human anatomy while other skeletal remains resemble the australopiths, like Lucy. In other words, this burial pit contained the remains of people who ranged in appearance about as much as modern humans.The bones/bodies were deposited over “some period of time.”

This find is being presented as a "new branch" of homo, called Homo naledi. These researchers do not consider Lucy and her kin to be fully human, though there is much evidence to suggest so. They hang a great deal on the size of brain cavity, though this is not an indicator of complexity of thought. In this view, H. naledi is slightly more human than the A. australopithecine and slightly less human than modern humans. Again this is based on the size of the brain cavity. That of H. naledi is less than half that of the average modern human skull, but proportional to the rest of the body. The 1500 bones and bone fragments represent at least 15 individuals. The adults were about 5 feet tall.

The cave burial of so many archaic humans suggests these people practiced ritual burial. No stone tools, clothing or other artifacts have been found in this burial site. There are numerous sets of bones from multiple individuals of different ages and sexes. There are many more bones awaiting further excavation.

Next week there is to be a 2-hour PBS-Nova presentation which will address these two years of research. It will be interesting to see how this is presented.

Jeffrey Schwartz thinks that the H. naledi remains represent two or more different species. He makes his case in Newsweek: “Why the Homo Naledi Discovery May Not Be Quite What it Seems”. On the other hand, John Hawks states that "The variation within the collection is not high, it is extraordinarily low." Hawks reports: "Homo naledi has a mosaic of features that include some that compare most closely to more primitive australopiths, and others that compare more closely to Homo. How do we know that this is one species rather than a jumble of species mixed together? Simple: every feature that is repeated in the sample is nearly identical in all individuals that preserve it."

Archaic humans or sub-human evolving by various branches to modern human?

Related reading:  Genesis on Human Origins; Facts About Human Origins; Was Lucy Fully Human?; Overview of Human Origins; This Face Changes the Human Story; Does the Binary Feature Signal Greater Complexity?

Many Groups of Archaic Humans

In 2011 researchers discovered jaw bones and teeth of four individuals in the Afar region of Ethiopia which date to between 3.3m and 3.5m years old. These archaic humans were alive at the same time as other early human groups, suggesting that it may be time to abandon the linear evolution hypothesis. Clearly, there were more archaic humans living in Africa 3 million years ago than has been generally recognized.

Dr Yohannes Haile-Selassie, curator of physical anthropology at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, believes that the growing evidence of archaic human fossils indicates that the early stage of human evolution was complex.

He is quoted in this BBC report: "Historically, because we didn't have the fossil evidence to show there was hominin diversity during the middle Pliocene, we thought there was only one lineage, one primitive ancestor - in this case Australopithecus afarensis, Lucy - giving rise to the next."

Lucy’s species lived from 2.9 million years ago to 3.8 million years ago, overlapping in time with the new species Australopithecus deyiremeda. The new species is the most conclusive evidence for the contemporaneous presence of more than one closely related early human ancestor species prior to 3 million years ago.

Dr. Haile-Selassie states, "That hypothesis of linear evolution has to be revisited. And now with the discovery of more species, like this new one... you have another species roaming around.

"What this means is we have many species that could give rise to later hominins, including our own genus Homo."

Dr Haile-Selassie said that even more fossils need to be unearthed, to better understand the path that human evolution took.

He added that finding additional ancient remains could also help researchers examine how the different species lived side-by-side - whether they mixed or avoided each other, and how they shared food and other resources in their landscape.

The original study is published in the journal Nature.

This report states that modern humans lived alongside an estimated eight now-extinct species of archaic human populations about 300,000 years ago.

The Upper Nile Valley region is likely the point of origin of archaic humans and the idea of a "new species" is another example of having to force material findings into the Darwinian "common ancestry" mold. Just wait until the Rising Star Expedition reports come out about a burial cave near Krugersdorp in South Africa. The large number of individuals found in a tiny underground chamber suggest clan burial. By April 2014, between two localities, 1724 human specimens were recovered, and they show a range of anatomical features consistent with modern humans.

Related reading: Time to Jettison the Theory of Common Ancestry of Apes and Humans?; A Flawed Paradigm; The Dispersal of Archaic Humans; Was Lucy Human?; Getting the Facts About Human Origins; The Northern Range of Archaic Humans; Protruding Jaw a Human Feature; Is Scientific Dating of Fossils Reliable?

1.5 Million Year Footprints in Kenya

Archaic human footprint found in Ileret, Kenya
Several sets provide evidence of males travelling in groups.

Archaic human footprints were found near a lake in Ileret, Kenya in the early 2000's. The 22 footprints were discovered in two sedimentary layers dated at 1.51 to 1.53 million years ago, providing the oldest evidence of an essentially modern human–like foot anatomy, with a relatively adducted hallux, medial longitudinal arch, and medial weight transfer before push-off.

The study appears here. The report focused on the anatomy of these footprints and found that these archaic humans ambulated like modern humans. Neil Roach returned to Ileret and found more footprints — about 100. The findings were presented at the annual meeting of the Paleoanthropology Society in San Francisco. These prints represent multiple individuals walking in one direction along a lakeside, possibly hunting for antelope or wildebeest.

Jeremy DeSilva's research showed that Australopithecus lacked the large grasping toe typical of tree climbers, and its spine, pelvis, knees, and ankles were made for walking on two legs. DeSilva compared the ankle joint, the tibia and the talus fossils of human ancestors ("hominins") between 4.12 million to 1.53 million years old, he discovered that all of the ankle joints resembled those of modern humans rather than those of apes. Chimpanzees flex their ankles 45 degrees from normal resting position. This makes it possible for apes to climb trees with great ease. While walking, humans flex their ankles a maximum of 20 degrees. The human ankle bones are quite distinct from those of apes

“Upright walking is such a unique way of moving,” says DeSilva, assistant professor of anthropology at Boston University. “If you look across the animal world, locomotion is so diverse: things fly, things swim. Moving on two legs is odd."

Humans are unique in so many ways.

This discovery of a complete fourth metatarsal of A. afarensis at Hadar shows the deep, flat base and tarsal facets that "imply that its midfoot had no ape-like midtarsal break. These features show that the A. afarensis foot was functionally like that of modern humans." The February 2011 report was written by Carol Ward, William H. Kimbel, and Donald C. Johanson. Johanson worked with Mary Leakey on other significant finds.

Johanson and Leakey were scheduled to speak at a Nobel Symposium in Sweden in May 1978. The conference honored Mary Leakey, who received a medal from the King of Sweden for her scientific investigations. Leakey was embarrassed when Donald C. Johanson announced that his Afar Triangle finds were ape, and included Mary Leakey's 4 million year old Laetoli specimen (jaw bone LH4) from Tanzania as an exhibit. Leakey would have classified her Laetoli finds as Homo/human. She expressed her regret that “the Laetoli fellow is now doomed to be called Australopithecus afarensis.”

Archaic human footprints at Laetoli, Tanzania 

Mary Leakey’s 1979 discoveries of footprints in Tanzania added to the evidence that humans walked the earth over 3 million years ago. At Laetoli, about 25 miles south of Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, Leakey discovered footprints of a man, woman and child created about 3.6 million years ago and preserved under falling ash from the nearby Sadiman volcano. The raised arch and rounded heel of the footprints showed that whoever left these footprints walked as humans walk today.

There is a great deal of ego gratification in naming a "new" stage in human evolution, but analysis of all these footprints indicates that these creatures were fully human. From over 3 million years to the present, there was been a limited amount of physical changes in humans. Devotion to the theory of evolutionary branching of ape and human from a common ancestor is not supported by the data.

Related reading: Was Lucy Human?; Study Reports a Whopping ‘23% of Our Genome’ Contradicts Standard Human-Ape Evolutionary Phylogeny,” Evolution News, June 3, 2011

Genesis on Human Origins

The highest concentration of R1b in Africa is in the Lake Chad region, Noah's homeland.

The book of Genesis is the most helpful written source of information about human origins. The first 12 chapters provide significant information that can be used in anthropological study of the first humans, the earliest human communities, the development of settlements, early technologies, the origins of the priesthood, circumcision, animal sacrifice, the dispersion of archaic peoples, and the development of languages. The focus of this article is human origins. The next in the series looks at what Genesis tells us about Abraham's Nilo-Saharan ancestors. The last in the series addresses the movement of archaic populations out of Africa to regions as distant as Northern Japan and Scotland.

To understand what Genesis tells us about human origins we must set aside preconceptions that cause us to filter out essential information. We must allow Genesis to speak for itself without imposing our beliefs on the text.

There is no conflict between the data of Genesis 1-12 and the concrete findings of science. Genesis provides an accurate and reliable picture of human origins, as we will see in this series on scientific verification of the Genesis data.

The First Humans

Humans appeared suddenly and unheralded upon the Earth about 4 million years ago. These humans, though anatomically archaic, were fully human. This aligns with the Genesis explanation. After the Earth had cooled and vegetation covered the ground, after the environment was safe for humans, that is when they appear (Gen. 1:27). Further, Genesis states that humans were a special act of creation, not the result of a long process of evolution from a primitive common ancestor. That assertion has the support of science also. The common ancestry theory has never been proven. It is impossible to prove something that is not true. The theory of humans and apes having a common ancestor is not indicated by the genome research. See “Study Reports a Whopping ‘23% of Our Genome’ Contradicts Standard Human-Ape Evolutionary Phylogeny,” Evolution News, June 3, 2011.

The oldest Homo fossils exhibit all the physical traits of humans. They walked upright, had opposing thumbs, short fingers, human ankle bones, and human dentition. In humans, the back teeth are larger than the front teeth (not so with apes), and the canines are not pointed. Humans also lack the characteristic diastema, or tooth gap, found in apes.

These archaic populations were fully human, as evidenced by their anatomical structure, the presence of tools, controlled fire, and evidence of hunting and butchering. The archaic brain cavities were small compared to modern humans, though proportional to the smaller bodies. Further, brain size does not indicate lack of complexity of thought.

The earliest fossils that scientists agree to be fully human date to about 160,000 years and were found in desert sands near the Ethiopian village of Herto in 1997. These fossils show a range of anatomical features yet all the features are found among humans today. The nearly complete skulls of people who lived 160,000 years ago are, in the words of the American paleontologist Tim White, “like modern-day humans in almost every feature.”

Recent discoveries in Dikika, near Gona and Bouri, Ethiopia indicate that they shared food, and used flints to scrap, saw and chop. Two fossilized bones have been found that appear to be marked by stone tools. On the basis of low-power microscopic and environmental scanning electron microscope observations, these bones show unambiguous stone-tool cut marks for flesh removal and to access bone marrow.

Lucy's skeleton

When Jeremy DeSilva compared the ankle joint, the tibia and the talus fossils of human ancestors ("hominins") between 4.12 million to 1.53 million years old, he discovered that all of the ankle joints resembled those of modern humans rather than those of apes. Chimpanzees flex their ankles 45 degrees from normal resting position. This makes it possible for apes to climb trees with great ease. While walking, humans flex their ankles a maximum of 20 degrees. The human ankle bones are quite distinct from those of apes. (Read DeSilva’s research here.)

A recent discovery of a complete fourth metatarsal of A. afarensis at Hadar that shows the deep, flat base and tarsal facets that "imply that its midfoot had no ape-like midtarsal break. These features show that the A. afarensis foot was functionally like that of modern humans." (Carol Ward, William H. Kimbel, Donald C. Johanson, Feb. 2011) From here.

Some of the earliest evidence of controlled use of fire by humans was found at Swartkrans in South Africa. Other sites that indicate fire use include Chesowanja near Lake Baringo, Koobi Fora, and Olorgesailie in Kenya.

Mary Leakey’s 1979 discoveries in Tanzania added to the evidence that humans walked the earth about over 3 million years ago. At Laetoli, about 25 miles south of Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, Leakey discovered footprints of a man, woman and child created about 3.6 million years ago and preserved under falling ash from the nearby Sadiman volcano. The raised arch and rounded heel of the footprints showed that whoever left these footprints walked as humans today.

Early human footprints at Laetoli, Tanzania date to 3 million years.

Some of the Australopithecine fossils dating between 2.4 million and 700,000 years are recognized by scientists as early human fossils. Mary Leakey considered her Tanzania finds to be Homo, that is, human, and not ape.

Other archaic humans lived in Africa near Lake Chad, Lake Turkana, Lake Baringo, and in Southern Africa. Paleoanthropologist John Hawks has written (here) about the Lake Turkana-Omo region:

"Ancient people were using this area throughout, leaving stone artifacts. It is amazing walking along the exposures, noting the stones that are the marks of ancient human activity. These early modern humans were making fundamentally the same kinds of artifacts that we find across western Eurasia, made by the earliest Neandertals, and across most of the African continent at the same time. There were regional differences in the pattern of toolmaking, but there was a broad technological commonality. This was the cultural background of our ancestors."

These archaic humans used polished bone tools, butchered animals for food, and controlled fire. Some of the earliest evidence of controlled use of fire by humans was found at Swartkrans. Other sites that indicate fire use include Chesowanja near Lake Baringo, Koobi Fora, and Olorgesailie in Kenya.

Using bones found at Pinnacle Point Cave in South Africa, archaeologist Corey O’Driscoll identified projectile impact marks which are between 91,000 and 98,000 years old, the oldest direct evidence for the use of projectile weapons.

Pinnacle Point cave

Human occupation of Pinnacle Point began about 162,000 years ago. The oldest level reveals a fairly sophisticated stone technology in which silcrete stone was heat-treated. Silcrete is a fine-grained stone brought from the South African coast. This is the oldest known example of such technology.

Large pieces of red ochre have been found at Pinnacle Point and at other sites in southern Africa. The pieces were either ground or scraped to produce a pigment for painting the body and for use in burials. The burial of rulers in red ochre was a universal practice among Late Stone Age peoples ( c. 100,000 to 20,000 years ago.)

This was also a period of human expansion. Humans moved along the major water systems of the ancient world. That world was also a wetter world in Africa and the ancient Near East. Human populations had spread out of Africa to virtually every continent. During this time the heads of clans were buried in red ochre powder, a symbol of blood, by which they expressed hope in life after death. Perhaps the oldest case (at least 50,000 years ago) involves the burial of a small boy in the Lebombo Mountains of Southern Africa. He was buried with a sea-shell pendant and covered in red ochre dust (ground hematite).

A man buried 45,000 years ago at La Chapelle-aux-Saints in southern France was packed in red ochre. The Fox Lady of Doini Vestonice in Czechoslovakia was covered in red ochre at her burial 23,000 years ago. The Red Lady of Paviland in Wales was buried in red ochre about 20,000 years ago. Her skeletal remains and burial artifacts are encrusted with the red ochre. Another 20,000 year old burial site in Bavaria reveals a thirty-year-old man entirely surrounded by a pile of mammoth tusks and nearly submerged in a mass of red ochre.

Between 100,000-12,000 years ago a genetic and linguistic distance began to grow between two main groups: African and Asian. Genesis 11:1 speaks of a time when "the whole world had one language and a common speech" and this describes how the two groups were once so closely related that we can speak of a common cultural underpinning that expressed itself in the Afro-Asiatic Dominion.

Haplogroup N mitochondrial DNA 

The classification of fossils as ape or human has been revised several times because the criterion of classification of human and ape has not been consistently applied. Some scientists interpret evidence through their preconceptions and try to force the data to fit their interpretation of human origins. There is also a great temptation to publish research that might gain them funding to continue their work and the funding comes mainly from organizations and institutions that favor evolutionary theory.

The evidence indicates that humans have been on the surface of the earth for millions of years and that a range of physical features from population to population has been the norm. Population specific features were likely enhanced because archaic people practiced endogamy (marriage within the clan). From 3 million years to the present, physical changes in humans have not been very great. From the beginning, humans were fully human, the result of a special creative act of the Creator. The essence of the human being has remained unchanged from that initial act. There is no reason to abandon this belief since the widespread theory of evolutionary branching of ape and human from a common ancestor is not supported by the data.


Related reading: Haplogroups of Interest to Biblical Anthropologists; Protruding Jaw a Human Feature; Concerns about BioLogos; The Dispersal of Archaic Humans; Adam Was a Red Man; Millions of Years Between Genesis 4:1 and Genesis 4:17; Mining Blood; Facts About Human Origins; Biblical Anthropology and the Question of Common Ancestry; A Scientific Timeline of Genesis; When is the Evidence Sufficient?

Concerns about BioLogos

Alice C. Linsley

Deborah Haarsma, the Director of BioLogos, is professor of Astronomy, and her husband, Loren Haarsma, teaches Physics at Calvin College in Michigan. The biology department of Calvin College issued this statement on May 7, 2010: "We teach evolutionary theory as the best scientific explanation for the dynamic diversity of life on Earth. . . . We teach biology from an evolutionary paradigm."

Neither Deborah nor Loren are biologists, though biologists serve on the BioLogos team. Neither are anthropologists, and as far as I can discover, no anthropologists serve on the BioLogos team. That is unfortunate since anthropology has much to contribute to the conversation about human origins.

I have some concerns about BioLogos, especially after talking with the Haarsmas two summers ago at the annual conference of the American Scientific Affiliation. Deborah and her husband believe in common ancestry of humans and apes. At the same time they claim to believe that the "Bible is the inspired and authoritative word of God." Here we have contradiction. The Bible teaches that God created humans last and that from the beginning they were fully human. The anthropological evidence supports this view. Humans appeared suddenly and without antecedents about 4 million years ago. This is what would be expected from the Genesis creation accounts. Though these accounts should not be taken as scientific, those who consider the Bible as "the inspired and authoritative word of God" must regard the data provided here as reliable and truthful. The oldest human fossils show evidence of full humanity though the anatomical features are archaic, not modern. These very old remains indicate human dentition, oppositional thumbs, and erect posture. There is even evidence that these early humans butchered and controlled fire.

I had a long chat with Loren Haarsma about these ancient human fossils and he claimed that Lucy could not have been human because her brain cavity was so small. I was surprised by this response. It seems poorly informed. Lucy's brain cavity/skull was proportional to her body size, and the size of the brain is NOT an indicator of the complexity of thought. Complexity of thought develops out of a binary framework. It is obvious that binary systems lead to greater complexity of meaning and function than unary or monadic systems. After that conversation, I wrote these pieces:

Does the Binary Feature Signal Greater Complexity?

The Binary Aspect of the Biblical Worldview

I have supported BioLogos because I believe the conversation about human origins must include Christians who hold to Darwinian evolution. That said, there can be no doubt that their view of common ancestry does not align with the Genesis assertion of "kinds" fixed in their essence.

The Haarsmas and I are fellow members of the American Scientific Affiliation (ASA) which in recent years has provided a platform for the presentation of Darwinian theory as it might apply to the Bible. ASA gatherings are an appropriate place for such discussions and by no means is there agreement among the scientists on the question of human origins. Deborah and Loren are kind, intelligent, and committed people who love the Lord Jesus. This is another area where Christians do not agree. Perhaps the philosophical (not scientific) tension between Darwinian non-essentialism and Biblical essentialism will lead to even greater creativity of thought, just as the strings of a violin, when under tension, can produce beautiful music.

Related reading:  Enns Casts Evangelicals as Anti-Darwin; Biblical Anthropologists Discuss Darwin; Genesis: Is it Really About Human Origins?; What is Meant by the Term "Kind" in Genesis?; Evangelical Colleges Battle Over Creationism; Theories of Change and Constancy; Saving Noah

Evidence of an Old Earth - Part 2

Alice C. Linsley


Evidence of an Old Earth - Part 1 explores how Young-Earth Creationism fails to align with the information found in Genesis. Young-Earth Creationism also fails to align with information in the various sciences. The discrepancy between the Young Earth interpretation and the evidence of the sciences is so great that many have the impression that Christianity and the sciences are in conflict. Truly, there is no conflict. The evidence from the sciences aligns quite well with the details given in Scripture.


Dispersion of peoples

Genesis 10 describes the dispersion of peoples that took place between 10,000 and 5,000 years ago. DNA studies have confirmed the dispersion of these Kushite peoples out of Africa. The Kushites ruled the ancient world for 7000 years according to Vedic (ancient Hindu) sources. Genesis 6:4 calls these rulers the "mighty men of old."

Abraham's ancestors named in Genesis 10 and 11 were ethnically Kushite. One of those ancestors was Nimrod whose kingdom was in the Tigris-Euphrates Valley. The language of his kingdom was Akkadian, an Afro-Asiatic language. The Akkadian lexicon (vocabulary) is more African than Asiatic.

Archaic humans were widely dispersed long before the Kushite dispersion described in Genesis 10. A 2013 report in Nature showed this map with the location of Middle Pleistocene fossils in Northern Spain (shown in yellow), Denisovan finds (blue), and Late Pleistocene Neanderthal finds (red). Ancient DNA has been recovered from fossils at these sites.

The populations shown on the map lived at least 50,000 years ago, and there are still older human populations. The ancestors of the Chinese came from Africa about 80,000 years ago.

On the Arabian Peninsula, the Qafzeh population used tools 125,000 years ago at Jebel Faya. These people likely came into Arabia from Africa.  The migration of peoples out of Africa begin between 120,000 and 100,000 years ago. Subsequent migrations were caused by climate change, especially as the Saharan began to dry out. The most recent migration of peoples from Africa took place around 6000 years ago into Anatolia, Bactria, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria.

The dispersal of human populations is confirmed by comparative linguistics. A 2013 report on phonemes (distinct units of sound) in 500 languages traces them back to a prehistoric mother tongue in Africa spoken at least 100,000 years ago.

Scientists have found that every language can be traced back to a long-forgotten dialect spoken by our Stone Age ancestors in Africa. The further away from the point of origin of the mother tongue, the fewer phonemes from that language survive. English, which developed from German, preserves many of the phonemes of the reconstructed prehistoric language.

Notice the area through which the peoples of Africa entered the Arabian Peninsula. Genesis tells us that this area was populated by Abraham's ancestors, including the clans of Dedan, Sheba, Raamah, and Joktan. The Joktanite clans still inhabit Southern Arabia.

Human artifacts

Human artifacts also testify to an old Earth. Ostrich eggshell fragments, dating to 60,000 years ago, have been hailed as the oldest example of symbolic written communication. The unusually large sample of 270 engraved eggshells were mostly excavated at Diepkloof Rock Shelter in South Africa.

The Ishango bone (shown below) is a bone tool, dated to about 25,000 years ago. It is a dark brown length of bone, the fibula of a baboon, with a sharp piece of quartz affixed to one end, perhaps for engraving. The fossil has three rows of tally marks along its length. It may have been used to multiply or as a calendar.

Ishango Bone

Humans made reed mattresses 77,000 years ago in South Africa. That is where the oldest mattress— made from compacted grasses and leafy plants— was found at Sibudu Cave in KwaZulu-Natal. In this same region a stone carving of a python has been found that dates to 70,000 years.

There is the evidence of mining in South Africa between 80,000 to 100,000 years ago. These are major mining operations that included quarries and tunnels. It is estimated that a million kilos of red ocher ore was excavated from several mines. At one mine half a million stone-digging tools were found. The red ocher was ground to power and was used globally to bury rulers. Anthropologists agree that the red ocher symbolized blood and suggests that the people believed in life after death. The practice may have been connected to the hope or expectation that the ruler might rise from the dead and lead his people to immortality.

Burial sites and even ancient cemetaries reveal that archaic peoples practiced ritual burial. The use of red ocher in burial was widespread in prehistoric times. It indicates that archaic peoples believed in life after death. A man buried 45,000 years ago at La Chapelle-aux-Saints in southern France, was packed in red ocher.

The "Red Lady" of Paviland in Wales was buried in red ocher about 20,000 years ago. Her skeletal remains and burial artifacts are encrusted with the red ore.

The ‘Fox Lady’ of Doini Vestonice, Czechoslovakia (near Russia) who was buried 23,000 years ago, was covered in red ocher.

A 20,000 year old burial site in Bavaria reveals a thirty-year-old man entirely surrounded by a pile of mammoth tusks and nearly submerged in a mass of red ocher.

In the La Braña-Arintero cave in the Cantabrian Mountains of Spain, 7000 year old skeletons were discovered in 2006. The bodies were covered with red ocher.

Two flexed burials were found in Mehrgarh, Pakistan with a covering of red ocher on the bodies. These date from about 5000 BC. All of these burials predate the time calculated by Young-Earth creationists for the creation of the world.

Paul Sereno unearthed 10,000 year old skeletons at Gobero in Niger. These were buried on the edge of a paleolake on the northwestern rim of the Chad Basin. The Gobero site is the earliest known cemetery in the Sahara and the skeletons found there indicate that some individuals were at least 6 feet tall.

Gobero skeleton (G3B8) measures 6 feet 6 inches

Photo (c) Mike Hettwer, courtesy Project Exploration

At the time of the Gobero populations (9700-4400 years ago), humans were dispersed globally, and these populations were not destroyed by a worldwide flood. Consider the following population estimates by urban center between 2400 and 2200 BC, the time when Noah's flood would have occurred:

Memphis, Egypt - 32,000 inhabitants

Lagash, Iraq - 60,000 inhabitants

Mohenjo-daro, Pakistan - 40,000 inhabitants

Mari, Syria -50,000 inhabitants

Baodun settlements, China - Baodun is the largest settlement, covering an area of about 373 miles. There is no evidence of destruction by flooding though all six Baodun settlements straddled the Min River in central Sichuan province. The Min is a tributary of the upper Yangtze River.

The Natufians populated an area that includes Palestine, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon between 15,000 and 9,000 years ago.The British archaeologist Dorothy Gerrod coined the term "Natufian" because the remains she studied were found in a cave at Wadi an-Natuf in Palestine.

The Pengtoushan culture thrived along the Yangtze River between 7500–6100 B.C., and the Yangshao culture flourished along the central Yellow River between 5000 and 3000 B.C. Yangshao nobles wore silk garments.

There is no evidence that any of these peoples were wiped out by a worldwide flood. The evidence simply does not support the interpretation that all the peoples of the earth were destroyed in a catastrophic global flood and that the earth was repopulated by Noah's descendants. What we have in Genesis is a description of Noah as a Nilo-Saharan ruler in the region of Lake Chad during the African Humid Period. The region was already wet and apparently is was inundated after a prolonged monsoonal season. From Noah's perspective, the whole world was under water.

8000 year old dugout found in the Sahara

About 4000 years before Noah people were using dugouts to navigate the rivers of the Sahara. This is attested by the discovery of an 8000 year old dugout in Dufuna in the Upper Yobe Valley along the Komadugu Guna River in Northern Nigeria (shown above). This general region was much wetter at the time that Cain, Seth and Noah ruled there. Many of the major waters systems were connected so that it was possible to travel between the Atlantic coast and the Nile River.

African Sheer Zone where rifting caused waters to collect
along a line from the Atlantic to the Nile.

Noah was a ruler

The Nilotic rulers kept personal menageries.  In his private zoo in Nubia, Akhenaten kept lions in domed buildings, antelopes in pens, and cattle in an enclosure made of sticks and branches. Before his time, the rulers of the Horite shrine city of Nekhen kept menageries and provided royal burials for the animals that died (see image below).

Baboon buried 3,500 years ago at Nekhen
National Geographic

Nekhen has more animal burials than any early Nile Valley urban center. Noah was related to the rulers at Nekhen. It is likely that Noah, as a ruler, had his own menagerie. So the account of Noah saving animals aligns very well with the archaeological and anthropological evidence.

Scientific analysis of the marriage and ascendancy pattern revealed in Genesis 4 and 5 makes it clear that Cain and his brother Seth lived when there were human settlements along major rivers, boat building, fishing and hunting, tool production, textiles, pottery, religious traditions, such as animal sacrifice, ruling families, and an established pattern for marriage among the ruling houses. Nilotic rulers were building pyramids at the time that Cain lived.

Related reading: Ancient Water systems Connected the Nile and Central Africa; When the Sahara Was Wet; How Big Was Noah's Flood?; Boats and Cows of the Proto-Saharans; Nilo-Saharan and Saharo-Nubian Populations; The Ancient Egyptians Were Sea Faring; Sodom, Gomorrah, and the Seismic History of the Dead Sea: Support for Biblical History – Yes! Support for a Young Earth – No!

The Dispersal of Archaic Humans

As more human fossils are being found and studied, it is becoming apparent that archaic humans were widely dispersed more than 50,000 years ago. A recent report in Nature contained this map showing the location of Middle Pleistocene fossils in Northern Spain (shown in yellow), Denisovan finds (blue), and Late Pleistocene Neanderthal finds (red). Ancient DNA has been recovered from fossils at these sites.

Dr Juan-Luis Arsuaga teamed up with Max Planck scientists, who recently developed novel techniques for retrieving and sequencing highly degraded ancient DNA.

The team applied the new techniques to hominin remains from the Sima de los Huesos site to sequence their mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) and then compared the genome with that of Neandertals, Denisovans, present-day humans, and apes.

The results show that the Sima de los Huesos humans lived about 400,000 years ago and shared a common 700,000 year ancestor with Denisovans, a human species that lived in a vast range from Siberia to Southeast Asia at the same time as Neanderthals.

“The fact that the mtDNA of the Sima de los Huesos hominin shares a common ancestor with Denisovan rather than Neanderthal mtDNAs is unexpected since its skeletal remains carry Neanderthal-derived features,” said Dr Matthias Meyer, the lead author of a paper published online in Nature.

Read more here.

Other archaic humans lived in Africa near Lake Chad, Lake Turkana, Lake Baringo, and in Southern Africa. Paleoanthropologist John Hawks has written (here) about the Lake Turkana-Omo region, "Ancient people were using this area throughout, leaving stone artifacts. It is amazing walking along the exposures, noting the stones that are the marks of ancient human activity. These early modern humans were making fundamentally the same kinds of artifacts that we find across western Eurasia, made by the earliest Neandertals, and across most of the African continent at the same time. There were regional differences in the pattern of toolmaking, but there was a broad technological commonality. This was the cultural background of our ancestors."

 

A. afarensis used polished bone tools, butchered animals for food, and controlled fire. Some of the earliest evidence of controlled use of fire by humans was found at Swartkrans. Other sites that indicate fire use include Chesowanja near Lake Baringo, Koobi Fora, and Olorgesailie in Kenya.

Using bones found at Pinnacle Point Cave in South Africa, archaeologist Corey O’Driscoll identified projectile impact marks which are between 91,000 and 98,000 years old, the oldest direct evidence for the use of projectile weapons.

Pinnacle Point cave

Human occupation of Pinnacle Point began about 162,000 years ago. The oldest level reveals a fairly sophisticated stone technology in which silcrete stone was heat-treated. Silcrete is a fine-grained stone brought from the South African coast. This is the oldest known example of such technology.

Large pieces of red ochre have been found at Pinnacle Point and at other sites in southern Africa. The pieces were either ground or scraped to produce a pigment for painting the body and for use in burials. The burial of rulers in red ochre was a universal practice among Late Stone Age peoples.

Related reading: Many Groups of Archaic Humans; Early Hominids in the Balkins by Nena Galanidou; Migrations Out of Africa; Denisovan Finds Create a Stir; Facts About Human Origins; The Rising Star Expedition Recovers Hundreds of Fossils; Africa is Archaeologically Rich

Adam and Eve: "The Blood" and "The Birther"

Alice C. Linsley


I find it ironic that people insist on reading Genesis 1-3 as history and and yet ignore the historicity of Genesis 4-11. In this section we find data that is verified by the sciences, especially kinship analysis, DNA studies, migration studies, climate studies, archaeology and linguistics. Were we to pursue the picture of Abraham's ancestors presented in Genesis 4-11 we would better understand the Nilo-Saharan context of the Genesis 1-3 accounts. Only when we put this material in its proper cultural context will we be able to reconcile science and Scripture.

Genesis is first and foremost about Christ and the Edenic Promise (Gen. 3:15). The rulers listed in the Genesis king lists are Christ's historical ancestors, the people to whom God gave the promise that the Woman's Seed would crush the head of the serpent and restore paradise.

The first created people appeared on earth suddenly and unheralded about 3.6 million years ago in Africa. This is where the oldest human fossils have been found and this is the point of origin of the genetic types and of modern languages.

Genesis tells us that Abraham's ancestors came from Kush and that Eden spanned from two rivers in East Africa to the Tigris-Euphrates in Mesopotamia. So the biblical account of Adam and Eve as first parents must come from Africa. In fact, the remembrance of ancestral first parents has many parallels in African folklore.

Adam is derived from Ha-dam - the Blood, and is a very early term for human being. Eve is from Ha-Va - the Birther. Among archaic peoples blood was the primal element that represents humans, and the V represents a woman giving birth. The V is a variant of the solar symbol Y, indicating one who has been overshadowed by the Creator for a special purpose. The Angel Gabriel explained to Mary that she would be overshadowed and conceive. All these words are related: hay = “living being”(Hebrew); iya = mother (Hebrew); ka ayi = mother (Dravidian); aye = life (Hausa/Hahm), and eyi = gave birth (Hausa/Hahm).

The Biblical account of first parents was preserved by Abraham's ancestors, the founders of the Horite ruler-priest lines. They are the ancestral rulers from whom Jesus descended through his mother Mary. This explains why Eve gave birth and declared "Kaniti" - ruler!

Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain, and said, "I have gotten/gained (qa-nithi) a man with the help of the Lord." Genesis 4:1, The Hebrew Study Bible

The human knew Havva his wife, she became pregnant and bore Kayin. She said: Kaniti (Qanithi)/ I have gotten a man, as has YHWH. Genesis 4:1, The Schocken Bible, Vol. 1

Qany(ty) or Qan-itti comes from Nilo-Saharan languages like Oromo and ancient Egyptian. These languages share many phonemes with ancient Akkadian, the language of Nimrod's kingdom. The Akkadian itti, as in itti šarrim, means "with the king" or "for the king." It is attached to the names of royalty. Even today the Oromo of Ethiopia and Somalia attach itti to names: Kaartuumitti, Finfinneetti and Dimashqitti. That itti is associated with Nilotic rulers is evident in the name of the great Egyptian queen Nefertitti.

The Church Fathers read the Adam and Eve story as historical because Adam and Eve in biblical parlance are the original first parents. Now the question is "first parents" of all humans or of the people who gave us Genesis? (Likewise, universal flood or extensive regional flood?) This story belongs to those who gave us Genesis, and to understand it we must understand their cultural context, which was Nilo-Saharan.

Analysis of the king lists of Genesis 4 and 5 shows that Kain and Seth married the daughters of a ruler named Enoch (Anoch/Hanock), so the Bible itself makes it clear that there were other people. Enoch is an African word that means "one who ascends" or "one who is royal heir." This indicates that at the time of Kain and Seth there were already ruling houses or dynasties. They lived during the time of the 4th Dynasty, when Menkaure, Khafre and Khufu were building the Great Pyramids (c. 2601 – c. 2515 BC). This fits the chronology of the Genesis Kings.

Related reading:  Questions Students Ask About Genesis; Answers to Questions about Adam and Eve; Are Adam and Eve Real?; The Biblical Meaning of Eve; St. John Chrysostom on Eve's Sin; Elder Joseph on Adam and Eve

Dmanisi Finds Call for Radical Re-think of Human Speciation

Shown right: Skull 5, archaic human face dates to 1.8 million years
Credit: Guram Bumbiashvili, Georgian National Museum

Skull 5, from a partially excavated site at Dmanisi, Georgia, is the world’s first complete adult skull found from the Early Pleistocene period, according to the study’s authors. The skull’s cranium and jaw bone were found five years apart, about six feet from each other, but researchers are confident they came from the same individual. The skull has a mosaic of both primitive and more evolved features, such as a small braincase and long face, not previously seen together in the fossil record.

Researchers found additional remains associated with Skull 5 that suggest the individual had a stature and limb-to-body proportions within the range of modern humans. The researchers believe that Skull 5, based on its massive size, was likely a male. Their analysis also found that the individual had suffered a fractured cheekbone in life as well as arthritis......

The latest skull to appear from the rocks at Dmanisi

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013

Photograph courtesy Georgian National Museum

As excavations at Dmanisi continue, researchers expect to find more fossils — and perhaps more conclusive proof that normal variation within a single Homo species has been misinterpreted as species diversity. It might be time to rewrite the evolutionary history books.

Read it all here.

I have maintained consistently that a small brain, such as found with the Australopithecus afarensis, does not indicate lack of the complex reasoning characteristic of humans.

Related reading: The Origins of the Dmanisi Skull; Questioning the Common Ancestry Hypothesis; Theories of Change and Constancy; Does the Binary Feature Signal Greater Complexity?; Was Lucy Human?

A Scientific Timeline of Genesis

Alice C. Linsley

In this overview I am not attempting to provide a "history of humankind" but instead I am attempting to trace the dispersion of the ancestors of Abraham, Moses, David, Samuel and Jesus Christ.

Between JUST GENESIS and my other blog Biblical Anthropology, I have investigated the prehistoric roots of Biblical peoples more deeply than any other anthropologist to date and I have done so using the standard tools and methodologies: kinship analysis, comparative linguistics, comparative cosmologies, climate and migration studies, molecular genetics, and archaeology.


Africa is the point of origin of all living humans

It is accepted that Africa is where the first human populations emerged and the oldest human fossils have been found there. The oldest languages are in the Afro-Asiatic family and comparative study of these languages suggests a dispersion out of Africa. Scholars have recognized, for example, linguistic affinity between Manding and Japanese and between Manding and words found across Southeast Asia. Dr. Clyde A. Winters has demonstrated the linguistic connection between ancient Elamite, Dravidian, Manding and Sumerian. He believes that these diverged from a common Paleo-African language used by the Proto-Saharans.

The name Sulawesian, for example, is derived from the word Sulawe which appears to be related to ancient Egyptian and Dravidian words for rice and writing. The Egyptian word for writing is ssw; and the Mande sewe; and the Dravidian ha-verasu (referring to written record of rice sales). Likely, "Sulawesi" is a reference to written accounts of rice sales. If those who were moving from island to island were merchants, they would have recorded their transactions.

On Madagascar, the weight of one grain of rice is called vary, and corresponds to the Swahili wari and to the Dravidian verasu. The Hebrew word for rice is orez and Arabic ruz and these share the RZ root with Dravidian. The Dravidian word reflects the written records of commercial weights.

Linguistic connections are further evident in the term for slash and burn cultivation used in Sulawesi and East Africa. The word trematrema is used in Northeast Betsimisaraa to refer to a one to three year old slashed-and-burnt field. It is related to the Swahili word tema, ‘to cut’, and the redoubled form tematema, ‘to slash, to chop." This technique is used also by Sulawesians who practice "dry rice" planting.

Recent linguistic studies indicate that the basic phonemes found in virtually every language can be traced back to a words spoken by our Stone Age ancestors in Africa.

Anthropologists have noted similarities in religious practices pertaining to the ancestors, knob sticks used by rulers, burial in red ocher, and shrine settlements along major rivers and at elevated rock shelters called by various names, including kar/car, tamana, or ophel. The Bible is often critical of "the high places" because of some of the occult practices done there.

Genetic diversity

When the average person thinks of Africa today, they imagine people with a black or dark skin tone and wooly hair. This is a false idea. From the beginning the greatest genetic diversity has existed in Africa. There were black and red Nubians, for example. The San Bushmen, one of the oldest known groups in the world, have a skin tone associated more with the Chinese. The Khoisan-Japanese connection seems more probable when we consider the other names  Arabic name for the San: Wakwak (Arabic) and Wanege (Sandawe of Tanzania). Wa was the earlier name for Japan and the word appears in the name Okina-wa. The African variant is Jokinawah, which may be related to the names of the biblical rulers Joachin and Joktan.

Recent DNA studies have revealed that the Ainu of Hokkaido and the Ryukyuans of Okinawa have a closer genetic affinity than either group has to the Japanese.

For the Biblical Anthropologist, the peoples in the R1b Haplogroup (Y-DNA) and the X Haplogroup (MY-DNA) are of special interest. R1b is found widely in Africa, Southern Europe, France, and the British Isles. This dispersion took place over thousands of years beginning about 20,000 to 18,000 years ago.

Haplogroup R1b, also known as haplogroup R-M343, is the most frequently occurring Y chromosome haplogroup in Western Europe, some parts of Russia (the Bashkir minority), Central Asia (e.g. Turkmenistan) and in the region of Lake Chad and along the Nile.

This is the Haplogroup of Abraham's Proto-Saharan ancestors who dispersed widely and are known my many different names in ancient history: Kushites, Kushan, Ainu, Saka, Hittites, etc. Among them was a caste of priests known in ancient texts as 'Apiru, Hapiru, Habiru or Hebrew.

The word "Hebrew" appears in ancient Egyptian and Akkadian texts. The Habiru were already widely dispersed in the 14th-13th centuries B.C. Their spread was driven by their unique marriage and ascendancy pattern by which sons were sent away to established their own territories.


Forming a hypothesis using biblical data

The book of Genesis is an extremely valuable source of significant data about the earliest human populations. It provides details that are useful in reconstructing a picture of human origins, diversity of populations, migrations, technological development, religious practices, early rulers and the Afro-Asiatic worldview.

There is no conflict between the data of Genesis 1-12 and the concrete findings of science. Genesis provides an accurate and reliable picture of reality, as we will see in this scientific timeline of Genesis.



ca. 4.6-4.8 billion years the Earth formed. Genesis 1 begins with the Earth already formed. The primal substance is water in a chaotic state. The Breath/Spirit of God (Ruach) went forth and established order, separating the waters above from the waters below (vertical axis), and the dry land from the sea (horizontal axis).  Here the cross is already prefigured in Genesis 1.

Genesis 1:9 says that there was only one body of water (rendered "one mass" in the Greek; "one place" in the Hebrew). This indicates that there was one land mass at the beginning. God called the land "Earth" (Gen. 1:10). Scientists call this "Pangaea."

ca. 65 million years ago the great dinosaurs disappeared though the aviary dinosaurs continued to exist for some time.

ca. 4 million years ago humans appear suddenly and unheralded upon the Earth in the region designated as Eden. Genesis describes Eden as a vast area extending from East Africa to Mesopotamia.These archaic populations were fully human, as evidenced by human dentition, tools, controlled fire, evidence of hunting, and anatomical structure like modern humans.

ca. 100,000 - 20,000 years ago human populations had spread out of Africa to virtually every continent. During this time rulers were buried in red ochre powder, a symbol of blood, by which they expressed hope in life after death. Perhaps the oldest case (at least 50,000 years ago) involves the burial of a small boy in the Lebombo Mountains of Southern Africa. He was buried with a sea-shell pendant and covered in red ochre dust (ground hematite).

A man buried 45,000 years ago at La Chapelle-aux-Saints in southern France was packed in red ochre.

The Fox Lady of Doini Vestonice in Czechoslovakia was covered in red ochre at her burial 23,000 years ago.

Ainu/MicMac of Canada

The Red Lady of Paviland in Wales was buried in red ochre about 20,000 years ago. Her skeletal remains and burial artifacts are encrusted with the red ochre. Another 20,000 year old burial site in Bavaria reveals a thirty-year-old man entirely surrounded by a pile of mammoth tusks and nearly submerged in a mass of red ochre. Native Americans used red ochre for ceremonies and also to bury their dead.

ca. 20,000 - 12,000 years ago there began to be a distinction between two main genetic and linguistic groups: African and Asiatic. This is remembered as a time when "the whole world had one language and a common speech" (Gen. 11:1). The two main groups of peoples were still so closely related that this period may be referred to as the "Afro-Asiatic dispersion" or the Afro-Asiatic Dominion.





ca. 8000 years ago the Ainu/Anu were migrating out of the Nile Valley toward Finland and Japan. They spread into Europe, Central Asia and the British Isles. From Finland they crossed to Greenland and Labrador and from Labrador to the eastern seaboard of Canada. The Ainu were a seafaring people. They ranged in skin tone from red to reddish brown and tan, and the men wore beards and had long wavy hair.

Ainu elder of Northern Japan

The Ainu are in mtDNA haplogroup X. The dispersion of haplogroup X is shown below. The greatest concentrations are indicated by the darker shade. MtDNA traces lineage by the mitochondria, received from the mothers.

There is a connection between Abraham's ancestors and the Ainu. Abraham's father held the title Terah/Tera which is an Ainu word, meaning "priest." Tera-ntr refers to a ruler-priest. Het/Heth was a Sidonian ruler-priest who ruled at a temple in Canaan (Gen. 10:15). The following image is from Petrie's 1939 archaeological discoveries.[1]

Note the skullcap with dark frontal piece, and the beard and moustache are like that of the Ainu elders shown above. Note also the knob stick, called "rod" in Numbers, where we are told that the rod of Aaron blossomed. This was carried by the clan chief and passed through the generations from chief to chief.

Further confirmation of the connection between Abraham's ancestors and the Ainu is the obvious correspondence of the Ainu and the Hebrew scripts. The Ainu were the original settlers of the islands of Japan. They are sometimes called "Hannu" which may be the etymology of Han, another script used in Japan. The character table shown below was developed during the 7th century and brought by Yuetzhi scribes who came to Japan via the Korean peninsula. It is believed to have been finalized by the Buddhist monk Kukai. The Yuetzhi were ethnically Kushite.

There also are many similarities in clothing, facial appearance, skin tone, and religious practices among the Kushan-Yuetzhi and the Nilotic Ainu. Both mummified their rulers. The gold medallion belts found at Kushan graves are similar to the roundel belts depicted on statues of ruler-priests found within the temple complex at Hatra between the Tigris and Euphrates. The rulers of Hatra controlled commerce that moved through their territory along the two main caravan routes that connected Mesopotamia with Syria and Asia Minor. The principle deity was Shamash whose emblem was the Sun. Shamash means "throne of the Sun" in Arabic. This is the same deity as Ra who overshadowed Hathor. She became pregnant and gave birth to Horus, called "son" of the Creator.

The rulers of Edom were devotees of Horus and therefore known as Horites. The Edomites are associated with the color red and edom means red. Probably some had red hair and a reddish skin tone. This is the Biblical description of Isaac's son Esau who was born red and hairy. Esau the Younger married a Horite woman of Edom, a descendant of Seir the Horite (Gen. 36).

Abraham's territory was entirely in the region of Edom. It extended between Hebron, where Sarah reside, and Beersheba, where Keturah resided.

There are many connections between Japanese and African words. For example, the name Isahi is a variant of Esau or Issa. Kishi appears to be a variant of Kish and Kush. Obito, the title for a regional chief in Japan, is related to the Edo (Africa)/Edomite (Southern Arabia) word for chief, which is Oba. The first ruler of Petra was the Horite ruler Obodas. These ancient rulers were said to have a reddish skin tone, as was the case with Esau and David. The ancient Greeks called Edom "Idumea" which means "land of red people." The original name of Tokyo was Edo.

The dispersion of the ruler-priests

Abraham's ancestors were priests who were devotees of Horus. They were called "Ha-piru" or "Ha-biru" which refers to the Sun temples (O-piru = Sun house/temple). Ha-biru (HBR) is the origin of the word Hebrew (HBR). This was a caste that of great antiquity and prestige. These priests were attached to rulers and kingdom builders from Africa to China and from Anatolia to Ireland.

ca. 6000 years ago Abraham's ancestors built temples to worship the Creator and His son Horus who was said to be born of Hathor, a virgin of their ruler-priest lines. Hathor and she conceived by the overshadowing of the Sun, the emblem of the Creator.  Her totem was the cow and she was portrayed as wearing the sun in the horns, as a sort of solar cradle, indicating divine appointment. At the Dedura Temple at Karnak she is shown holding her newborn in a manger.

One function of the ruler-priests was circumcision using flint knives such as the one shown here from the Naqada III culture (3200-3050 BC). The practice of circumcision originated in the area of the Nile and Sudan. This was a time of transition from loosely associated communities under local chiefs to the unification of the Upper and Lower Nile regions under powerful kings. King Menes was the first to unite the peoples of the Nile Valley and he instituted the Law of Tehut to govern his kingdom. 

Genesis 4 and 5 lists the Nilo-Saharan rulers who lived 5000-4800 years ago.    . Among them are Enoch, Cain, Seth, Methuselah and Lamech. These rulers had a unique marriage and ascendancy pattern that also served to drive many of their  sons out of Africa into Mesopotamia, the Indus River Valley and Southern Europe. One of these sent-away sons was Nimrod who build a great kingdom in the Tigris-Euphrates Valley. Abraham is one of his descendants. 

Noah lived in the region of Lake Chad about 4500 years ago. This corresponds to a prolonged wet period in the Sahara know by various names: the Africa Humid Period, the Aqualithic, the Gurian Wet Period, etc.  This corresponds to the time of the Old Kingdom, a period of great cultural and technological achievement. This places Noah and his sons in relatively recent history, not at the dawn of human existence.

Possibly Noah was the last predynastic Proto-Saharan ruler. The Proto-Saharans are called "Kushites" in the Bible and Saka in Vedic texts. They are said to have ruled the ancient world for 7000 years.

Once we arrive at the time of Noah (2490-2415 BC), it is easier to calculate dates because there is a great deal of historical information about the Nilotic peoples and the rulers of Egypt.

Alignment of Egypt Chronology with Genesis King Lists, following Breasted’s Egypt timeline [2].

First Intermediate Period
7th - 8th Dynasties: 2475-2445 BC
Shem
Ham (2438-2363)
Japheth
Kush (2417-2342)

9th -10th Dynasties: 2445–2160 BC
Salah (2217-2042)
Eber (2196-2121)
Peleg (2175-2100)


Middle Kingdom
11th Dynasty: 2160-2000 BC
Reu (2154-2079)
Serug (2133-2058)
Nahor (2112-2037)
Terah (2091-2016)
Abraham (2039-1964)

12th Dynasty: 2000-1788 BC
Joktan the Younger, Abraham's firstborn son (1987-1912)
Esau
Jacob
Joseph

Note that the reigns of some of these rulers overlapped. For example, Tubal-Cain (Gen. 4:22) and Methuselah (Gen. 5:22-25) ruled at the same time. This is another reason that the "begats" of Genesis cannot be used to calculate the age of the Earth, as was attempted by Bishop James Ussher.


NOTES

[1] Flinders Petrie (1853 – 1942) was an English Egyptologist and a pioneer of systematic methodology in archaeology and preservation of artifacts. He held the first chair of Egyptology in the United Kingdom, and excavated many of the most important archaeological sites in Egypt.

[2] James Henry Breasted (1865 – 1935) was an American archaeologist and historian. After completing his PhD at the University of Berlin in 1894, he joined the faculty of the University of Chicago. In 1901 he became director of the Haskell Oriental Museum at the University of Chicago, where he continued to concentrate on Egypt. In 1919 he became the founder of the Oriental Institute at the University, designed to be a lab for research into the rise of civilization in the Near East. In 1905 Breasted was promoted to professor in the first chair in Egyptology and Oriental History in the United States.


Related reading: When is the Evidence Sufficient?; Millions of Years a Stumbling Block;  The Kushite-Kushan Connection; Was Noah Mesopotamian or Proto-Saharan?; The Nile-Japan Ainu Connection; A Kindling of Ancient Memory; Genetics Confirms Biblical Migrations; The Horite Ancestry of Jesus Christ; The Genesis King Lists; Objections to the Fundamentalist Reading of Genesis 1-5; Abraham's Ainu Ancestors; Jesus Fulfills the Edenic Promise; The Biblical Evidence of an Old Earth; Millions of Years Between Genesis 4:1 and Genesis 4:17; Adam Was a Red Man