I think that in 120 years, with the help of a few good people,
that you or I could do the same thing with what we assume to be
the technology of Noah's pre-flood world. We could probably do a
fair job with much of today's technology if we had 120 years to
prepare for it but it would take considerably more people and a
lot more money. <<
Joe has raised an excellent point. Noah could have learned a lot. But it is
also a matter of passing that information along as well as finding new
sources for raw materials. If Texas were the landing site of the ark, my
knowledge of how to make iron would really do me no good. The nearest, high
grade iron ore is in Michigan. Of course, just getting off the ark, I have
no idea what the geology of this reconfigured world is like so I am not sure
which direction I should go to find the ore. But even if I do, are you
aware of how hard iron ore is? Considering that immediately after the flood,
the processes of weathering would be unlikely to have created talus piles
yet, you would have to use picks. Dynamite is probably not available.Pick
work is very, very difficult. Even if you find the iron ore, you now need to
go find coal. Coal and Iron ore are almost never found in the same locality.
They must be hauled to the production site. There are some lignite deposits
in Texas but you need a higher btu content. The nearest anthracite is either
in eastern Oklahoma or Illinois. But even knowing this, I would have to look
a long time to find the coal in natural settings in Oklahoma.
Who is going to feed me while I search for these things? The reason metal
work was so late, was because agriculture was necessary to produce the
surpluses of food to feed the iron workers. The first evidence of agriculture
was from 10,000 years B. P. and thus was probably first practiced some time
earlier than this but probably not more than 15,000 years B.P. ( see Andrew
Sherratt, "The biginnings of Agriculture in the Near East and Europe," in
Andrew Sherratt, editor, The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Archaeology, (New
York: Cambridge University Press, 1980), p. 105) The first evidence of iron
is from about 5,000 B. P. It would seem that Noah was unable to pass this
information on.
Metal industries require the invention of agriculture and domesticated
animals. Those who believe that modern, God made man was created 40,000
years ago, are missing the fact that there was no agriculture for the next
30,000 years! Why? If man was so confounded inventive, why is there no
evidence of agriculture earlier? If you believe in only a 1600 years span
between creation and the flood, then there is no technological or
agricultural civilization for the next 28000 years! If the flood was 10,000
years ago, then there was no farming prior to the flood! The current
Christian teachings of christians in this area are woefully inadequate. Do
these observations of the archaelogical record mean nothing to us?
In the case of iron ore, do I send one of the eight people to get the ore,
leaving us one person short to do the chores around the campsite? The loss
of even one person's hunting skills could mean death to everybody. A person
on such a journey might never find his way back or be eaten by a newly
released wild animal. Can you imagine the difficulty to travel 1,000 miles on
an uncharted world and then find your way back to the same half acre plot of
ground? You would have to mark your trail every hundred yards or so and then
hope that the marks remained visible. But even if you get all the material
you need to make iron ore, and you spend the time to build a kiln, which
will withstand the tremendous temperatures, and you produce molten pig iron,
the time you have spent on this little project means that you are dead from
starvation! If you fail to transmit the information within 300 years of
Noah's life, it is all lost.
What about pottery? A geologist friend of mine and I were discussing this
problem yesterday. Only certain types of clay are suitable for pottery. He
made the statement that if you want to get rich, don't look for gold or
platinum, but look for a clay deposit. The price of gold, silver and
platinum go up and down and the quality of the vein varies which can all lead
to ruin. But there is never enough pottery clay in the world for the demand,
and the price is relatively stable. I do not know how to find a kaolinite
deposit and I am a geoscientist.
Could Noah and company do much farming? Not really. Even though Noah
planted the grapes, the length of time and care necessary for producing a
crop are excessive to the food value of the crop. Besides, Noah et al, could
not wait five months to get a crop. Crops need lots of care, weeding, pest
eradication and pruning. If you say that Noah had a stash of food on the ark
which would spot him enough time, you have to remember it is now a year old
(or more) stash of food and will be nearly 2 years old before the harvest
comes in. Barring the miraculous it would now be full of mold, and insects.
Remember that the ark must have been a very damp place so bacteria would
thrive. Thus they would be eating spoiled food. Sounds appetizing doesn't
it? I would contend that they needed fresh meat. But if they ate the
animals on the ark, they would not be around to repopulate.
We forget that very rapidly,the most important thing to the survivors will be
tonight's meal. Tomorrow's technology is not so much fun when you are
hungry. You might say that God cared for them miraculously and taught them.
I certainly could not argue with you, but at some point, God was going to
let them be on their own to take care of themselves as we do today and our
ancestors did yesterday.
We also act as if the population explosion began immediately. This is
unlikely to be the case. In the suddenly primitive society Noah et al found
themselves in, medicine, would be practically non existent. A broken leg
like the one I once had would have made me useless to the group. A compound
fracture or small burn could be fatal. There is no antisnake bite serum,
very little help with deliveries of babies. We forget that just 100 years
ago, a woman giving birth had a serious risk of dying.
There are a couple of implicit assumptions with the current view of how the
flood fits into history. We implicitly assume that God owes us a
technological standard of living. This is simply not true. God owes us
nothing. If He does, he failed in His duty to Africans, New Guineans,
Australians, eskimoes and most Indian tribes who failed in over 5,000 years
of recorded history to build a technological civilization.
Secondly, we assume that mankind is always under all conditions infinitely
inventive. But if man is so inventive as to absolutely assure ourselves that
we would have a technological civilization within a few hundred years, what
happened in the case of the Africans, American Indians, and New Guineans?
Why did they not invent a more technological society? It certainly was not
because they lacked the intelligence. Their children raised in our culture
can become anything they want. I would contend that it is not at all easy
for people to create what we so easily take for granted.
In my opinion, our view of the post flood world is very naive about the
difficulties and our apologetical books don't even consider this type of
issue.