ABSTRACT: This started out as comments on a recent newspaper article
about evidence for human occupation of Australia in two waves 130 kys
and 38 kya. However, it became also a survey of three broad views of
relating the Biblical data about Adam (1. No-Adam; 2. Old-Adam; and
3. Young-Adam) to such scientific evidence. It then concluded with a
defence of my Young-Adam/Pre-Adamite model.
Here is an article in our local newspaper that reports a claim that
archaic Homo sapiens may have sailed to Australia 130,000 years ago
(and that Homo erectus has voyaged to Indonesia 730 kya).
The first claim is based on burn-off patterns that suggest human
activity in Australia in two waves: 130 kya and 38 kya. This is of
course consistent with the mid-lower limit of the cave etchings
recently found at Jinmium in Australia's Northern Territory:
=========================================================
Settler clues in cores
MELBOURNE
NEW data from core samples drilled from the seabed off Australia
and Indonesia provide compelling evidence that Australia's first
settlers began arriving more than 130,000 years ago.
The findings support an earlier claim that Aboriginal people lived at
the Jinmium site in northern Australia between 116,000 and 176,000
years ago and are set to reignite a debate about the origins of modern
people: did they walk out of Africa or did they evolve from archaic
humans living in Africa, Asia, Europe and Australia?
According to Peter Kershaw, a paleoecologist at Monash University
in Melbourne, and doctoral student Patrick Moss, detailed analysis of
the charcoal and pollen found in a core of sediment taken near the
Great Barrier Reef shows that aboriginal people were setting fire to
the landscape about 130,000 years ago
The pair claimed that a huge "Peak" in charcoal, produced by
burning, coincided with a shift in the vegetation from fire-sensitive
plants, such as hoop and bunya pine, to fire-promoting eucalypts.
Another peak appeared 38,000 years ago, suggesting a second wave
of immigration.
The pair found no other signs of such change in the 10-million year
span covered by the core, despite big climate changes triggered by the
advance and retreat of ice ages.
The findings fit neatly with new results from a core drilled off
Lombok in Indonesia.
And Mike Morwood, an archaeologist with the University of New
England at Armidale, will report soon that archaic humans, Homo
erectus, had voyaged to Flores Island in Indonesia more than 730,000
years ago.
If such supposedly primitive people were capable of sea travel, it was
reasonable that humans were sailing to Australia more than 100,000
years ago, said paleoanthropologist Alan Thorne, of the Australian
National University in Canberra.
"Settler clues in cores", "The West Australian", Saturday November
16, 1996, p34)
=========================================================
There are three broad views on the relationship of early man and the
Biblical account of Adam:
1. "No-Adam" views. On this view, there never was a historical
"Adam", so no Bible-science problem arises. The name "Adam"
literally means "man", so Adam may have been a symbol. The problem
for this view is that the Bible depicts Adam as in some sense a
historical figure and Jesus seemed to believe in a historical Adam
(Mt 19:4-6). It is of course possible that Jesus was accommodating
himself to the prevailing views of His day, or that he really
believed that Adam was a historical person but was wrong. These
views, which would be compatible with liberal Christian and with
non-Christian positions, call into question Jesus' reliability and
therefore His authority, and ultimately his deity.
2. The "Old-Adam" view, would no doubt emphasise this evidence
of early "human" activity, and stress its continuity with activities
of modern man, such as the technology and communication skills needed
for sea-travel. On this view, these early people must have been
fully human, and therefore descendants of Adam. The problem for this
view is where does it start? Human-like morphology and activity is
now thought to have begun 4 mya but if Adam dates from then, there
are major problems in reconciling it with the picture of
comparatively advanced civilisation in Genesis 3 and 4. Such views
must deal with a gap of millions of years somewhere between Genesis 1
& 2 and Genesis 10 & 11.
3. The "Young-Adam" view would regard the Genesis account of Adam and
his descendants as broadly historical (possibly with some symbolic
eleements). The challenge is to relate the Biblical primeval history
in Genesis 1-11 with the scientific evidence of early human activity
(eg. Homo habilis and erectus, Archaic H. sapiens and H.
neandertalenis) On this view, the earlier people were human-like but
not fully human, and were not descendants of Adam. Therefore
young-Adamites would generally try to highlight the gap between
earlier hominids and modern humans, and would emphasise the quantum
leap in quality of art, technology and agriculture that dates from
about 50-35 kya.
My Pre-Adamite view is broadly "Young-Adam". I believe there was a
literal Adam who was progressively prepared by God as his image
bearer* over millions of years and when he eventually appeared as
a member of a population of anatomically modern hominids
(Pre-Adamites), with the requisite physical, intellectual, spiritual
and linguistic abilities (Gn 2:7), God selected him from out of that
population, placed him in an ideal environment (Gn 2:8) in
Mesopotamia, taught him agriculture (Gn 2:15, 19-20), and God's will
for him (Gn 2:16-17); supernaturally created a mate for him (Gn
2:22-22), and finally when he was ready, put him to the test by
allowing him to be tempted by Satan (Gn 3:1ff).
If Adam had passed that test, he and his descendants (and possibly
the Pre-Adamites) would have been granted eternal life (Gn 3:22), and
would have lived in a state of grace with had authority over nature
to subdue it (cf. Gn 1:28; Gn 2:19-20; Mk 4:39). However, Adam
failed the test, and he was left in a state of nature, to subdue the
earth the hard way (Gn 3:17-19). Eventually Adam's descendants merged
with the Pre-Adamites (Gn 4:14-17; 6:2).
All human beings today therefore are one species (Ac 17:26),
descendants of both Adam (Rom 5:12-19; 1Cor 15:21-22), and the
Pre-Adamites.
I cannot claim that the above model is necessarily how it happened,
but I can claim that it fits the Biblical and scientific facts better
than other models.
Scientifically this Pre-Adamite model it is testable in that it
claims that there is a discontinuity between early man that should
first become evident in Mesopotamia about 50 kya +/- 20 kya. One
side of the discontinuity we would expect to see a slow emergence of
human features and culture over hundreds of thousands of years, and
on the other a sudden "explosion"** of fully human culture and
civilisation, especially in agriculture.
Biblically the "Young-Adam"/Pre-Adamite model it is testable in that
if it doesn't fit the Old and New Testament data and especially the
NT teaching on Adam being our Representative, then it would be
likewise falsified.
Comments and criticisms welcomed. While purely negative criticisms
are OK it would be nice if the critic would also try to set out
his/her alternative model that *better* accounts for the scientific
and Biblical (OT and NT) data.
Notes:
* On this Pre-Adamite view, Adam was "the image of God" (Gn 1:26-27;
5:1) in the sense that a sculptor's self-image as it emerges out of
the rock, increasingly resembles the the sculptor, until the point
where the image is finished and most closely resembles the sculptor,
whereupon the sculptor declares it alone to be his image. Other
hominids (eg. the genus Homo), are part of that emerging imago Dei,
but not the imago Dei.
** I do not necessarily claim that this "explosion"was one "big-bang"
following Adam. Because the Pre-Adamites from whom Adam was drawn
were anatomically modern, there may be a series of "sub-explosions"
which together make up one complex "explosion". However, if further
exploration reveals a finely graded continuum of advancing human
civilisation and/or a fully human culture originating well outside
the Biblical geographic area and time-frame, then my
"Young-Adam"/Pre-Adamite model would be falsified.
God bless.
Steve
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| Stephen E (Steve) Jones ,--_|\ sejones@ibm.net |
| 3 Hawker Avenue / Oz \ Steve.Jones@health.wa.gov.au |
| Warwick 6024 ->*_,--\_/ Phone +61 9 448 7439 (These are |
| Perth, West Australia v my opinions, not my employer's) |
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