Life Forms Just Before End of Ice Age and After the Seven Days of Genesis
Ever wonder why the Bible uses the particular and succinct phrases "after their kind" and "after his kind" throughout the narrative of Genesis chapter one? It's simple, once you grasp the "Gap" context. When the Lord God made the new world on the face of the old Earth during those seven days, the Scriptures tell us that He filled the new world with many of the same KINDS of plants and animals that had been on the face of the Earth prior to Genesis 1:2. Not all kinds were replaced, however, and some new ones were introduced in their place.
The geologic time frame preceding the seven-days of Genesis correlates roughly with the end of the great "Ice Age" at the Pleistocene/Holocene epoch boundary, which dates to about 13,000 - 10,000 radio carbon (C14 ) years before present (BP = "1950"). As mentioned previously, the geologic record reveals a mass extinction episode at this time in which hundreds of large and unusual forms of mega fauna mysteriously perished from the face of the Earth. Gone were the Mammoths, Mastodons, giant ground sloths, woolly rhinos, rats the size of dogs, armadillos the size of Volkswagens and about 200 other known species, including some very weird-looking creatures that raise thoughts of radioactive mutations. They all disappeared by the end of the Ice Age. Their replacement "kinds" of today (Adam's world) are quite different in both size and morphology.
Scientists have postulated many "possible" explanations for the reason. A leading theory was that humans hunted these large animals to extinction. Some hold to the belief that they were killed off by disease or their inability to adapt to a changing post-glacial climate. Others speculate that they were killed by "Climate Change" (a very popular mantra in scientific circles today). Nothing has been proven conclusively for lack of direct evidence.
Below is a chart showing temperature changes on the
Earth over the period in question, starting at the left when the Earth was just
emerging from the last "Ice Age" episode, and running towards the right until (roughly)
just before the industrial ages. The chart's "0" level is based on today's
"normal" global temperature baseline. What we see are global temperatures slowly
rising, then rapidly increasing, then beginning a decline, then suddenly sharply
declining again. This is followed, very shortly thereafter, by an almost
instantaneous surge back upwards to "normal" levels and then a slow climb to the
days of Adam's time (which was warmer than today), and a fall-off again after Noah's flood followed by an unsteady
oscillation across most of the rest of human history.
(Top-half of composite Graphic base image [left] from "Meteorology Today" by C.
Donald Ahrens ?1994 West Publishing Co.)
There are two important things you should note from the composite graphic above. The top chart shows global temperatures across time while the bottom chart shows Sulfate levels in the atmosphere across the same period of time. The latter, the SO4 ion level, is a paleo-proxy volcanic activity indicator. Points to observe:
1): There is an increase in volcanic activity between when the mega fauna extinctions begin (about 14,000 BP), that ends a little over 7,000 years ago. That would be roughly one-thousand years before the Earth is pronounced "without form, and void" in the Bible's time line, or about 6,000 years ago (Genesis 1:2).
2): The mega fauna extinction phase terminates in a relatively sudden and dramatic drop in global temperatures, marked by the Younger-Dryas cooling event.
Clearly, the data indicate there were rapid temperature changes, an onset of intensive geologic activity, and probably changes in the levels of solar activity at this point in Earth's history. The latter probability is supported by reported fluctuations in radiocarbon concentrations in the Younger-Dryas cold period between 12,700 and 11,500 years BP. In addition, abundant tiny particles of diamond dust have been found in sediments dating to 12,900 years ago at six North American sites. This latter observation adds strong evidence for Earth possibly being impacted by carbon-and-water-rich comets or carbonaceous chondrites (asteroids or meteors) at the time of the Younger-Dryas. For your information only, here are a few links to several reports concerning this possibility: Younger-Dryas event: Diamonds suggest comets caused killer cold spell - Comprehensive analysis of impact spherules supports theory of cosmic impact 12,800 years ago - New evidence that cosmic impact caused Younger Dryas extinctions.
Unfortunately, the Biblical notion of a universal catastrophic destruction of all living things in the recent geologic past, followed by a Supernatural regeneration of the face of the Earth and the restoration of its surface flora and fauna by the Lord God, is not something many men and women of science would even consider within the context of the Scientific Method. So, expect even more new theories to emerge as scientists continue to wrestle with this problem. And it does present problems, in reasoning and common-sense:
Would it not seem logical that a catastrophic event of this magnitude and severity, which wiped out the giant mammals, would also wipe out the humanoids that hunted them? That would call into question the validity of the scientific theories that those so-called nomadic hunters, who killed off the mega fauna, subsequently emerged from the Ice Ages, gave up hunting and took up agriculture. If they died off too, then Adam and Eve were NOT descended from those humanoids. There could be NO EVOLUTIONARY link. In fact, God commanded Adam and Eve to replace that perished race of beings:
"And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be
fruitful, and multiply, and replenish
the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over
the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth."
(Genesis 1:28 KJV)
And this is where the wisdom of the Holy Scriptures begins to fill in the missing pieces of this mystery.
If the Paleoclimate data are valid, and the Biblical time line of Adam and modern mankind is valid, then we must conclude that those perished beings were on the face of the Earth before Adam and Eve. But who and what were they? From the Bible, we do know that the Angels were the Earth's first inhabitants (review our pages, The Ancient Earth and the Angels and Who and What are the Angels? for additional background). Whether or not these beings were the fleshly descendents of the fallen angels, or a biological hybrid or product of cross-breeding, we can't know for sure. But what we can know is those beings were NOT any descendants of Adam and Eve, as Young-Earth Creation Science proponents claim. So what were they?
DNA testing of Neanderthal remains clearly shows that modern man is NOT descended from the Neanderthal. The DNA from three (3) different sets of Neanderthal remains showed that there is no genetic link between modern man and the Neanderthal. More recent studies of Neanderthal DNA and Neanderthal Skull Characteristics further confirm this finding.
The remains of an "anatomically modern human" (Cro-Magnon), found in Australia, have revealed that it was at least 60,000 years old and had a mitochondria DNA generic marker which is now extinct. That is, nobody today is descended from that particular line of beings, at least on the female side. This find has raised serious debate between the "Out of Africa" and "Regional Continuity" evolutionary camps.
Although there have been relatively recent reports of finding Neanderthal DNA segments in the DNA of some of the Earth's modern human population, this does not conclusively prove that Neanderthals and modern man mated sometime in the past. There is another plausible Biblical explanation concerning the exploits of the fallen angels (see: Genesis 6:2-6:4 & Daniel 2:43). Angels always appear as men throughout the Bible. And in order to create any offspring with human women, they too must have unique DNA. If Genesis 6:2-4 is indicative of such behavior in Noah's days, and Daniel 2:43 hints of the same such behavior in more recent times (or the near future), then it is a stretch to assume those same "sons of God" could have been up to those same tricks with the bipedal biologics that inhabited the Pre-Adamite world? Perhaps.
Evolutionary mainline science still cannot provide a fully satisfactory answer to origins of modern man. As the tools of science improve, like refined DNA techniques, the mysteries will only become more mysterious as is demonstrated by the above cases. Reasoning from a uniformitarian paradigm, and in reference to the above-cited pro and con cases of DNA connections to present humans, secular scientists will say that this only means those particular lines of humans must have been a branch of mankind that perished. They would have to make the claim that, as Evolutionary "theory" demands, that there was continuity of the human race. However, the link between the evidence from the past and present is still yet to be "scientifically" established. In fact, evolutionary research is finding just the opposite. Today scientists are claiming that human evolution has greatly accelerated, particularly since about 10,000 years ago. The truth is, there are big morphological differences between "modern man" and "primitive man," and pronouncing a sudden acceleration of evolution is their only way of explaining the findings within the accepted evolutionary paradigm.
The Bible has a better answer: Modern man is a new creation; a new creation made in God's image and placed on the face of the regenerated Earth to "replenish" it. The concisely parsed words of the Holy Bible say that there is a gap, or discontinuity, between the ancient world of the past (which included the Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon) and the present world of modern man. The very existence of such a gap in the Genesis narrative is the unifying factor between the Bible narrative and the observations of geology and paleontology. Without knowledge that a "gap" existed, mainline science assumes that there was a continuum of life and attempts to fill in the blanks with the available evidence and theories to explain that evidence.
For review purposes, here is the Biblical sequence of events:
1) In Genesis 1:1, we have a general proclamation by the Spirit that God created the heaven and the earth. Life did not evolve and achieve self-conscience awareness. God created it and He made the planet to be inhabited (Isaiah 45:18). Exactly when in time it was first created and inhabited is not revealed in the Scriptures.
2) In Genesis 1:2, we find the Earth in ruin, in darkness, and in the waters, which indicate a state of ruin and destruction but, nonetheless, still the same planet Earth. Waters and darkness are already there before God says, "Let there be light." Exactly how long it was in that state is also not revealed by the Scriptures.
3) In Genesis 1:3 we have the Lord God making a new world out of the ruins and restoring the face of the Earth and the functioning of the heavens (In Seven-Days).
Leaving behind the obscure and mysterious events of the Pleistocene epoch and the geologic ages that came before it, let us now examine God's handiwork of the seven days of Genesis regeneration of life on the face of the Earth. Since we extensively cover the topic of the restored structure of the cosmos on our page, The Firmament, Third Heaven, and Structure of All Things Biblical, we will concentrate here on the restoration of life forms on the Earth's surface during the seven-days of Genesis.
On the third day God replenished the Earth with vegetation:
"And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, [and] the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed [is] in itself, upon the earth: and it was so."
(Gen 1:11 KJV)"And the earth brought forth grass, [and] herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed [was] in itself, after his kind: and God saw that [it was] good."
(Gen 1:12 KJV)
Notice the phrases, "after his kind" - What it is saying is that what God put on the Earth during the seven-days was modeled after the same kind of plants that were on the Earth before. They were made AFTER the KIND of a thing that was here before.
On the fourth day God made the sun, moon and stars from the ruins of the old cosmic order. The fact that the Bible says God made the vegetation on the third day, and the sun on the fourth day, causes Bible critics to point out that plants need sunshine to grow (photosynthesis), so the sequence can't possibly be true. Is this a mistake or is this unscientific? NO. If the seven days of Genesis were literal 24-hour days, which they were, then there is no problem here. Since there were less than 24 hours between the placement of the vegetation (day 3) and the making of the regerated sun (day 4), any farmer will tell you that all plants can survive 24 hours without any sunlight. This order (the plants before sunshine) disallows the notions that the seven "days" are long periods of time or that the Genesis account roughly parallels the geologic record. It does neither. Think about that one.
On the fifth day He filled the oceans with fish and aquatic mammals and filled the skies with birds:
"And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that [it was] good."
(Gen 1:20-21 KJV)
Again, there is that "after their kind" thing again, this time concerning the creatures in the sea and the birds. Note of Interest: The wording of the above passage says that all the birds in our present world came forth from the waters, NOT the land. The Bible shows that modern birds are not the direct descendants of the dinosaurs. From a relatively recent study: Scientists say no evidence exists that therapod dinosaurs evolved into birds.
According to the fossil record, there have been life forms in the Earth's oceans for millions of years. Many are long since extinct and new kinds took their place over the geologic ages. There are also fish that scientists thought were long extinct, but which have been found alive in today's oceans. The "Coelacanth" is the best known example. A few years ago there was great excitment over the claim that scientists had discovered a living prehistoric Coelacanth. However, later, when scientists compared the fins of a fossilized Coelacanth with those of ones caught off the coasts of Africa and Indonesia, it turned out that it was not really the same primitive fish! Yep, that old fellow too appears to have been made "after his kind", as well and was not a direct descendant of the fossilized examples. In His creative restocking of the new world's oceans on that day, God saw fit to include a fish akin to the old Coelacanth kind along with other kinds of fish which had populated the Earth's seas in the times immediately prior to the old world's destruction. On the other hand, many other ancient marine species were not reintroduced in the regeneration.
Then there is the sea creature that God created that was NOT made "after his kind" but was introduced unique and a new creation in the new world - the "great" Whale.
And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
(Genesis 1:21 KJV)
Notice in the sentence structure of Genesis 1:21 that the creation of the "great whales" is set apart from the making of the rest of the sea creatures by a comma. Are the great whales a specific species of the whale like the gigantic Blue Whale, or is this a general reference to the suborder of Baleena or a particular size range? I'm not sure. There are small whales that look like dolphins like the Beluga Whale. And there is a larger animal we call a killer whale, or Orca, which is actually the largest dolphin. And then there is the "Whale Shark" which is not a mammal like the whale or dolphin (it is a really big fish). So the Biblical term "great whales" is somewhat ambiguous. Regardless, we can say with a high degree of confidence that according to the Bible, there are "great whales" swimming in today's oceans that where not on the Earth in the previous world.
At this juncture we should mention that there is a whale of a controversy these days about the evolution of the whale. Mainline science argues that the whale evolved from a wolf-like (some argue a hippopotamus-like) land creature and did so in a very accelerated period of time (about six million years) and very recently, geologically speaking. This is inconsistent (and just the opposite) of the evolutionary paradigm that all land creatures evolved from ancestors that originally came from the seas. Could it be that God's creation of the "great whales" threw such a monkey wrench into the fossil record of whale species that evolutionary scientists had to create a special rapid macro-evolutionary scenario to explain the disconnect?
On the sixth day the Lord filled the new world with the land animals:
"And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so. And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that [it was] good."
(Gen 1:24-25 KJV)
Again, all these living creatures (like the vegetation) are said to be made "after their kind" or "after his kind," and there seems to be a great emphasis placed on that point in the narrative. Now, and this is VERY IMPORTANT, see what else the Lord God did NOT make "after his kind" - Man:
"And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth."
(Gen 1:26 KJV)
It should be pointed out that Man was the ONLY living thing in Genesis (other than the whale) that was NOT said to be made "after his kind"; therefore he was new and unique. That uniqueness was in respect to being made in the image of God. And unlike all the other creatures God made during the seven days, only Man was told to "replenish" the Earth (Genesis 1:28), which indicates that Man, made in God's image, was to replace the humanoids that inhabited the old world. These humanoids obviously had a physical form biologically very similar to true Man in physical sense, but not in mind and soul as defined being created after God's likeness.
"And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth."
(Genesis 1:28 KJV)
Summation: The truth of these passages and the emerging evidence affirms that true Modern Man is a newcomer to the face of this old planet. True Man, made in the image of God, has only been on the Earth about 6,000 years. He is a created creature, he did not evolve. Although he was preceded on the face of the Earth by lineages of humanoids of varying morphology closely approaching modern anatomical similarity, Adam and his descendants (us) are unique. That uniqueness is defined as creation in the image of God (אֱלֹהִים ʼĕlôhîym, el-o-heem'), and that definition eludes scientific quantification.
In the next chapter we are going to critically examine the ongoing Creation vs. Evolution debate.
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The
Hermeneutics of Genesis 1:2
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