PureInsight | January 3, 2001
Analysis and conclusions
How can this evidence of the presence of man from the very beginning of the fossil record be explained? Certainly, the prevailing Uniformitarian-evolution-linear model of the past is in no position to do so, because the mere existence of deeply buried human objects completely destroys the whole premise of slow, gradual, progressive development of the earth, of life, of man, and of human culture -the very cornerstone of the model. If man and his products can be found all the way down to the lowest level of geologic life, where is the evidence for his continual evolution, or for his long cultural climb from primitive beginnings? It is clear we must look elsewhere for the answers.
Today, besides the Uniformitarian-evolution-linear model, there have been three new and alternative models proposed, and each of these offer their own interpretations of the past. These are: Extraterrestrialism, Catastrophic evolution, and Creationism. Let us look at each one separately.
Most people have become aware of the Extraterrestrialist model through the writings of Erich von Daniken, author of Chariots of the Gods, and other similar works. What is not often realized, however, is that von Daniken's ideas not only have had popular appeal to the man on the street, but they are having a definite impact on the academic and scientific world as well. Von Daniken offers what appears to be a plausible answer to the riddle of out-of-place artifacts of an advanced nature which have been unearthed from the archaeological record -and, as we have seen from the fossil and geological records as well. According to him, aliens from other worlds have supposedly been visiting the earth throughout history and prehistory, and the out-of-place remains we find were the product of contact between the spacemen and early man. In the case of those objects discovered in those layers believed to pre-date man's appearance, then the items were left by the extraterrestrials themselves. By giving the out-of-place artifacts an 'other world' source, Von Daniken has thus neatly explained their presence, while at the same time preserving accepted' theories of evolution. In effect, he has placed the artifacts in a realm outside the earthly scheme of things, where they do not conflict with slow, progressive evolutionary development - only intervening now and then.
But there are several flaws in the Extraterrestrialist model. In not one instance has Von Daniken been able to demonstrate the existence of a single 'ancient astronaut.' His 'evidence,' on close inspection, is largely based on his own personal interpretations of primitive drawings and ancient records which look and sound (to him) like men wearing spacesuits, or riding around inside spaceships. In every case, there is another simpler and literally more 'down to earth' interpretation for every 'space' drawing and record he offers as proof.
When we examine closely the out-of-place artifacts themselves, especially those we have studied embedded in the geologic layers, we find that they do not appear alien to us, and they certainly do not exhibit a technology exclusively different from that of, say, our own civilization today - that is, what man himself has and could have once before produced. What is more, where we have found the presence of artifacts, we have also found clear evidence of the presence of man: You will remember that among those discoveries made in the fossil record, not only did we observe objects of worked metals, stone, etc., but there were also human skulls, bones and footprints. Man was there; the artifacts logically were of his making. There is no need to invoke spacemen, or look to the stars, for an answer - the answer lies here on earth, or as in the case of our study here, in the earth.
A second modern model of the past is Catastrophic evolution -and as its name implies, it is a modification of the old Uniformitarian-evolution model. Catastrophic evolutionists propose to fully accept the existence of human remains in the geologic column, while leaving the column and the dating of the various rock layers intact. What this means is a scenario of human history in which civilizations have been born, risen to intellectual and technological heights, and then were destroyed by earth upheavals, again and again over 600 million years. At first glance, this model might seem plausible enough to explain the facts. But there are problems to consider. As noted earlier, historians measure the antiquity of our own civilization as being no more than 10,000 years. If we take this as the average 'lifespan' for the development of a technological society, and attempt to apply this to the multiple civilization scenario, we find that we must presuppose the existence of an incredible 60,000 civilizations to each down to the Cambrian age. What is more, there is the major difficulty of how all these societies would have disappeared -unless one is also to imagine 60,000 separate cataclysms. Unfortunately, the geologic record does not support that many world changes. The geologic record also reveals that, if only simple forms of life supposedly existed in the earliest levels, there was no way such environments could have supported a human population, let alone active civilizations. Finally, there still remains the unanswered question of where man originated - and for that, we have already seen, evolution cannot even attempt a solution.
Our third alternative model to examine is by no means new - in fact it was the accepted model of the past long before uniformitarianism of geology came to the forefront. It is called Creationism, or Creation-Flood science, because it is based on the Biblical account in Genesis of the Divine creation of the world, life and man, and the world-destroying Deluge. What makes Creationism distinctive from the other proposed models is it teaches that mankind existed on the earth before most geologic strata were formed. What is more, he was created and lived as an intelligent, civilized being from the outset. The Genesis record describes how after Creation and before the Flood, the descendants of Adam - the Antediluvians - possessed an advanced culture that included agriculture, urbanization, the arts, metal-working and sophisticated engineering abilities. The Flood completely destroyed the Antediluvian civilization and the entire world, depositing the remains (according to Creationist-Flood geology) in a short time in the form of all the strata from Cambrian to early Tertiary. After the Flood, the first descendants of Noah built another civilization culminating in the technology that constructed the Tower of Babel. The remains of this post-Flood civilization, after the destruction of Babel, were swept away by the Ice Age disaster, and were preserved in the strata of the Tertiary-Pleistocene.
The Creation-Flood model can thus accept the appearance of human remains and advanced artifacts in the geologic past, as evidence for pre-Flood and immediate post-Flood civilizations. Because of the cataclysmic nature of the Flood, and the abruptness with which the Babel-Ice Age disaster occurred, the Creation-Flood model predicts further that buried artifacts are probably few and far between, appearing as rare surviving remnants in the rock - which is the case exactly.
Another upset in Creationism's favor is that, by its rejection of uniformitarian long-age dating of the earth's strata, it is able to explain remarkable similarities among the out-of-place artifacts, in diverse levels. For instance, we found several examples of giant human bones and footprints - in Tertiary, Cretaceous, Jurassic, Triassic, and Pennsylvanian rock. This would mean, in 'accepted' geologic time measurements, the persistence of a very specialized life form - Homo gargantuan - over a span of 300 million years. There is no precedent for that kind of survival anywhere in the fossil record. But by viewing all these layers as having been laid down in a short time period, and by regarding the remains within as the remnants of one destroyed world, the various giant finds and their similarities are explained. In addition, the large bones and prints confirm what was recorded in Genesis about conditions before the Flood: 'There were giants in those days, mighty men, men of renown.'
