Austin Robbins
We’ve often heard or used the common expression, “old as the hills.” Just how old are those hills? Or, to put it more in perspective, how old is the earth, and by extension, the sun, moon and stars?
Standard evolutionary theory says one thing and the Bible indicates quite another. Which is more accurate? Of course, no one can state with complete assurance an exact date for the origin of the earth, let alone the universe. But, in general terms, certain dates can be ascertained.
Before we try to estimate the age of those hills, however, it is necessary to clarify that the age of the earth is not terribly important to the evolution/creation controversy. Timing does not impact directly on it. Evolution does demand great spans of time, but Creation could have occurred recently or long ago. By contrast, timing is of great importance to Biblical accuracy. While the Bible does not give specific dates of events between Creation and the call of Abraham, it does indicate in a general way the chronologic implications of historic sequences.
Archaeologists, studying artifacts and written records, have been able to establish with a degree of accuracy dates of the earliest civilizations. The dates of those ancient cultures agree in general with the timeline inferred by the Bible (Livingston 1993). The outside limit of civilization’s antiquity is thought to be about 10, 000 years. It must be understood that the Bible indicates the beginning of civilization as we know it occurred not at creation but at the end of the Flood.
Written records exist for many ancient civilizations. According to Sir Leonard Wooley, the earliest known texts are those of the Sumerians in the southern Mesopotamian Valley. This is the area of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers near the borders of Iraq and Iran. Dating from about 3500 BC, these records were inscribed on clay tablets in wedge-shaped cuneiform script. This script of pictographs, representing various words or concepts, was used with numerous languages, including Akkadian, Babylonian. Egyptian pictographic script, known as hieroglyphs, dates as early as the First Dynasty, about 3100 BC. The earliest Chinese texts, dated reliably by astronomical references, begin about 2200 BC.
Archaeological study of artifacts unearthed in ancient sites give clues as to how and when the earliest inhabitants lived. Clay pots (usually broken), tools, weapons, farm implements, jewelry,
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grains, and other foodstuffs tell a great deal about the people who utilized them. The earliest evidence of agriculture comes from the ancient Near East. One of the earliest sites is Jericho, dated to about 8000 BC according to radio carbon dating. In Europe, evidence of early farming is found in Denmark and Switzerland, from about 2790 BC. The recently discovered “Iceman,” found frozen in the Alps between Italy and Austria comes from this period, or even earlier.
Population statistics have been used to estimate the antiquity of the human race. Some argue that to achieve the world’s present population, about 5.5 billion, would have taken much more time that the Bible allows. But this argument fails in light of simple growth figures. Starting with two people, assuming each generation had four children and that the parents lived to see all their grandchildren, in five generations there would be 96 people. In 10 generations there would be 3070 people, in 15 generations—98,300 people…
20 generatons— 3,150,000 people
30 generations— 3,222,000,000 people
40 generations— 5,500,000,000 people
Thus, 40 generations is all that is needed to attain the present population. How long is a generation? A reasonable assumption is marriage at age 25, four children by age 35 and grandchildren at age 70. Thus a generation is 35 years. Forty generation at 35 years per generation equals 1400 years! That is actually much too short a time!
Reducing the number of children to three would require only 52 generations to reach 4.3 billion people in 1, 820 years. Thus three children is also too many, but the average must be more than two or there would by no population growth at all! According to these numbers, the human race cannot be very old. Working backwards from present day population figures and using very reasonable assumptions about life spans and family size, provides a date of about 4000 BC. This is a good starting date for the Flood.
Modern radiometric dating has been touted as giving exact ages for various materials. However, it is far from being an accurate indicator of age. The reasons for this inaccuracy are quite technical, but suffice it to say very few dates obtained by radiometric methods before about 10, 000 years are accepted at face value even by paleontologists themselves. Derek Ager (1983:425), professor of geology at University College in Swansea, Wales, wrote in New Scientist,
My frustrations as a geologist were brought to the boiling point by David Challinor’s article on natural history museums and in particular by his remark that, “Originally paleontologists dated fossils by identifying the geological strata in which they were found. Today the age of a fossil is determined by measuring the decay of radioactive carbon or by means of the decay of their (sic) radioactive potassium into argon.” I can think of no cases of the decay being used to date fossils.
Why would a geologist make such a statement? It is simply because the vast majority of ages obtained by radiometric dating methods do not agree with the ages of fossils established by the assumptions of evolution. A classic example of this is found in the appendix of Marvin Lubenow’s Bones of Contention: A Creationist Assessment of Human Fossils (1992: 247–66). In an appendix,
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titled “The Dating Game,” Lubenow clearly documents the adjustment (downward) of dates given to a particularly important human fossil, KNM-Er 1470. The layers of volcanic ash or tuff which lie in close association with many fossils in the Lake Rudolf (now named Turkana) area of Kenya have become a primary indicator of the dates of those fossils. Fossils which lie below a certain layer are thought to be older than the layer and those above it are said to be younger. Before fossil skull 1470 was discovered, the tuff around it was dated by radiometric means, in this case by potassium/argon.
The original report in Nature stated that the tuff was between 212 and 230 million years old. The investigators, Fitch and Miller (1970:226–228), commenting on possible sources of error, stated, “From these results it was clear that an extraneous argon age discrepancy was present.” The reason Fitch and Miller, recognized authorities in the potassium/argon dating method, felt that the original date of the tuff was wrong was that the fossils associated with it were assumed to be between two and five million years old. A date of 212 million years would be in the Triassic period, early dinosaur times, clearly not possible for a human-like fossil according to an evolutionary scenario.
In the years following the original study (1969) several other studies were done. Samples of the volcanic ash were sorted to remove “extraneous” material. How did the researchers know there was “extraneous” material present? Only the assumption that the fossils in association with the ash were two to five million years old, not 200 million. At last a date of 2.6 million years was obtained which was said to be accurate and secure. Thus, since the tuff above skull 1470 was dated at 2.6 million years and the layer below at 3.18 million years, the skull was thought to be about 2.9 million years old. But even this was intolerable to standard evolutionary thinking. The skull was far too modern in appearance to be so old. Richard Leakey (1973), whose team discovered the skull, stated, “Either we toss out this skull or we toss out our theories of early man.”
What happened then? Skull 1470 could be reevaluated and called an Australopithecine (Southern Ape) rather than a member of the genus Homo. Or 1470 could be assigned to a very primitive and distant member of that genus. Or the date of 1470 could be revised further downward to allow for its obvious modernity. Actually all three options were exercised. The date was eventually revised, the fossil was assigned to Homo habilis and at least one of Leakey’s associates, Alan Walker, said 1470 was really an Australopithecine. Lubenow’s very detailed account demonstrates that radiometric dating is far from providing an independent method of confirming fossil age. The philosophy of evolution still drives the dating game.
What about other chronometers which could provide a possible answer to the question “How old are those hills?” There are many, including the rate of influx of certain chemicals from the land into the oceans, the decay of the earth’s magnetic field and the rate of shrinkage of the sun. The wide variety of dates calculating the start of the processes ranges from a few hundred to over ten million years. For example, sulfate is accumulating in the world’s oceans at a rate which would require 10,000,000 years to reach the present level. Calcium would require only 1,000,000 years, aluminum only 100 years, and uranium 189,000 years. The
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shrinkage of the sun, if continued 100, 000 years, would be all used up! Carbon 14 dating of oil deposits yielded a date of between 22,000 and 27, 000 years, astonishing Dr. Libby, the developer of the C14 dating method.
What can we say to this great variation in dates given by these methods? Simply that none of them can be trusted to be accurate. When it comes right down to it we must adopt the attitude of Job in matters beyond our experience. God asked him, “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell me if you understand!” And Job replied, “Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me.. . My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you. Therefore, I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes” (Jb 38:4; 42:3, 5).
Only God can reveal some things—man cannot learn everything. So let us let God answer our question “How old are those hills?”
Events of Scripture after Genesis 11 can frequently be correlated with known dates in history. Abraham lived about 2100 BC. In The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings, Edwin Thiele (1983) wrote that 931/930 BC was the date of the division of the Israelite kingdom after Solomon’s death. Consequently, 1 Kings 6:1 and Exodus 12:40 yield a date of 1877 BC for Jacob’s entrance into Egypt. He was 130 years old then (Gn 47:9), so he was born in 2007 BC. Isaac was 60 years old when Jacob was born (Gn 21:26) and Abraham was 100 when Isaac was born (Gn 21:5). Therefore Abraham was born in 2167 BC. From that date forward, with few exceptions, scholars have been able to date most of the Bible’s prominent figures and major events fairly accurately. The problem comes in dating the periods between Adam and Noah and Noah and Abraham.
Bishop James Ussher (1581–1656) attempted to calculate the date of Creation by adding the generations of the patriarchs before Abraham. He arrived at a date of 4004 BC for the Creation. We now know his calculations were in error. There was simply not enough time between Noah and Abraham based on his figures. Noah is said to have lived 350 years after the flood. But, adding the generations for the patriarchs between Noah and Abraham yields only 292 years. Thus Abraham would have been 58 years old when Noah died. This does not square with other statements of Scripture which indicate that Abraham’s family and certainly his peers, were idolaters when God called him out of his ancestral land (Jos 24:2). If Noah were still alive, or recently deceased, idolatry would not be flourishing and the Flood still fresh in men’s memories.
There are gaps, names missing, in the genealogical records in Genesis 11 and Genesis 5. We know this by comparing them with those in Luke 3. The term “begat” can and often did refer not to a son, but to a grandson or great-grand-son. In at least one case, it was an ancestor removed by 400 years! (Compare Ex 6:20 with Nm 3:17–19 and 27–28—see also Matthew 1:8 where three generations are omitted and 1 Chricles 26:24 where there are 400 years between Shebuel and Gershom.)
The Bible implies great antiquity for the events of Genesis 11, the Tower of Babel and the separation of nations. By the time Abraham left Ur of the Chaldees and Haran to enter the land of Canaan there were already the Kenites, Kennizzites, Kadmonites, Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites and Jebusites there (Gn 15:19). In Egypt, the Pharaonic
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dynasties were already powerful (Gn 12:15). Philistines had arrived in Canaan from Caphtor (the island of Crete) and were in Canaan before Abraham arrived (Jer 47:4; Gn 20:2). It is not unreasonable to assign 2, 000 years or perhaps as much as 4, 000 years between the Flood and Abraham. But it is unreasonable to allow 200,000 or more years in that interval. The gaps in the family records were of the order of magnitude of one, two or perhaps several generations (i.e. 50, 100 or perhaps 400 or 500 years, but not hundreds of thousands of years).
Likewise the antiquity of the Fall of man can be estimated with a considerable degree of accuracy. A simple addition of the ages of the pre-deluvian patriarchs yields a time span of 1, 651 years between Adam and Noah. But here, as in the genealogies of Genesis 11, there can be at least one gap. Also Methuselah is said to have been “begotten” by Enoch who was a Godly man. The implication is that Methuselah was therefore also a Godly, righteous man. Therefore he could not have lived to the exact year of the Flood since Scripture says Noah was the only righteous man on earth when the Flood came. Methuselah would have been an ancestor, not the actual father of Lamech. This would extend the time somewhat between the Creation and the Flood by up to 1, 000 years.
At any rate, from Abraham back to Noah could have been as much as 4,000 or 5, 000 years and from Noah to Adam an additional 2, 000 years. Thus the outside limit of the Scriptural timeline since the Creation is about 11, 000 years. It could be less, of course, but not more.
The answer to the question “How old are those Hills?” must lie in God’s revelation to man. He did not tell us exactly how old the earth is. But He did make sufficient evidence available to us so that we can calculate a “ball park” figure. So we should allow Him to “teach us to number our days aright, that we may apply our hearts to wisdom” (Ps 90:12).
Bibliography
Ager, D.
1983 New Scientist 100: 425.
Livingston, D.
1993 The Date of Noah’s Flood: Literary and Archaeological Evidence. Archaeology and Biblical Research 6: 13–17.
Lubenow, M.L.
1992 Bones of Contention: A Creationist Assessment of Human Fossils. Grand Rapids MI: Baker Books.
Fitch, F.J. and Miller J.A.
1970 Radioisotope Age Determinations of Lake Rudolf Artifacts Site. Nature, 18 April: 226–28.
Leakey, R.
1973 Skull 1470, National Geographic 149: 819–29.
Thiele, E.R.
1983 The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings. Grand Rapids MI: Zondervan.
Additional Reading
Moore, H.
1990 The Alphabet Makers. Huntington Beach CA: Summer Institute of Linguistics.
Whitcomb, J.C.
1976 Historical and Chronological Charts: Creation to Abraham. Winona Lake IN: BMH Books.