The Antiquity and the Unity

The Antiquity and the Unity of the Human Race Revisited

Davis A. Young

Department of Geology, Geography, and Environmental Studies
Calvin College
Grand Rapids, Michigan 49546

[From Christian Scholar's Review XXIV:4, 380-396 (May, 1995)]
©1995 by the Christian Scholar's Review
Reprinted in electronic form by permission.

If the data in Genesis 4 are correlated with the cultural setting of the Neolithic Revolution in the ancient Near East about 8000 to 7500 B.C., then the biblical representation of Adam as Cain's immediate father suggests that Adam and Eve lived only about 10,000 years ago. The fossil record of anatomically modern humans, however, extends at least 100,000 years before the present. There are at least three solutions to this dilemma. All three alternative solutions pose difficult exegetical or theological challenges that result either in a refinement of the doctrine of original sin or a significant departure from traditional historical readings of Genesis 2-4. Davis A. Young, professor of geology at Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan, examines and evaluates these solutions from both a scientific and biblical-theological perspective.

"The fundamental assertion of the Biblical doctrine of the origin of man is that he owes his being to a creative act of God." So began Benjamin B. Warfield's classic article, "On the Antiquity and the Unity of the Human Race."l Growing out of that fundamental assertion, claimed Warfield, were subsidiary questions, the most important of which "concerned the method of the divine procedure in creating man." Discussion of that question, he argued, could "never sink again into rest until it is thoroughly understood in all quarters that 'evolution' cannot act as a substitute for creation, but at best can supply only a theory of the method of the divine providence." In the more than fourscore years since Warfield wrote, this "subsidiary" question has not only not sunk into rest within the Christian community but has repeatedly boiled up with renewed vehemence. Regardless of their convictions on the antiquity of the earth, the origin of life, the evolution of plants and animals, the nature and extent of the deluge, and a host of related matters, Christians typically turn up the intensity level when debating the question: Is the human race biologically related to non-human forms?

The pivotal significance of that question was underscored recently when the 1991 Synod of the Christian Reformed Church considered a lengthy report from its Committee on Creation and Science. Although the report discussed a variety of issues from the antiquity of the universe to biological evolution, the Synod singled out for action the matter of human origins. Unwilling even to concede Warfield's allowance that evolution could supply a theory of the divine providence in the creation of man, the Synod adopted the following motion: "The church declares, moreover, that the clear teaching of Scripture and of our confessions on the uniqueness of human beings as imagebearers of God rules out the espousal of all theorizing that posits the reality of evolutionary forebears of the human race."2 The impetus for adopting the declaration stemmed in part from a deep concern that "the evolutionary idea of an animal ancestry for the human race does in fact erode the doctrine of the uniqueness of human beings as image bearers of God."3

What intrigues me, however, is that most evangelical Christians seem to be unaware that a rejection of the idea of human evolution and an insistence on a non-evolutionary creation of the human race do not thereby adequately protect biblical anthropology from possible erosion. Even on the presumption of the special creation of humanity there is other scientific evidence that has the potential for affecting our understanding of the doctrine of original sin. Arising out of Warfield's "fundamental assertion" are his two additional subsidiary questions concerning the antiquity and the unity of the human race. Although these questions were discussed vigorously in the 19th century, Warfield admitted in 1911 that "neither of them can be said to be burning questions of today." Given the explosion of extra-biblical evidence bearing on the antiquity and unity of the human race since Warfield's day, however, it is striking that these questions have received relatively little recent analysis within the evangelical community. Although anthropologists have pondered the two questions, Christian scholars in general and theologians in particular seem poorly informed about the pertinent extra-biblical evidence and its implications for Christian theology.4 In an effort to fan the flames of interest in these two questions a bit, this paper aims to offer a fresh restatement of some of the questions surrounding the antiquity and unity of the human race and to sharpen the focus on the related theological and exegetical problems in order to encourage sustained dialogue among Christian theologians, anthropologists, and paleontologists in respect to these questions.

The Doctrine of Original Sin

At issue is the doctrine of original sin. Both Roman Catholic and Protestant confessional statements on original sin have incorporated the historic view that Adam and Eve were the very first human beings and the product of a special divine creation.5Reflecting that view, the formulations of Roman Catholic, Lutheran, Reformed, Presbyterian, Anglican, Methodist, Congregational, and Baptist churches repeatedly use such expressions as "first parents," "first man," "hereditary evil," "hereditary disease," "by propagation of a vicious nature," "derived or spread from our first parent unto us all," "our first father Adam," "posterity," "inherited damage," "by propagation, not by imitation, transfused into all." Perhaps the most explicit statement is that of Answer 16 of the Westminster Shorter Catechism: "The covenant being made with Adam, not only for himself, but for his posterity; all mankind, descending from him by ordinary generation, sinned in him, and fell with him, in his first transgression."

Although expressing their convictions in various ways, the framers of these confessional statements all believed that Adam and Eve were the first human beings, that all human beings are biological descendants of that original pair, and that all human beings have somehow inherited sin from them. Furthermore, they assumed that Adam and Eve were specially created by God. It is understandable that the writers of these 16th and 17th century documents would hold such interpretations of the biblical data. There was no scientific information to compel them to rethink the historic view. Moreover, the traditional Christian view was generally accepted by western society at large. Now, however, it is appropriate to discuss whether or not any adjustment in our conception of original sin is necessary or biblically tenable because the wealth of information now available from archeology and paleoanthropology has made it increasingly difficult for contemporary Christians to demonstrate the direct descent of all living humans from a historically recent Adam and Eve.

Warfield on the Antiquity of the Human Race

Warfield confidently asserted that the "question of the antiquity of man has of itself no theological significance." It was a matter of "entire indifference" to theology how long humans had been on earth. The only reason the issue had been raised could be traced to the contrast between the apparently short human history presented in the biblical narrative and the great amount of time assigned by "certain schools of scientific speculation." This discrepancy, however, is "entirely factitious" because he believed that his Old Testament colleague at Princeton Theological Seminary, William Henry Green, had demonstrated that the biblical genealogies may not legitimately be employed for the extraction of chronological information.6 Characteristic of biblical genealogies, said Warfield, is the omission of names, and for all we know, instead of the recorded twenty generations and apparent two thousand years between creation and the birth of Abraham, there might actually have been two thousand generations and two hundred thousand years. Thus as far as the biblical genealogies are concerned, "we may suppose any length of time to have intervened between these events which may otherwise appear reasonable." Consequently the matter of the antiquity of the human race becomes a strictly scientific concern.

Although clearly willing to grant high antiquity to humanity if need be, Warfield looked askance at scientific speculations demanding hundreds of millions of years of earth history and at evolutionary speculations insisting on hundreds of thousands of years of human development. He embraced Lord Kelvin's calculations of the earth's age at only twenty to forty million years as giving "pause to the reckless drafts which had been accustomed to be made on time."7 He sensed, too, that the scientific investigators of his day were acquiescing in a moderate estimate of human antiquity on the order of ten to twenty thousand years.

I am suspicious of Warfield's claim that the biblical text is indifferent to human antiquity. Nor do I think that the issue of human antiquity necessarily has no theological significance. I suggest that Warfield overlooked biblical material apart from the genealogies that may place constraints on our estimates of the antiquity of Adam. As we shall see shortly, the Bible appears to provide data pertinent to human activity that can be dated archaeologically. When considered in conjunction with current information on human fossils, these data may have implications for how we understand the doctrine of original sin.

When Did Adam Live?

Let us assume as the fundamental premise of the following discussion that Adam and Eve were not only historical persons but also the very first humans, miraculously created by God in a "supernatural" act that involved no evolutionary ancestry whatever so that the issues to be raised cannot be construed as the result of speculative evolutionary scenarios. I suggest that intriguing scientific challenges still remain for this historic view of human origins because of the data contained in Genesis 4. 8 There Cain is evidently the firstborn son of Adam and Eve. As befitted one who "worked the soil," Cain brought an offering of the fruits of the soil. He sounds like a farmer, not simply a person who gathered wild fruits and vegetables. His brother Abel "kept flocks," and so brought an offering "of the firstborn of his flock." He sounds like a shepherd. After Cain killed his brother, he escaped to the land of Nod, fathered his son Enoch, built a city, and named it after his son. At the very least he established some sort of permanent settlement. Within a few generations, the descendants of Cain were using musical instruments, working metal, and engaging in the nomadic herdsman lifestyle. Genesis 4 seems to describe the cultural achievements associated with the Neolithic revolution, evidence of which is preserved in archeological sites throughout the Near East.

Let us for the sake of discussion assume that the identification of Genesis 4 with the Neolithic revolution in the ancient Near East is valid. We could then ask when the various cultural achievements mentioned in Genesis 4 first occurred. Since Warfield's day, careful stratigraphic and paleontological control in conjunction with radiocarbon dating, thermoluminescence dating, fission track dating, and other modern techniques has permitted the documentation of the appearance of these cultural achievements. Numerous musical instruments have been found or are artistically portrayed, for example, on pottery at several Mesopotamian sites dating since at least the fourth millennium B.C.9 Interestingly enough, the oldest known "musical" instrument is a bone whistle from the Middle Paleolithic site at Haua Fteah in Libya, perhaps more than 45,000 years old! The earliest known use of worked metal is at Cayonu Tepesi is southern Turkey where some native copper items were recovered from levels dated to about 7000 B.C.10 Permanent settlements in the form of villages of large round huts are associated with the Natufian culture in the Levant perhaps by 9000 B.C. Building in mud brick was common practice by 8000 B.C.11 The critical component of the cultural world described in Genesis 4, however, is plant and animal domestication because the apparently immediate offspring of Adam and Eve are portrayed as a farmer and a shepherd.

The advent of the cultivation of domesticated plants in the ancient Near East has been well documented. According to Zohari, "the first definite signs of plant cultivation in the Old World appear in a string of early Neolithic farming villages that developed in the Near East by 7500-7000 B.C."12 More specifically, Byrd states that "the onset of cultivation appears to have occurred in the PPNA [pre-pottery Neolithic A] (radiocarbon dated between 10,000/10,300 - 9,600/9,300 B.C.) or just prior to it."13 The sowing and harvesting of the earliest domesticated plants, the cereals emmer wheat, barley, and einkorn wheat, are indicated by distinctive morphologies assumed by these grasses upon cultivation. These dominant cereals were accompanied by such legumes as lentils and peas. Virtually all of these early domesticated plants grew in the wild in the limited area of the Near East so that domestication of those plants could have started only there. From these villages in the fertile crescent, agriculture quickly spread into southern Europe, western Asia, and northern Africa. Thus far we have no evidence that plant and animal domestication occurred earlier elsewhere than in the Near East.14 Plant cultivation in the Near East also occurred more or less simultaneously with sheep and goat domestication. Cattle and pigs were domesticated soon afterward.15 If, however, plant and animal domestication was first established around 7500 B.C. and if Cain and Abel were a farmer and a shepherd respectively, then Cain and Abel lived around 7500 B.C. And if Cain and Abel were the first offspring of Adam and Eve, then Adam and Eve must have lived only a very short time before that. After all, even on a literal reading of the genealogy of Genesis 5, Adam was only 130 years old when Seth was born. And the text suggests that Seth was born after Cain had slain Abel. In fact, Adam, given the assignments of tending the garden and naming livestock, seems to be associated with agriculture and the domestication of animals. On the face of it, the biblical and archeological evidence suggests that Adam and Eve did not live earlier than around 8000 B.C., that is, roughly 10,000 years ago.

If we accept the historicity of Genesis 2-4, there are at least three ways to avoid this conclusion, none of which I find very satisfactory. In the first place, one might claim that future Near Eastern archeological work will disclose that plant and animal domestication occurred much earlier than is currently accepted. As we will see shortly, however, revision of the date for the establishment of agriculture or animal domestication will not extricate us from very serious difficulties pertaining to the biological relationship of all humans to Adam unless the time of Adam and Cain can be pushed back to at least 40,000 years ago. And even that may not be sufficient. Thus far we have encountered no hint of plant and animal domestication that long ago.

Secondly, one might claim that the domestication of plants and animals occurred prior to 10,000 years ago somewhere outside the Near East but that the evidence has not yet been found. One following this avenue would need to claim that Genesis 4 describes the development of civilization outside of the Near East. And this in turn raises the important issue of where Adam lived. The view that Cain and Abel were not natives of the Near East cannot be sustained simply because the biblical description of the location of the garden in Genesis 2 plainly places it within a Near Eastern setting. Moreover, there is presently no evidence for any civilization earlier than that of the Near East. If such earlier civilizations did exist they would need to have developed agriculture at least 40,000 years ago in order to relieve us of the biological relationship problem just noted.

In the third place, it might be argued that ancient Near Eastern archeological sites preserve the record of a civilization that developed after the biblical flood rather than the very earliest civilization of Genesis 4. On this position, the biblical deluge occurred at least 10,000 years ago. If so, then the conditions of Genesis 4 would have occurred considerably before that, and Adam, Eve, Cain, and Abel would have lived far more than 10,000 years ago. This option then is a variation on the two previous options in that it asks us to hope that someday archeology will discover evidence for a civilization that is much older than the ones we now know about.

But I doubt that this option can be sustained. As evidence gathered from Near Eastern sites suggests a continuous transition from a hunting and gathering economy to one based on wheat and barley agriculture, there is no hint of a break between the preceding hunting-gathering economy and the agricultural economy that might be the result of a catastrophic event like the deluge. If Near Eastern archeology preserved the record of the recovery of civilization after the flood, we would probably expect to find that cultivation of plants and domestication of animals were reestablished immediately after the flood. After all, Noah and his family were acquainted with agriculture as indicated by his planting the vineyard. Noah is described as "a man of the soil" (Genesis 9:20). Undeniably, too, there were domesticated animals on the ark. Might not a post-deluge archeological site indicate sudden appearance of plant cultivation succeeding datable flood deposits? But this is not what is found.

I suspect that ancient Near Eastern flood epics and Genesis 6-9 are referring to the same event. The similarity in structure between Genesis 1-11, the Atrahasis Epic, and the eleventh tablet of the Gilgamesh Epic renders it likely that all have the same deluge in mind. If so, the biblical flood is appropriately identified with a flood that occurred shortly before the time of the Sumerian king Gilgamesh who lived in the early 3rd millennium B.C.16 Thus the biblical flood should probably be dated in the 4th or very early 3rd millennium B.C. Possibly the biblical flood should be related to some of the flood deposits encountered at a variety of archeological sites within Mesopotamia. If this is the case, early evidences of agriculture at ancient Near Eastern sites plainly pre-date the biblical flood, just what seems to be suggested by Genesis.

Finally, although we have evidence of several later Mesopotamian floods, there is no identifiable geological evidence in the Near East for a great flood that cut off Near Eastern civilization before 10,000 years ago. There is no compelling scientific reason to reject the idea that archeological sites in the Near East containing the earliest evidences of plant cultivation should be linked with the events described in Genesis 4.