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Human fossils from the Flood and ancient climate patterns

Should we expect any such fossils?

Rudi T. from South Africa writes regarding our article Where are all the human fossils?. CMI’s Dr Emil Silvestru responds:

AA Snelling’s article “Where are all the human fossils?” refers.

Relating to possible destruction of human remains, Snelling mentions several highly destructive factors which would be found in the global Flood. These are difficult to deny, and in fact they are what one would expect.

My question, then, is this: how can we argue on the one hand for a destructive Flood, and on the other hand, appeal to the same Flood to preserve imprints left in soft sediments (such as pawprints)?

The preservation of vertebrate animals would be a hit-and-miss affair in a highly turbulent Flood, but still plausible. In the light of the forces involved, however, it seems difficult to imagine how animal prints, water ripples, etc., would remain preserved at all.

Is there a model for any of this, and/or is work proceeding or being contemplated on such a model? Or are we in a position where we allow rapid burial to preserve prints in great detail one moment, but with animals and humans being destroyed entirely by turbulence in the next moment? In other words, is the evidence fitting into a constantly-updated model, or is the evidence being explained away? If we’re alternately appealing to opposing mechanisms, sans model, just to make the evidence fit in, isn’t that rather close to what the evolutionists are doing?

Thanks for your attention, and for all the great resources on your site! May God bless your ministry.

CMI’s Dr Emil Silvestru replies:

Hello Rudi

Thank you for your inquiry. This is a recurrent topic for our ministry and one that is very pertinent. Dr. Snelling’s answer is providing a good general framework for solving this puzzle. I would add to it the geographical distribution of antediluvian human population as well as its size. It seems quite obvious by the analysis of the first 6 chapters of Genesis that pre-Flood the sea was not really part of regular human habitat. In fact the word ‘sea’ appears only twice up to chapter 9. So I believe it is reasonable to assume that most antediluvian human habitation was rather far from the sea/ocean. As for the antediluvian global population, using the estimates of growth between the Flood and the Resurrection of Christ (from 8 to about 300 million see Where are all the people?) from the creation of Adam and Eve the population doubled about 17 times, which means the population was much smaller than in AD 1. The Bible also suggests that the population was concentrated in urban areas at that time (unlike the evolutionary model of ancient societies). It is therefore reasonable to assume that—as the Flood waters advanced—most of the population massed together onto the highest elevations and were eventually swept by violent water flow or simply drowned once no more land was available.

Bloating and floating and decay and scavengers would take care of the rest. It is significant that there have been no human skeletons found at any shipwreck older than about 50 years (sea water dissolves bones).

Fossilization only occurs if rapid burial encases creatures in thick-enough unbound sediment and only where and when mineralizing solutions regularly filter through the sediment.

Let me use a proxy for this: in North America there are no traces of sauropods (both skeletal remains and ichnites) roughly north of the US/Canada border whilst theropods and hadrosaurs are found all the way to the Arctic. Since it is unlikely this had to do with some ancient border regulations, it is reasonable to assume that something physical prevented sauropods from reaching that territory. How about the incoming waters of the Flood and the evidently lower mobility of sauropods? Of course this also suggests that dinosaurs did not rule the territory that became North America for over 100 million years.

With all this in mind, my impression is that we are not necessarily chasing our own tail (to summarize your well-put argument). Yet I am fully aware we are still invoking some rather exceptional circumstances to explain the absence of human fossils but frankly, not more exceptional than some of the evolutionary explaining-away of ‘offset’ fossils. As Dr. Snelling pointed out, the Flood was God’s punishing action aimed to annihilate sinful humanity. So maybe it was part of his plan to prevent the fossilization of antediluvian sinners!

At this point I’d like to suggest that if ever human skeletons will be found in say, dinosaur fossil-bearing layers, evolutionists would rather attribute them to some time travel went wrong than accept the reality of Noah’s Flood.

I hope this helps a bit. Please do not hesitate to write again if there is anything else I can help with.

Sincerely

Emil Silvestru, PhD (geology)


Climate patterns and natural history

Anthony W. from Australia asks how climate researchers were supposedly able to graph CO2 levels over the last 400,000 years. CMI’s Dr Tas Walker answers:

Hi, I’m writing in regards to the ‘science’ of determining weather/climate patterns in the ‘pre-historic’ past.

At my church recently we had a seminar on climate change and the church’s reaction to this. It was heavily inferred that we are contributing heavily to climate change.

They did however display a graph (which I can email though if provided with an address) which graphed atmospheric CO2 levels and also average temps over the last 400,000 years. The graph showed that temps followed fairly closely changes in CO2 levels, this seemed to be cyclic, repeating every 100,000 years. The graph apparently appears in the Stern Review and Al Gore’s ‘An Inconvenient Truth’.

Now obviously a well informed creationist knows that yes, the climate does oscillate however the time scale is much shorter. My question is how would the compilers of the graph have obtained the data relating to CO2 levels and temps? Would it have been from ice-core analysis?

Thanks and regards, Anthony.

CMI’s Dr Tas Walker responds,

Hi Anthony,

Obviously no one measured the CO2 levels or global temperatures over that period. Ice cores are one way that information is derived. Tree rings are another. Corals another. Sometimes little fluid inclusions in minerals are analysed. There are probably many other methods that are used. But the results all depend on assumptions that are made and these are obviously long-age assumptions.

For periods up to about 3,500 to 4,000 years ago the time scale is probably OK but the interpreted CO2 and global temp would be quite rubbery. For periods older than that the timescale is incorrect because they are ignoring the effects of the global Flood and the post-Flood Ice Age immediately after. So the period which they quote as from 3,500 years to 100,000 years would likely in real time be from 3,500 years to around 4,000 years—a period of some 500 years or less. The variations they quote likely represent variations in local short-term storm events and similar. Or they could even be an artefact from assembling a liner sequence of tree rings from logs that were actually contemporaneous.

You would need to do some digging on the internet to find how the data for that particular graph was developed, the assumptions that went into it, the validity of the results and the time period for which it actually applies.

All the best,

Tas Walker

Published: 12 August 2012

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