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Creation 34(1):24–27, January 2012

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Suddenly there was culture

Creation for Kids

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The Bible says that when God made the very first people on Earth, Adam and Eve, He made them “in His image”. This means that they and their children were not ‘ape-men’, or ‘stone-age’ people or ‘primitive’.

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They were very intelligent. Very soon, people began inventing things. One man found out how to extract iron and copper and tin from their ores in the earth and make all sorts of metal tools. Another experimented until he had made the first harp and the first flute (Genesis 4:19–22).

By the time of the Flood, Noah and his family knew enough ‘technology’ to be able to build the Ark, a massive ship that was three decks high and was longer than a football field. Then a few years later, Noah’s descendants built a city with a huge tower in it, called the Tower of Babel. This might have been in the shape of a stepped pyramid called a ziggurat, like others still standing in the area around present-day Babylon.

God divided the people at Babel into different language groups. Those who went to Egypt, for example, took with them enough knowledge (some others didn’t) to eventually work out how to build pyramids. Let’s look at three other ancient civilizations.

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Norte Chico

The ‘oldest’ civilization in the Americas is called Norte Chico, on the coast of Peru. This civilisation seems to have flourished for about 500 years. This culture built pyramids, had an organized religion and a complex government. The people even played music on flutes made out of pelican bones. They also had irrigation to grow cotton to make cloth. In fact, an irrigation channel still in use today is thought to have been built by the Norte Chico people.

All this is evidence against the theory that all cultures have evolved from primitive to advanced. According to evolutionists, something ‘so old’ should not be ‘so advanced’, with pyramids, religion, government, music, irrigation, and so on. But as Christians, we shouldn’t be surprised.

Although it is a mystery to evolutionists, it fits with the Bible’s account of groups of people moving away from Babel to set up in other areas with the skills they took with them.

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Tiahuanaco

Also in South America is the ancient city of Tiahuanaco. It’s near Lake Titicaca in Bolivia. Tiahuanaco is another huge mystery for evolutionists. The people had tools such as drills and chisels which they made from high-grade copper. Skulls have been found with well-healed bone grafts; could this be early ‘brain surgery’? Today the remains of statues and huge beautifully cut stones lie scattered around. Some of these weigh up to 100 tons. How did the people transport them and build temples with them? Even evolutionists have admitted that the architects who designed these buildings were men of genius.

A local legend said that Tiahuanaco sprang up after a great Flood, built by unknown ‘giants’. Such a story would fit with the people’s memory of Noah’s flood, as well as the fact that some people groups from Babel did have these building skills.

Machu Picchu

The ancient Inca civilization in South America was a huge empire covering what is now Peru and Bolivia, most of Ecuador, a large portion of modern-day Chile, and parts of Argentina and Colombia. It was a culture with a complex form of government, which organized the lands, forests, mines, pastures, houses and all kinds of products.

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The city of Machu Picchu was built by Inca engineers high up in the beautiful mountains of Peru. It is now one of the world’s most famous ancient ruins. The Incas used stone without cement or mortar, yet the stones fit together so well that you can’t fit a piece of paper between them. The tight fit made the walls really strong and stable.

The Incas lived in very steep mountain country, which is not good for farming. To solve this problem they cut terraces into the mountains and built irrigation channels (often carved in stone) to carry water to their gardens. The Incas also had beautiful intricate weaving and pottery. They worked with a bronze-alloy metal, and there is even evidence that they too may have performed brain surgery.

Clever ancient man!

Archaeologists often say they are ‘amazed’ or ‘surprised’ at the level of man’s skill in the distant past. But they’re only surprised because their evolutionary beliefs lead them to expect to find evidence of ‘primitive’ men, not intelligent ones. To solve this problem, some evolutionists have suggested that ‘ancient’ man must have had help from some technologically advanced race such as aliens! However, when we accept the Bible as true history, we find that it fits the facts much better than the evolution story, with no need for aliens to explain things away! The evidence shows that people have always been intelligent, because God created them that way in the first place.

Genesis 1:27

So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female he created them.

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