How Old is Mankind, Adam, etc? - Methods and Tools Used!

[Philip]

"Errors in Human Origins Dates"
By Hugh Ross - June 29, 2020

https://reasons.org/explore/blogs/today ... gins-dates

This is an excellent article by Hugh Ross, just posted yesterday. It gives a wonderful shorthand for the various dating methods used by scientists to access the age of mankind, fossils, etc. It notes the strengths, weaknesses, problems, and accuracy / inaccuracy rates inherent in each method scientists commonly use. And it particularly emphasizes the significant problems of statistical and systematic errors.

[DBowling]

Some thoughts...

I agree that there is a significant margin of error in estimates regarding how long humans (species homo sapiens sapiens) have been in existence.
However, when multiple disciplines such as DNA analysis and archaeology converge on the same general date range, that does lend credibility to the estimated 150K - 200K time range.

That said, the Scriptural record gives us a more precise time frame for the existence of the Biblical Adam, especially since the language of the Genesis 5 and Genesis 11 genealogies do not allow for inserting any gaps between Adam and Abraham. Even allowing for textual issues regarding the numbers in the Scriptural genealogies, according to Scripture the Biblical Adam lived in Mesopotamia less than 8000 years ago.
That is well within the time frame where Carbon 14 and other historical dating techniques are more reliable.

So the scientific disciplines can tell us with a high level of certainty that humans (species homo sapiens sapiens) were around at least 10s of thousands of years (and most likely well over 100K years) before the time of the Biblical Adam.

[Philip]

DB: the Scriptural record gives us a more precise time frame for the existence of the Biblical Adam, especially since the language of the Genesis 5 and Genesis 11 genealogies do not allow for inserting any gaps between Adam and Abraham. Even allowing for textual issues regarding the numbers in the Scriptural genealogies, according to Scripture the Biblical Adam lived in Mesopotamia less than 8000 years ago.

I agree - no matter how one parses the estimate ages for other homosapien sites - you cannot get around even the most generious time boundaries that lock in what is possible for the age of Adam. But the question is, what do we make of homosapien sites like the one found at Jebel Irhoud, Morocco, which dated various homosapien fossils to around 300,000 years old?

[DBowling]

DB: the Scriptural record gives us a more precise time frame for the existence of the Biblical Adam, especially since the language of the Genesis 5 and Genesis 11 genealogies do not allow for inserting any gaps between Adam and Abraham. Even allowing for textual issues regarding the numbers in the Scriptural genealogies, according to Scripture the Biblical Adam lived in Mesopotamia less than 8000 years ago.

I agree - no matter how one parses the estimate ages for other homosapien sites - you cannot get around even the most generious time boundaries that lock in what is possible for the age of Adam. But the question is, what do we make of homosapien sites like the one found at Jebel Irhoud, Morocco, which dated various homosapien fossils to around 300,000 years old?

After doing a quick internet search on Jebel Irhoud, I have a couple of outstanding questions...
1) Are the fossils at Jebel Irhoud anatomically modern humans (species homo sapiens sapiens) or are they an earlier subspecies of homosapien.
From https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/06 ... nd-morocco

Once Hublin saw the date, “we realized we had grabbed the very root of the whole species lineage,” he says. The skulls are so transitional that naming them becomes a problem: The team calls them early H. sapiens rather than the “early anatomically modern humans” described at Omo and Herto.

Some people might still consider these robust humans “highly evolved H. heidelbergensis,” says paleoanthropologist Alison Brooks of The George Washington University in Washington, D.C. She and others, though, think they do look like our kind. “The main skull looks like something that could be near the root of the H. sapiens lineage,” says Klein, who says he would call them “protomodern, not modern.”

2) Since God first established personal relationship with his image bearers around 8000 years ago... long after all hominid species except for modern humans (species homo sapiens sapiens) were extinct, what difference does it make precisely when pre-Adamic humans first appeared. From a spiritual perspective, does it really matter whether anatomically modern humans came into existence 100K or 200K or even 300K years ago?

[Philip]

DB: From a spiritual perspective, does it really matter whether anatomically modern humans came into existence 100K or 200K or even 300K years ago?

No, I don't think so.

But it does matter when people attempt to bridge various hominids into the human family (labeling them "human ancestors"), so as to support evolutionary thinking. As such a belief cannot be Scripturally supported - nor, in my opinion, scientifically.