I am going to present another reason that the anthropologically universal flood must be much earlier than people have heretofore claimed. This is a technological reason. People think humans are highly inventive”we aren’t. Ask yourself this, how many inventions have you submitted to the patent office? Most will say none. Now, one thing people dealing with an anthropologically universal flood implicitly assume is that civilization would arise almost immediately.
Technology requires people, lots of people. I find oil for your cars, you all do other things indirectly for me. I specialize in my technology, you in yours. The farmer grows food for both of us. If we were reduced to only a few people then our technological knowledge would die. Consider the effects of such a population bottleneck. It would take a long, long time before their children re-invented the technology. What would ensue is a long dark age. And what my view would say about the past is that it was the re-development of technology.
The Tasmanians provide a wonderful example of how badly small populations are at maintaining technology. The Tasmanian aborigines were cut off from the Australian aborigines when the sea levels rose 8,000 years ago. They numbered 4,000 people with several different languages and over time, even with 4000 people they were not able to maintain their technology. 7000 years ago they made bone and stone tools and were not different from the mainland aborigines, but about 3500 years ago, they ceased making bone tools. And in spite of excellent fishing around the island, they lost the ability to fish. Their huts were reduced to about what Neanderthals built. They apparently lost the ability to make boats and when they re-invented the boat several thousand years later, they were so poor that they couldn't last more than about 8 hours in the water before sinking.
( see Josephine Flood, "The Archeology of the Dreamtime, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), p. 173-187)
The Tasmanians lost the ability or knowledge of using bone to manufacture tools. They used to have this knowledge but over time it disappeared.
"Bone tools were also present at Rocky cape. Seven thousand
years ago people here were using a considerable number and
variety of bone artefacts: large, rounded tipped points or awls
made from macropod shin bones, small, sharp needle-like points
(without an eye), broad spatulae, and an assortment of split
slivers of bone fashioned ot a point at one end. The people
were using one bone tool to every two or three stone ones.
""A remarkable change took place over the next four thousand
years: bone tools dropped out of use. By 4000 years ago only one
bone tool was being used for every fifteen stone ones, and by
3500 years ago they had disappeared from the Tasmanian toolkit
altogether. This disappearance of bone tools in Tasmania about
3000 years ago has been confirmed by the evidence of several
other sites in both the north-west and east of the island."" ~
Josephine Flood, ""The Archeology of the Dreamtime, (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1989), p. 176-177
And with fish all around them, they lost the knowledge and ability to fish.
"Even more surprising is the incontrovertible evidence that
after eating fish for many thousands of years the Tasmanians
dropped fish from the diet about 3500 years ago. Early explorers
were amazed that the Tasmanians did not eat scale fish and did
not even seem to regard it as human food. Those who could bring
themselves to believe this astonishing fact ascribed it to the
extreme primitiveness of Tasmanian culture. Certainly the
Tasmanians had no nets or fish-hooks, so it seemd logical to some
scholars, steeped in Darwinian evolutionary theory, that these
most primitive representatives of the human race should be unable
even to catch fish, one of the basic foods of mankind.
"This concept of a people too far down on the evolutionary
ladder to have learnt how to catch fish was not seriously
challenged until fish bones were found in the middens of Rocky
Cape. Yet fish bones were not at the top, but at the base, of
the middens. The Tasmanians had once eaten fish but later gave
up this excellent source of food.”
"In rocky Cape South Cave there were 3196 fish bones in the
lower half of the midden, dated to between 3800 and 8000 years
ago, and only one fish bone in the younger, upper half."" ~
Josephine Flood, ""The Archeology of the Dreamtime, (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1989), p. 179
"No other surviving human society has ever been isolated so
long or so completely as were Tasmanian Aborigines over the last
8000 years. (the land bridge was gradually inundated between
12000 and 8000 BP-....)"~ Josephine Flood, ""The Archeology of
the Dreamtime, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), p. 173
"That the simplest material culture should be found among
the people who experienced the longest isolation in the world is
significant. Rhys Jones sees analogies with the reduction in the
number of faunal species on islands that become separated from
their parent continents. He considers the 4000 people isolated
on Tasmania and divided into several different language groups
were too few to maintain indefinitely their Pleistocene culture,
and that they were therefore, doomed--'doomed to a slow
strangulation of the mind.'
"Certainly the evidence for the religious life of the
Tasmanians is very limited, which may indicate a limited
religious life. Compared with the richness of religious life on
the mainland, it was apparently largely confined to burial
ceremonies and dances depicting mythical and historical themes.
But by the time George Augustus Robinson made his record of
Aboriginal life, the population had been decimated and large
ceremonial gatherings would hardly have been possible." ~
Josephine Flood, ""The Archeology of the Dreamtime, (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1989), p. 185
"Bill McGrew, author of the most comprehensive study of
chimpanzee material culture, firmly believes that chimpanzee tool
use is of considerable complexity. Indeed, in an (in)famous
article written in 1987, he directly compared the toolkits of
chimpanzees to those of Tasmanian Aborigines and concluded that
they were at an equivalent level of complexity. For this
comparison McGrew chose to measure complexity by counting
'technounits', which is simply an individual component of a tool,
whatever material that component is made from and however it is
used. So a hoe used by, say, a peasant farmer, comprising a
shaft, a blade and a binding, has three technounits, while the
suite of computerized robots operated by a modern car worker has
perhaps three million technounits.
"When McGrew measured the technounits in the tools of the
Tasmanian Aborigines and those of the Tanzanian chimpanzees he
found that the mean number of technounits per tool was not
substantially different. All chimpanzee tools and most of the
Aboriginal tools were made from a single component. The most
complex Aboriginal tool, a baited hide, had only four
technounits."" ~ Steven Mithen, The Prehistory of the Mind, (New
York: Thames and Hudson, 1996), p. 75
This is from McGrew's article (A is an artifact, N is a natural object):
Subsistants of the Tasmanian Aborigines
Category Form Artifact/ Use Technounits
Naturfact
Instrument
simple stone N chop down Notch Bruise tree 1
chisel A Dislodge shellfish 1
stick N Dig up prey 1
Weapon
simple stone N Throw to knock down prey 1
Stick A Throw to knock down prey 1
Spear A Stab Prey 1
Facility
simple torch A Drive or smoke out prey 1
rope A Climb tree to prey 1
Grass tied A Trip up kangaroo 1
Basket A Carry Shell fish 1
Blind (wood+branches) A Conceal hunter 2
Blind baited A Conceal bird catcher 4
(pole + grass+ bait + stone)
Spears sunken A Stab prey on trail 1
W.C. McGrew, ""Tools to Get Food: the Subsistants of Tasmanian
Aborigines and Tanzanian Chimpanzees Compared,"" Journal of
Anthropological Research, 43(1987):3:247-258, p. 253
I ascribe the lack of Tasmanian material culture to the total isolation they had from the rest of the human race for 8000 years. There was no intellectual stimulation among the 4000 people, or at least not enough to matter which is why they lost there technological edge. Descendants of these people can become
nuclear scientists, but they have had the advantage of much intellectual stimulation in their formative years. Tells you that we are as we are because our environment as children challenged us. Even today, children sadly isolated by their abusive parents who are raised in basements etc, are intellectually stunted when they are freed.
Now, when it comes to the flood, if you and 7 of your best friends are isolated, ask yourself how quickly you could rebuild todays society, or even a 14th century society. Do you or 8 of your best friends know how to grow cotton, build a spindle and a loom to make cloth? You need a plow to grow cotton, so lets make an
iron plow. Do you know what iron ore looks like? Do you know where to
look? Do you know where to look for coal? Do you know how to mine it?
With dynamite? Ok, do you know how to make dynamite? Can you build a
wagon and haul it? If you can't make dynamite build wagons, tame
horses, and haul the stuff, to where the coal is (or vice versa) how do you make anything with iron? Assuming that you can do this, can you make iron? Do you know how to construct a kiln? Do you know what you need for iron manufacture besides coal, ore and a kiln? There is a very important item I have left out. If you don’t know what it is, you won’t be able to smelt iron. If you can't make iron, you can't make an iron plow and then can’t grow cotton for your clothing. So, without cotton, do you know what other plant material makes great clothing which can keep you warm? (I do).
So you want to make a wooden plow. Fine. How do you cut the tree? Do you know how to make stone tools? And while you are trying to re-
establish an agricultural society, what do you eat TODAY? Who gathers food while you wait on the crop to mature. Do you know how to keep pests from eating your crop before you eat it? A farmer spends most of his time shooing the bugs off his crop. But you need to eat NOW. You can’t wait 3 months to eat. So do you know how to make a bow and arrow? Do you know how to fletch an arrow? Do you even know what fletching is? Do you know how to straighten an arrow shaft? Once you have the arrow, do you know how to aim it? What are you going to use for the bow’s string? How are you going to process that material? Do you know how to stalk prey? Do you know what are the best sounds to use to signal fellow hunters? Do you know how to balance a spear so the point will strike first? Do you know which end of a sapling to use? Do you know what wood makes the best spears and arrows? Do you know how to harden the spear’s tip? If you kill an animal, do you know what parts of what animals you dare not eat? I know of one part of a carnivore you better not eat.
And while you are off hunting, who keeps the insects and birds from eating your crop. Speaking of which, are you aware that wheat, barley, corn and cotton, as we know these plants, don’t grow wild? One year without a harvest might be the end of them, especially in a post-apocalyptic world. How are you going to protect your cereal (assuming you can grow them) from fungus, moisture spoilage, rats, birds and insects who will gladly thank you for growing dinner for them? What kind of storage system will you devise?
Do you know what vegetables are poisonous? Do you know how to
remove the toxins? Consider this, yams are poisonous unless cooked. Uncooked yams are used by technologically primitive people to kill lice, immobilize monkeys and as an arrow poison”which by the way, did you know that before I told you? There was a sad story of Christopher McCandless who went wandering in the Alaskan wilderness and got lost and ran out of food. He kept a diary of his last days which recorded that he was happily eating the seeds of Hedysarum alpinum otherwise known as the Eskimo potato. What he didn’t know was that those seeds contain an alkyloid which prevents the absorption of glucose into the body. With a full belly, he starved to death. He didn’t know even what plants were safe to eat. And neither would you if you and 8 friends found yourself stranded, the sole survivors of some great apocalypse. Would you know to do the following with SOME plants?
"A special rattan basket was used in the processing of one
of the Dyirbals' staple foods. A very common riverine tree, the
black bean, sheds great numbers of heavy, brown pods containing
walnut-sized poisonous seeds. These were first softened by
lengthy steaming in an earth oven, then, after thorough dicing,
the Dyirbal filled the basket and suspended it in running water
for at least a day and a night to leach the bitter toxins out of
the seeds. The residue provided a tasteless bulk filler or dough
but it had the virtue of being storable. After cooking in ginger
leaves it could be wrapped, buried and eaten up to six month's
later." ~ Jonathan Kingdon, Self-made Man, (New York: John Wiley
and Sons, Inc.,1993), p. 176
How would you know to do this? How long would it take to learn this?
Cycads can kill if not soaked in water for a long time and acorns can make you quite sick also unless you eat them with something”do you know what that something is? There is an alternative way to remove the toxins. Do you know what that is? Do you like almonds? All it takes is to eat six native almonds to commit suicide! Do you know how to start a fire without a match? (you need sticks which have been modified.)
Do you know how to catch fish in a stream without having nets or hooks? Do you know what plants to use to make nets? Do you even know how to tan animal hides, assuming that you can catch one. How are you going to keep warm in the winter?
Say you need to cross a raging, but fordable river. Do you know how to do this without getting washed away? I do, but I have had about 10 years of anthropological study and without that, I wouldn’t know the answers to all the questions I have posed above (if anyone wants an answer to any of these, I will provide it).
Now, given a more primitive preflood society, they could have
maintained a hunting capability but not an agricultural one. What all this points to is that given a society who had only 8 survivors, they would lose all their technical knowledge and could not pass it on to their kids. It would take a long, long time before their children re-invented the technology. What I envision about the 'primitive' time of human evolution is that it is the re-development of technology. To refresh the prime example: the Tasmanians were isolated for 8,000 years from all other humans. They numbered 4,000 people and over time, even with 4000 people they were not able to maintain their technology. 7000 years ago they made bone and stone tools and were not different from the mainland aborigines, but about 3500 years ago, they ceased making bone tools. And in spite of excellent fishing around the island, they lost the ability to fish. Their huts were reduced to about what Neanderthals built. (see Josephine Flood, "The Archeology of the Dreamtime, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), p. 173-178)
If you were among only a few survivors of a catastrophe, you and your
children would be quickly reduced to naked savagery. This is what I
think happened ultimately to Noah's descendants. The flood simply couldn't have happened even a few tens of thousands of years ago.
My point is that assuming the flood occurred 4000 years ago and wiped out all but 8 humans, we would not have the technological society we have today.
The Pathway Papers
http://home.entouch.net/dmd/path.htm
™ Version 4.2