One of the things that fascinates me is the origin of civilization. If it’s wired into us as human beings, why does it seem to have taken so very long to appear in human history? And if it’s not wired in, why did it appear at all?
The Bible makes it clear that civilization started not long after Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden. God destroyed it in Noah’s Flood, and later scattered it to prevent the completion of the Tower of Babel (Genesis 6, Genesis 11). But if you reject the Bible and turn to what we are pleased to call science, then you’re stuck with no explanation at all.
Alone among the inhabited continents, Australia shows no sign of ever having developed its own indigenous civilization. How could that be? After all, there were people in Australia for thousands of years. Why no civilization? The closest thing to a lost Australian civilization was H.P. Lovecraft’s story, The Shadow Out of Time. And that civilization wasn’t even human!
So imagine my excitement when I read of a lost city discovered by satellite photography and radar at Uluru, a site in the middle of the Australian desert. Wow, this place had everything! Buildings, tombs, artifacts, skeletons–the whole ball of wax.
And then imagine my disappointment when I read that the Lost City of Uluru was only a hoax ( http://www.ntnews.com.au/news/centralian-advocate/ulurus-1500yearold-lost-city-a-fake/news-story/495f559bd7d1f7d520c6a1194091f5cc?nk=6a45170abbab194a2f952edbb50c2eba-1490462789 ).
This takes us back to where we started from, with no native civilization springing up in Australia. Why not?
As yet we have no answer to that question.
There is a theory, which I find interesting. Before I elaborate, I want to state that I am am going to refer to a man with whom I disagree an many points. I am not advocating a young-earth view of creation and I disagree with many of this person’s point, but I do think that this particular theory is worthy of notice.
Dr. Kent Hovind is a former science teacher and has become a religious leader. He speaks out against evolution, although his literal six-day view of creation is not one I endorse. When asked why Australia has unique wildlife he gave an answer which I found to be compelling.
He started by stating that the string of islands which separate Asia from Australia would form a single land mass if the level of the sea was dropped on,y slightly. His theory is that, immediately after the flood, the ice caps were much larger and sea levels were lower. Non predatory animals sought refuge in Australia and as the seas slowly rose (because of melting ice caps) they ended up isolated on that island continent. What I am reading into it, is that after the flood, animal and human populations spread outward slowly from the Middle East and Australia was quite sparsely populated so it was a last refuge of some species.
I occurs to me that if the post-flood world had lower sea levels and larger polar ice caps, that would explain much, with regard to human and animal populations. I have never quite bought the notion that the Americas were populated in a top down fashion by people crossing the Bering Strait on either an ice bridge or a land bridge. How could they possibly have populated South America this way when crossing the Darian Gap is difficult even in modern times?
It occurs to me, that if the seas were at one time much smaller, this could account for some of the cultural elements which seem to span vast distances, which only became navigable by sea in the last 500 years or so. This also sheds a different light upon Acts 17:26 “and He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation”. Perhaps we are seeing the post-Babel dispersion before our very eyes.
With regard to human development in Australia, it would fit that this place was literally the most remote on earth in the early post-flood period and therefore had the lowest human population and was a sanctuary, of sorts, for the mostly harmless species which are unique to the Australian continent.
While I don’t agree with all of Dr. Hovind’s theology, I find this particular theory to offer an explanation for several things for which I have heretofore lacked a satisfactory explanation. Also, keeping in mind the effects that a global flood 4,500 years ago would have had on all aspects of the earth brings a new perspective to the subject of climate. A global flood would have made the climate much less constant than would be allowed by geological theories which reject any catastrophic events.
Australia did have a couple of spectacular predators not that long ago: Thylacoleo (the “marsupial lion”) and Megalania, a giant monitor lizard. Not exactly a predator-free refuge.
True indeed, but by comparison with, for instance, Africa, the average koala was safer in Australia.
It is just a theory, but I find that is seems to address some questions I have long had about the dispersion of humans on the planet. There is no absolute timeline of geologic and meteorological events post-flood, and even less for the pre-flood era. The Bible doesn’t go into much detail, but it does give us some useful information.
After the flood account, there is the table of nations stemming from Noah. The next event is Babel and the scattering of the nations, which is referred to in Acts 17 as “having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation”, which leads me to believe that the ethnic distribution throughout the earth may be the product of something more than random migrations. All of that dovetails nicely with the theory I referenced above.
For whatever reason, Australia has had a fairly low population density for observable history and there’s no direct answer in the Bible. I would love to learn an accurate history of humankind, written without political, religious or cultural bias of any sort. I know that many ethnic groups have a flood legend in their history, and that would make a lot of sense if the flood happened shortly before Babel.
And remember, we are not told how long Adam and Eve were in the Garden–might’ve been a lot longer than anyone imagines–nor what was going on outside the Garden during that time.
An import point is the garden didn’t cover the whole earth, and that does beg the question, why was outside world? I lean toward gap theory of an old earth, but a young humanity. That previous era would be where things like the dinosaurs and homo-erectus lived. Notice how Satan is called a serpent and dragon, as if linking him to the reptile kingdom. This world was destroyed probably due to Lucifer’s fall, as he had domain of the earth at that time. That would make the genesis account a re-creation.
There’s no real way to know. I would imagine that something was going on outside The Garden, but I don’t know how to find out just what. The Book of Enoch claims to offer greater insights about the pre-flood but I don’t know that I would give it the same weight as I would the accepted bible canon.
Whatever the case, the flood was a game changer. Some theorize that there were massive geological events, basically a refreshing of the earth’s entire surface. That would explain a lot of things, but there’s not enough information to paint a complete picture. When the “cast watery deeps” were opened up that could have been catastrophic, to say the least, not to mention a global flood.
I wouldn’t necessarily give The Book of Enoch the same weight as biblical canon either, but I do believe it has some merits as commentary. I think it’s interesting it describes certain geological events happening prior to the flood. It certainly was a game changer. Before this point it never rained, there was no storms or hurricanes. Some have theorized their was a water vapor canopy in place before the flood. This would have provided a positive number of benefits to the pre-flood world. It would prevent harmful ozone from seeping down into our atmosphere, which would account for longer lifespans. Notice the lifespans drops dramatically after the flood. But there’s more. A water canopy would act like a giant hyperbolic chamber. We use these today to heal wounds faster. There would be many advantages to living in this kind of environment including greater stamina, higher IQ’s, warm weather from pole to pole, and plants would probably grow larger and faster.
I’ve always been fascinated by the flood. I’ve heard the water canopy theory myself and it makes a lot of sense. Such a thing would have moderated the climate and made earth a much more hospitable place.
I guess we will have to wait u too the restitution of all things and we will find out then. Whatever the Creator has in mind, it will certainly be better than anything we have ever experienced in this fallen world.
Much of Australasia is desert or semi-arid. Even today it is sparely populated, relative to its size, and most of the population is along the coastline. That could be one reason. Another reason it was cut off from everyone else so there didn’t seem to be any advancement in civilization among the aborigines. The same is true for the American Indians. There were pockets of fairly advanced civilizations, such as the Mayans and Aztecs, but compared to the rest of the world they still very primitive. It seems isolated peoples didn’t advance technologically.
Sorry for the typos.
Population density seems to play a role in technological development. In a simple agrarian or hunter/gatherer society, there’s not a lot of opportunity for the geniuses to rub elbows and develop their ideas. They are as clever and inventive as the people in technologically developed civilizations, but they apply their genius to a different set of circumstances.
It’s interesting that the bushmen of the Kalahari use some of the same techniques in determining when an animal has passed a certain place as scientists use in determining the age of a crater.