Revised Flood Charts

Amaic

Due to interest, we reproduce this post:

Preface

Today (06/Feb/07) a friend handed me what is turning out to be an unusual book, entitled Who Was Adam?, which I am keen to read right through considering that I have just embarked upon this Supplement to my Flood article; an article in which Adam figures so prominently. This book was written by an E. K. Victor Pearce, who became an honours graduate in Anthropology, after his having received theological training at the London College of Divinity. He also specialised at Oxford in prehistoric archaeology. Who Was Adam? is quite ‘unusual’ for various reasons. For instance, whilst the author appears to be an evolutionary anthropologist, and an apparent admirer of Teilhard de Chardin, no less, he writes surprisingly on p. 13: “One is still asked “Do you believe we descended from monkeys?” The questioner is surprised at the answer, “No anthropologist now believes this”.” Pearce has also accepted that the eleven toledôt (toledoth) divisions in the Book of Genesis constitute the true structure of that book. Moreover, he includes in his discussion mention of the research of Professor Yahuda, seeing his Egyptian evidence in Genesis as an indication of Moses’ involvement. At this stage in my reading of Pearce’s book I had to check the date of its publication, thinking that the author must have read the Wiseman/Yahuda synthesis that certain colleagues and I have publicised in recent decades. But this edition (second paperback, The Paternoster Press) was dated too early for that: 1976. I had not even read Wiseman or Yahuda back then.

Again Pearce, like me in my Flood article, has attempted to locate Adam in a Stone Age context. However, whereas I would place Adam right at the beginning, without his being preceded by a whole host of hominids over hundreds of millennia, Pearce has his Adam arising after what he calls the ‘Old Stone Age’, as the first ‘New Stone Age’ (or Neolithic) man (ibid.):

“… at the end of the sixth age-day [sic] of Gen. 1:26-30, we have Old Stone Age Man with his agricultural revolution in the “Garden of Eden” 10,000 years B.C. This is followed by surprising New Stone Age City developments of Catal Hüyük in Turkey, and Jericho, 8000 to 5000 B.C. [sic]“.

Pearce has also, as I too have done, attempted to align early Genesis and the Flood to the Stone Ages and an ancient Mesopotamian archaeology. Thus, for him, Chalcolithic would correspond with the metal-working of the Cain-ites. Though Pearce does not appear to have argued any specific connection between Cain-ite names and cities of southern Mesopotamia (e.g. Irad = Eridu), which was a most important feature of my archaeological

reconstruction. Thus he continues (ibid.):

“… the Chalcolithic period is referred to

in [Genesis] 4:22, when native copper and iron are used 5000 B.C. [sic], long before the Bronze Age. Then we have the Flood of Genesis 6-9, between 5000 and 4000 B.C. [sic]. The Flood is followed by a new centre of urban civilization. This is the period of the Bronze Age cities of S. Mesopotamian flood valleys, 3500 B.C. [sic], with ziggurats like the Tower of Babel. Sumer and Uruk of archaeology, and Shinar of Gen. 10-11, correlate here. In addition to the chronological alignment between Genesis and science we also have the geographical agreement. The plateau heights of Turkey and Iran  before the flood, give place in the story to the alluvial mud-flats of S. Mesopotamia  after the flood”.

Pearce has presumed that the Book of Genesis is indicating that pre-Flood cities were built on the heights (p. 80). But Jericho, a city of the plains, was definitely not, as he also has to acknowledge here, saying “with the exception of Jericho”.

Pearce’s book is quite idiosyncratic, then, inasmuch as a scientist/historian of his type of evolutionary persuasion does not tend to favour, as he does, either the toledôt thesis or the historical reality of the early biblical patriarchs.

I give here some quotes from Pearce’s book, relevant to the above:

On the toledôt (p. 19): “The eleven toledoths are thus the framework into which Genesis is fitted and are the true literary structure of Genesis …”.
On Wiseman (ibid.): “the characteristic of the toledoth is not dependent upon our acceptance of P. J. Wiseman’s theory, however, although his theory is worthy of consideration …”.
On Yahuda (p. 21): “… Professor A. S. Yahuda … concludes that the patriarchs brought the stories from Mesopotamia (hence the Sumerian words) and Moses incorporated them in his records, which contained Egyptian words …”.
On Teilhard. Pearce admittedly gives the Jesuit priest only qualified approval (p. 10): “For many theologians who are showing interest in anthropology through the works of Teilhard de Chardin, I have endeavoured to show the limitation he suffered because of the position of science at the time of his writing, without detracting from his positive contributions”. (He repeats this theme on pp. 12, 117, 118, 119, 121, 125).
On Adam: “Thus Genesis 1 is a general introduction to the creation of man, both Old and New Stone Age, late in the sixth age-day, but it is left to the second toledoth to enlarge upon the appearance finally of the New Stone Age. … The third toledoth is a good summary of this development (Gen. 5:1-5 RSV). This man named Adam … a New Stone Age farmer of about 10,000-12,000 years ago”.

In many ways, Pearce had the right idea: to align early Genesis with the palaeontologico/archaeological data. But he has followed the typically linear view of the arrangement of time scales (to be discussed further in the Introduction on the next page, and in subsequent pages), which has, in my opinion, prevented him from arriving

at the proper Stone Age, and archaeological, alignments for early Genesis.

Introduction

Whereas conventionally-minded (often evolutionary-minded) geologists, palaeontologists and historians tend to adhere rigidly to an ‘Indian file’, or ‘chest-of-drawers’, kind of linear arrangement (see p. 33 of Flood article) – with little or no overlap of their neat, linear compartments – revisionists on the other hand have found that such an arrangement does not always reflect the testimony of the received data, and hence can be quite artificial. In this Supplement I shall be discussing this situation in relation to the three sets of ‘Ages’ with which my Flood article was concerned, namely:

A. The Geological Ages;
B. The Stone Ages; and
C. The Archaeological Ages.

I must make it clear though that my Flood article was not an attempt at a full-scale revision of these Ages (A-C), but was intended to bring into alignment only what phases of A-C I considered to pertain to early Genesis, from Adam to the Flood.

Points of Co-ordination

Two great incidents in Old Testament history, (i) the Flood, and (ii) the Exodus, with the subsequent Conquest of Palestine (i and ii occurring approximately a millennium apart), marvellously enable us, I believe, to draw together and properly co-ordinate certain ‘Ages’ of A-C above that scientists and chronologists of a linear persuasion have wrongly imagined – due to a lack of proper co-ordination points – to have been quite distantly separated in time. In my Flood article I have used the catastrophic event of the Genesis Flood to try to knit together A-C (in part). This Supplement will be an attempt to summarise these time convergences from my article and place these into easily read charts, so that one may quickly be able to

contrast the standard linear time system with my revised version.
These revised charts (see pp. 7, 11 & 13) are only rudimentary at this stage and will need further development.
Firstly, the conventional sequence for A-C is basically as follows (all dates are BC and are most approximate):

Chart 1 (Conventional Arrangement)
A: Geological Ages

Date 3000 Million Plus 600 Million 500 Million 450 Million 400 Million 350 Million 310 Million 280 Million 220 Million 180 Million 130 Million 60 Million 1 Million

Era Proterozoic/ Archaeozoic Palaeozoic Mesozoic Cenozoic

Period Cambrian Ordovician Silurian Devonian Mississippian Pennsylvanian Permean Triassic Jurassic Cretaceous Eocene Oligocene Miocene Pliocene Pleistocene

Evolving Life Algae/Bacteria Molluscs, Sponges Jelly Fish Insects, Mosses Sharks, Ferns Amphibians Reptiles, Coal Reptiles Dinosaurs, Conifers Flowering, Birds Primates, Mammals Monkeys Apes Hominids Man

B: Stone Ages

Date 2-1500,000 Million 90,000 40-38,000 17,000-8500 8300-6000 6000-5000 4500 3500

Period Palaeolithic (Lower) (Middle) (Upper) Mesolithic/Epi-Palaeolithic Neolithic (Early) (Late) Chalcolithic (Ubaidian)

Culture Acheulean Mousterian Aurignacian Kebaran Natufian ( Black Sea Flood) Eridu Ware Ghassulian Beersheba

Activity Scavengers & Gatherers Hunters & Gatherers Farmers, Hunters & Gatherers, Herding Agriculture, Crops Orchard, Mixed farming Copper, Ivory

5
C: Archaeological Ages

Date 6000 5500 5000 4000 3500 2900 2750 2650-2350

Period Chalcolithic Ancient Bronze Historic Early Bronze Age/Early Dynastic (1A-C) (II) (III) [Middle Bronze Age Late Bronze Age Iron age – Not Relevant to this study]

Culture Hassuna, Samarra , Halaf Eridu (Ubaid I) Ubaid Uruk Period Jemdet Nasr Sumerian Civilization Uruk I Canaanite and Egyptian cities

Activity City Building Use of copper First temples First seals Wide use of brick Temples , houses of increasing size Urbanization Expanding trade City states Fortified towns

Now, turning to my Flood article, I shall use the data arranged there to attempt to build a new version of Chart 1 (A-C), as Chart 2 (A-C) (revised charts to be found on pp. 7, 11 & 13).

A: Geological Ages
(p. 14):

“… the antediluvian civilization already sat above six miles of sedimentary rock – the latter in turn layered above a Precambrian basement”.

(p. 26):
“Pleistocene and Holocene [our age] changes in world climate … were … responsible for wide fluctuations in the level of the Gulf waters …”.
(p. 27):
After the Fall … a harsher environment may have set in … glaciation (an Ice Age).
(p. 39):

… man is thought to have entered the Egyptian part of the Nile Valley also during the Acheulean period (which is conventionally classified as Lower-Middle Palaeolithic):

“… [Acheulean] was the last stage in a process of development that can be traced back to the remains discovered near the rock temple at Abu Simbel [in Nubia], the earliest of which probably date to the end of the Lower Pleistocene, about 700,000 BC. From the end of the Oldowan period onwards (i.e. throughout the Acheulean), there was a continuous human presence in the Egyptian and Nubian sections of the Nile valley, from Cairo to Thebes and Adaima”.

(pp. 40-41):
“… the Palaeolithic phase for Palestine has the following three standard subdivisions:

(a) The Lower Palaeolithic – Acheulean.
(b) The Middle Palaeolithic – Mousterian.
(c) The Upper Palaeolithic – Aurignacian”.

[Osgood] … though will … challenge this linear view, referring to “the possible horizontal contemporaneity of at least the last two of these cultures, the Mousterian and the Aurignacian”. But the more interesting point that Dr. Osgood makes is that of the need … for radically re-locating the Acheulean phase, and its characteristic hand-axe, downwards … from the early Stone Age to the early post-Flood period …:
“There is strong evidence for a very wet climate in The Middle East and for left-over basins of water over many areas of the Middle East in the early days which the biblical model would allow to be called post-Flood, but which the evolutionary model would call the stone age. ….
… [east Jordan] … the stratification in the north, west, and south trenches reflects the existence of a Pleistocene pluvial lake that shrank until a widespread marsh formed during the Early Neolithic”.

(p. 41):
… Grimal has the Acheulean culture following a pluvial period, though he dates the Acheulean somewhat later than does Osgood, to Middle Palaeolithic …:

The evidence suggests a starting point for Egyptian prehistory at the end of the Abbassia Pluvial period in the Middle Palaeolithic (c. 120,000-90,000 BC).

The Naqada I and II phases in Egypt , whose cultures are, respectively, Amratian and Gerzean, are conventionally assigned to the Chalcolithic stage of the Stone Ages. But Osgood … appears to re-assign Naqada I and II to the same wet phase of the Acheulean culture, when large trees were growing in every part of the Nile Valley ….

Chart 2 (Revised Arrangement)

A: Geological Ages

Date 4000 2750 2300 2100-2000

Era [Palaeozoic Mesozoic Cenozoic] Palaeolithic Mesolithic Neolithic Chalcolithic Palaeolithic Mesolithic Neolithic Chalcolithic (Ghassul IV)

Period Cambrian 6 miles of sedimentary rock Genesis Riverine System The Fall [Ordovician Silurian Devonian Mississippian Pennsylvanian Permean Triassic Jurassic Cretaceous] [Eocene Oligocene Miocene Pliocene Pleistocene] The Flood [Lower Pleistocene Oldowan] Abbassia Pluvial Acheulean Naqada I (Amratian) Naqada II (Gerzean) ( Upper Palaeolithic ) Mousterian Aurignacian Cush/Nimrod Babel Abram (Abraham)

Life/Climate Plants, Animals, Reptiles Man Ice Ages ( Jericho spring dries up) City Building (especially in S. Mesopotamia ) Development of Metals Temple building ( Black Sea Flood) Destruction of local life Wet climate Forestation (invention & use of hand axes) City Building

B: Stone Ages
(p. 7):

… I fully accept … Osgood’s compelling Abram/En-gedi-Chalcolithic/(Ghassul IV) synchronization … Osgood has also argued for Jericho Neolithic to have been contemporaneous with the above-mentioned Ghassul-Chalcolithic phase ….

(p. 8):

• … the eventual cultural evolution (beyond Palaeolithic) from Mesolithic to Neolithic must not be confined entirely to post-diluvian times … having its origins at least in antediluvian times, primarily with Cain, likely the first city builder (Genesis 4:17) – hence Neolithic? – and with Cain’s descendants, all in southern Mesopotamia , who became more and more ‘civilized’, technologically speaking (Chalcolithic),
  
  

·

• • … culminating in the vibrant Chalcolithic mid-late Ubaid period (still antediluvian), at Eridu, Uruk and Ur in southern Mesopotamia, that absorbed the Hassuna, Samarra and Halaf cultures in the north, and beyond Iraq – this archaeological phase perhaps corresponding with the likes of the highly ‘civilized’, polygamous Lamech and his sons before the Flood (Neolithic/Chalcolithic?).
    
    

… then interrupted by the Great Flood.

• But that, soon afterwards, Mesopotamian civilization in particular (cf. Genesis 11:2) was resumed … especially by Nimrod, the empire builder …; Nimrod’s phase representing the imperial Uruk I and Jemdet Nasr archaeological civilizations in southern Mesopotamia (c. 3000-2900 BC, conventional dating).
  
  
• That finally, after Babel , there occurred the Dispersion primarily westwards, shown archaeologically most especially by the Jemdet Nasr expansion (c. 2900 BC, conventional dating), leading to the Early Bronze Age/Early Dynastic phase.
  
  

(p. 24):

Ø Adam (Palaeolithic)
Palaeolithic, the text books tell us, entirely fills the geological period called Pleistocene (part of the Quaternary period of the Palaeozoic era).
(p. 27):
Even the perennial Jericho spring dried up in Mesolithic times, necessitating a long-time abandonment of that ancient site.
(p. 28):
By the time that Adam’s sons had reached maturity, there were, recorded, features of human living that a palaeontologist might perhaps associate with Mesolithic (or Epipalaeolithic) man. I refer to the basic cultivation of crops, cultic religion and simple animal husbandry. But still largely a hunting-gathering culture. The fertile site of Jericho , a spring-fed oasis, is considered to be the most ancient cultivated site on earth (its first level of occupation being Mesolithic). It is in this Jericho region that there has been found the first evidence for wheat farming (conventionally dated to c. 9000-7000 BC).
(p. 30):
Ø Cain’s Descendants (Neolithic to Chalcolithic)
With Lamech’s skilled progeny, we find ourselves squarely in Chalcolithic times.
(p. 32):
The supposedly extremely slow cultural progression from Palaeolithic man to Chalcolithic man that the evolutionary-minded palaeontologists have read into the march towards human civilization of Homo Sapiens will need to be reduced from over 2 million years to something like 1000 times less that figure (to perhaps some 2500-3000 years). However, it is a progression towards ‘civilization’, so-called, that may to some degree reflect the early Genesis saga, albeit briefly recorded. Thus: from a ‘civilization’ perspective, man (Adam) began in naked simplicity, fruit picking (roughly corresponding to Palaeolithic), progressed to working the soil (Abel) and herding (Cain) (roughly corresponding to Mesolithic). Man proceeded to build houses and cities (Cain after his flight to “the land of Nod ”) (roughly corresponding to Neolithic), and also went on to develop technology and sophisticated arts (Cain’s descendants and Noah and his family) (i.e. Chalcolithic).
(p. 33):
The stone age chronology is clearly evolutionary, and occupying a period of approximately 2,000,000 years, telescopes down as we get closer to the present. It begins, by definition, where our supposed ancestors finally developed into Homo Erectus. Homo Erectus occupies a large portion of the Lower Paleolithic until the theoretical development of Homo Sapiens or modern man, from which time cultural evolution is prominent.
…
Wherever a culture is dated as Paleolithic it is generally assumed to pre-date that which is labelled Mesolithic, which is in turn assumed to pre-date that which is Neolithic, which is then usually presumed to pre-date that which is Chalcolithic. ….

(p. 34):
The Paleolithic, Neolithic and Chalcolithic could well be contemporary, and might simply be an indication of the different conditions and the different environment and distance from the centre point available to each of the different cultures. ….
Osgood next introduces his realignment of Mesopotamian palaeontology and archaeology against Syro-Palestinian palaeontology … :

1. Halaf-Neolithic 4.
   

In 1982, under the title “A Four-Stage Sequence for the Levantine Neolithic”, Andrew M. T. Moore presented evidence to show that the fourth stage of the Syrian Neolithic was in fact usurped by the Halaf Chalcolithic culture of Northern Mesopotamia , and that [the latter] … was contemporary with the Neolithic IV of Palestine and Lebanon . ….

(p. 35):
… after the Flood (postdiluvian) … men made a bee-line again for the alluvial lowland of southern Mesopotamia (Sumer), or, as Genesis puts it, “a plain in the land of Shinar”, (11:2), presumably after an initial stint in the mountainous region of the Ark’s landing ….

B: Stone Ages

Date 4000 2750 2300 2100 2000

Period Palaeolithic Mesolithic/Epi-Palaeolithic Neolithic Chalcolithic ( Black Sea Flood) Palaeolithic (Lower) (Middle) (Upper) Neolithic (Early) (Late) Chalcolithic

Culture Adam The Flood Acheulean Mousterian Aurignacian Kebaran Natufian Hassuna, Samarra , Halaf Mid-Late Ubaid Cush/Nimrod/Babel Dispersion (Jemdet Nasr) Abram (Abraham) Ghassulian (Ghassul IV) Beersheba Jericho (Neolithic)

Activity Fruit picking Scavengers & Gatherers Hunters & Gatherers (Wheat farming at Jericho ) City Building Lamech and sons Noah Farmers, Hunters & Gatherers, Herding Agriculture, Crops Orchard, Mixed farming Copper, Ivory City Building Early Bronze (Dynastic) in Palestine and Egypt

C: Archaeological Ages
(p. 8):
Courville … identified the relatively brief Jemdet Nasr transitional phase … leading to the Early Bronze Era/Early Dynastic phase, with the post-Babel Dispersion ….
(p. 16):
Nimrod … Enmerkar, or N-M-R “the hunter” (=kar), of the Uruk I.

(p. 26):
The now celebrated ‘Black Sea Flood’ … dated to c. 7000 BC, I shall be chronologically realigning with/incorporating into, the Great Genesis Flood (c. 2300 BC) ….
(p. 35):
The five antediluvian ‘cities’, Eridu, Badtibira, Larak, Sippar and Shuruppak, were the first to exercise “kingship”.
(p. 46):
Both northern Mesopotamia (represented by Hassuna and Samarra cultures) and southern Mesopotamia (by Eridu ware) had already been settled by the time of Cain’s arrival.
(p. 48):
Enoch also established other settlements in southern Mesopotamia which were later named after him. Thus Uruk (Sum. Unuk) and Ur (Sum. Unuki) [var. Unu(g)ki] were founded shortly after Eridu.
(p. 54):
[ Babel dispersion] saw the beginning of the Bronze Age in Syro-Palestine – with its major Canaanite (not Cain-ite) cities being built (Hazor, Taanak, Megiddo , Shechem, Beeroth and Jerusalem ) – and of dynastic history in Egypt .
(p. 63):
… I believe that Sir Leonard Woolley did indeed find traces of the Genesis Flood at Ur, separating the late Ubaid period from the Jemdet Nasr – and that the Flood level was also uncovered by him and other archaeologists … at other of the antediluvian cities in southern Mesopotamia, such as Shuruppak, Uruk, Lagash and Kish….
(pp. 64-65):
… if the Flood was an historical event, E.D. [Early Dynastic] I or II [sic] is the period to which we should look for evidence of it. What then is the archaeological evidence?We must begin with Ur . In the season of 1928-29 Leonard Woolley sank two deep pits beneath shaft graves in the Royal Cemetery at Ur and exposed a stratum of “clean water-laid clay” which varied in thickness at different points from 3.70 to 2.70 m. and petered out almost completely at the mound’s foot, “where its place is taken by a channel of running water”.

Mallowan continues with his account (ibid., p. 71):

After he had exposed the water-logged soils under the Royal Cemetery, Woolley proceeded, in 1929-30, to dig a pit on a much larger scale with the express purpose of testing the architectural succession in ancient Ur from a point on the surface where Early Dynastic buildings of a plano-convex mud-brick appeared, down to virgin soil. Here at the appropriate depth he triumphantly vindicated his previous identifications by discovering a bank of clean sand which, deep down below the Early Dynastic remains, separated the pre-historic ‘Ubaid from “Sumerian” strata of the Jamdat Nasr period. The succession has been described by him in detail ….
(p. 68):

Here is how Mallowan told it (ibid., p. 77):

As regards the date of the Ur flood-bank we need only recall that it separated the late ‘Ubaid settlement from debris of the succeeding Uruk-Jamdat Nasr periods, and if, as Woolley has cogently argued, some of the burials within it may be attributed to survivors of the Flood then we can correlate the event with a well-defined period at Eridu, because the pottery associated with the Ur graves is typologically similar to that found in the famous Eridu cemetery which was contemporaneous with Eridu temples VI-VII, that is, to the end phase of the ‘Ubaid period.

C: Archaeological Ages

Date 2750 2300 2100 2000

Period Chalcolithic The Flood Ancient Bronze Historic Early Bronze Age/Early Dynastic (1A-C) (II) (III)

Culture Hassuna, Samarra , Halaf Eridu (Ubaid I) Ubaid Uruk period Uruk I Jemdet Nasr

Activity City Building Use of copper Temples , houses (Cain-ites) Noah Cush Nimrod Babel Dispersion Cities, dynasties ( Palestine, Egypt ) Abram (Abraham)