by
Damien F. Mackey
“… as we extrapolate the observations into the past we immediately step out of the scientific method and into the area of historical assumption. This is not science but mere reasoned conclusions, however acceptable they may be to one’s reason”.
Dr. John Osgood
In response to my article:
Lost Culture of the Chaldeans. Part Two: Related to Sinites (Chinese)?
arguing for the origins of the Chinese with the (Hamitic-Canaanite) “Sinites” of Genesis 10:17, a reader has offered his alternative (‘book’), “different [heretical] account”, as he calls it. “The lords made the two Great Lights but before turning them on they instructed everyone to disperse to the ends of the earth..as far away as possible from Babylon”.
The ‘book’ is a presumed “history of man from 10,000 BCE”, which date the author sets as “the Pleistocene-Holocene boundary”.
I take this ‘book’ to be largely humorous, playful and light-hearted.
But since it follows the usual evolutionary-based dating system for supposed prehistory and even for Egyptian dynastic history, some comments may be in order.
It is this sort of methodology that I would query.
Whether or not the ‘book’ is “heretical”, it is, I believe, inherently incredible. It follows a typically evolutionary a priori pattern of approach, in which human history is stretched out in an ‘Indian file’ fashion, which does not accord with how things really are.
Dr. John Osgood has a lot to say about the fallacy of this sort of approach and of the so-called “Dating Techniques” (“A Better Model for the Stone Age”: https://creation.com/a-better-model-for-the-stone-age):
The scientific method can only work in the present, for it only has its artifacts in the present with which to experiment and to investigate. Reasonable scientific conclusions can be reached about those artifacts in the framework in which we find them, whether these be tools or cities or fossils. However, as we extrapolate the observations into the past we immediately step out of the scientific method and into the area of historical assumption. This is not science but mere reasoned conclusions, however acceptable they may be to one’s reason.
It follows naturally that if the scientific method cannot work in the past and conclusions about the past must rest on assumptions, then there is not today a dating method that can be scientifically substantiated as being correct, for every method will have built into it an assumption. Now when we come to the practical application of this theory we discover in fact that this holds true. ….
In reality, a primitive desert, or forest, people can be contemporaneous with – but perhaps even unknown to – a highly sophisticated modern civilisation.
Now, an evolutionary-minded palaeontologist or archaeologist in, say, a 1000 years’ time, would instinctively separate these two contemporaneous societies by tens, or even hundreds, of thousands of years in time.
Osgood again:
A society that is forced to hunt and gather because of insufficient time to plant crops will then be called a hunter/gatherer society. It will exhibit the tools of that trade. It is likely, therefore, in most cultures in new places, that the first stage would be a hunter/gathering society in order to gather whatever is available to survive and live. As they were able to come to terms with their environment, they would begin to farm and to herd animals. It would be assumed by the archaeologists later excavating such a site that there had been a development of culture. But this is not necessarily the case, for this particular society would have had all that culture available to them right from the start. The difficulties would simply have been those of making it a reality in their environment, until sufficient leisure allowed them to do so.
….
However, if a person or society had been driven only a short distance from Mesopotamia and had sufficient ability to take many of their cultural niceties with them, such as the implements and tools for metal making and metal culture, then they would possibly be able to enjoy culture from a much earlier time. This would result in the later excavation of a Chalcolithic type of culture. It would, of course, be assumed to be later than the Paleolithic hunter/gatherer society or the Neolithic farming society discovered in a more outlying region. However, this would not necessarily be the case. 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]. ….
Evolution, of necessity, needs long periods of time.
That a priori mentality has affected the arrangement of the Geological Ages; the Stone Ages; the Archaeological Ages. The sort of mentality has even affected ancient Chinese and Egyptian history, whose dynasties have been stretched out in a single file that does not accord with reality, or with such ancient testimony that - in the case of Egypt - tells of some simultaneous dynasties.
Dr. John Osgood will give evidence for at least the late Stone Ages to have overlapped.
And the same may need to be done for the Geological Ages, with the great Flood being a handy unifying factor, I would suggest, for the geology of the Fertile Crescent region of the world.
The massive Black Sea Flood had originally been dated to 5600 BC, but today 7400 BC is the preferred date.
That is a big shift.
But it is nothing compared to palaeontological shiftarounds.
For supposed pre-history, ‘Mungo Man’ in Australia, initially dated to 60,000 BC, was soon shifted (about a week later, in fact) to 40,000 BC. No one seemed to bat an eyelid about such an extraordinary situation. The unthinking just seem to fall in line with the new ‘expert’ dating.
What does this all mean?
It means that palaeontologists, in this regard, don’t have a clue!
The over-extension of the Egyptian dynastic history has made of it such an unwieldy beast that, for it now to be compatible with other nations, such as the Hittites or the Greeks, centuries of ‘Dark Ages’ (1200-700 BC) must be fudged in to the latter histories to force them to fit - even though these other civilisations exhibit a perfect sequential progression in art, architecture, laws, etc. either side of the supposed ‘Dark’ divide.
See e.g. P. James et al., Centuries of Darkness, 1990, for further enlightenment on all of this.
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