How Long have Humans Lived on Earth?

Personally I feel that God created man a few hundred thousand years ago.

I believe that the fruit of the tree of Life gave man long life, if not a form of immortality. Now the church will say or has said man never ate the fruit of the tree of Life. That is not scriptural the Bible never says that man did or didn't eat.

The first commandment that God gave man was not to eat from the tree of knowledge but he could eat of every other tree and the tree of knowledge was centered in the garden. So why would man and his offspring not eat from the tree of life?

I believe Adam and Eve had many, many children before their sin. And the Bible names only the children born after the seduction and sin of Adam and Eve. Though the Bible does not mention children born before Cain and Abel. And if you look at the Bible you find the Bible is basically life after sin.

The Bible does speak about the people who were around, who were told not to kill Cain. Where did those people come from? Since the Bible does not mention and the church teaches that Adam and Eve only had two sons before Cain slew Abel. Where did they come from? What are the assumptions of the church?

Nothing is said of Adam and Eve having daughters, only the two sons, but the church will assume that they did because it agrees with their theology, yet toss out / deny other assumptions. Daughters were not mentioned until Genesis 6.

Who named the Land of Nod? Why is it called The Land of Nod? In those days, lands / tribes / cities were named after their founders. Why does the bible tell us Cain knew his wife after he went to Land of Nod. Is that saying Cain did not know his wife while he was in Eden, or they did not have children while they were in Eden? Or is it telling us Cain found a wife in the Land of Nod? What is taught is Assumptions again, views passed down through the centuries.

The history of man; scientifically, shows man has been here quite a while. So in order to continue to support 6,000 year old Earth as fact, the church has to reject it.

Were the translators correct with their usage (of the definition) of the Hebrew word yom / Yome? The word has several different meanings can be used quite a few different ways, not necessarily a literal 24 hour span, but can be used to said a period in time, a span of time, a space and time. godrules.net/library/strongs2a/heb3117.htm https://share.google/eAkAAbe8rNoDC8upu

Now here's a kicker :::: God did not create the literal 24-hour day until he put the sun and moon in place - Genesis 1:14. Now shouldn't that be telling us the days spoken of before Genesis 1:14 is not speaking of a literal 24-hour day but is speaking more like a day to the Lord is as a thousand years and A thousand years is as a day. Before God put the sun and moon in place there was no time table to use as a literal 24-hour day point, considering the Sun and Moon is to measure seasons, days, years.

There are churches that are beginning to believe the Earth is older than 6000 years. But most churches still adhere to man being here for 6,000 years using genealogies of those written in Scripture. Which maybe fairly close according to those names of descendants written. From what I can see it has been an estimated 6,000 years / a bit more, since the fall of Adam, not his creation.

DialecticSkeptic said:

Not as far back as human societies. If Adam and Eve lived 6,000 years ago, that would be ~3976 BCE. It would take another several hundred years for written language to appear (c. 3300 BCE), but large human societies already existed. Jericho and Tell Qaramel had been around for ~5,000 years by that point; Nevali Cori had been around for nearly as long; Catalhoyuk was over 3,000 years old by that point. (And this is just Mesopotamia.)

So, yeah, human societies pre-existed written records by thousands of years; even Adam and Eve existed ~700 years before writing. (They entered a world full of human societies, from the ancient Near East to the North American plains.)

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To me there is a problem with this interpretation. Sure if you add the genealogies in your particular version you get 3976 BCE. But there's other versions with 5500 BCE and 3700 BCE. These are not the most sensible dates for Adam and Eve. Similarly Noah's story isn't sensible in 2200 BCE or even 3300 BCE. But both make sense in pre-charcolithic times. The city of Eridu was once at the coast(now 100 miles inland) and it was founded(5500 BCE) about 500 years after the start of the last series of major worldwide coastal flooding. The Persian gulf would be an ideal setting for Noah. Why else would the oldest and most spectacular existing city be founded as a coastal village? They were starting over from nothing.


Similarly Adam's story has an ideal setting of about 12,000 BCE to 10,000 BCE. The middle east greened up and became an oak forest at this time. Then climate change wiped out most of the trees leaving the people to forage and toil grains. Hard to find a depiction of the middle east during its green period. But all the development comes post green period. The people living in plenty never develop anything complex. When their society ends they abandon their settlements and sometime in the 500 year period of rural living develop agriculture and animal husbandry. Then they come back and resettle abandoned locations leaving behind the first traces of agriculture fully developed outside of society. This is why I attribute agriculture to one person or family instead of a culture. Adam was the foundation of civilization itself.

AaronClaricus said:

To me, there is a problem with this interpretation. Sure, if you add the genealogies in your particular version you get 3976 BCE. But there's other versions with 5500 BCE and 3700 BCE.

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I am one of those people who push Adam back in time, though not as far back as you do. Without addressing the great ages of the antediluvians and instead taking them at face value, I situate him around ~5100 BCE.

These are not the most sensible dates for Adam and Eve.

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You neglected to say why.

Both [their story and Noah’s] make sense in pre-Chalcolithic times. … Adam was the foundation of civilization itself.

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In a discussion between us, let’s leave Noah out of this. I want to focus on just Adam. (Or does your argument hinge on Noah?) I want to know why Adam’s story makes sense in pre-Chalcolithic times, keeping in mind that Adam is not presented as the founder of civilization in Genesis. It was Cain who is said to have built a city, and Jubal, Jabal, and Tubal-cain who develop culture, music, and metallurgy—outside Eden, east of it, and under the sign of exile.

Adam's story has an ideal setting of about 12,000 BCE to 10,000 BCE.

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I disagree. That is a possible setting, but implausible and unlikely due primarily to the genealogies. They are not a sliding scale to be freely relocated wherever one finds a convenient paleoclimatic event. Once you detach the genealogical route starting with Adam from its historical anchor in Abraham, David, and Jesus, you are no longer doing biblical chronology at all; you are doing archaeological harmonization and retrofitting Scripture to it. If Adam is pushed to 14,000 years ago, the genealogies cease to be genealogies in any meaningful sense. They become symbolic placeholders with no temporal density. At that point, appealing to them at all is disingenuous.

There is no hint in Scripture of Adam being situated in the Epipaleolithic. The textual clues in early Genesis—domesticated animals, agriculture, metalwork, human societies, etc.—seem to put an outside limit of 10,000 years on where Adam and Eve are situated historically.

The Middle East greened up and became an oak forest at this time [12 to 14 thousand years ago]. Then climate change wiped out most of the trees, leaving the people to forage and toil for grains. It is hard to find a depiction of the Middle East during its green period. But all the development comes post-green period. The people living in plenty never develop anything complex. When their society ends, they abandon their settlements and, sometime [during] the 500-year period of rural living, develop agriculture and animal husbandry. Then they [return] and resettle abandoned locations, leaving behind the first traces of agriculture fully developed outside of society.

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When you say that “people living in plenty never develop anything complex,” you are simply begging the question against the historical record conveyed in my post—for things like Jericho and Çatalhöyük are fairly complex, and they developed after the Younger Dryas (which represented a shift in vegetation patterns, not an ecological collapse).

Dale said:

You have hit the nail on the head here.

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Cheers.

I was thinking primarily of the Old Testament when I said that Scripture is not history. … It is true that the Gospel of Luke is considered to have good historical information in it. We don’t know exactly what year Jesus was born or crucified, so the Gospels are uncertain on that point. The usual figure given is that Jesus was born in 4 BC and crucified in AD 29, but that is not certain.

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We can be uncertain about a particular date for an event without denying its historicity. I would say that we are uncertain about the exact dates of basically 99% of historical people, places, and events. Uncertainty dominates historical knowledge.

Even when we get past Genesis, it is difficult to [reconcile] biblical events with what we know from other sources. Some claim that the Pharaoh confronted by Moses in Exodus was Ramses II, but this is far from certain.

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I suspect the misalignment is because the dates for the patriarchs is off by a thousand years.

Later, the “treasures of the Temple” were taken by Pharoah Shishek, but no one can identify Pharoah Shishek with any Pharoah known to Egyptologists.

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I think you might be mistaken here. Pharaoh Shishak (1 Kgs 11:40; 14:25-26; 2 Chron 12:2-9) is securely identified by Egyptologists as Shoshenq I, founder of Egypt’s 22nd Dynasty (r. ca. 945–924 BCE).

I am one of those people who push Adam back in time, though not as far back as you do. Without addressing the great ages of the antediluvians and instead taking them at face value, I situate him around ~5100 BCE.


You neglected to say why.

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The years ~5000 BCE to 4000 BCE are quite full of people that have already adapted to the ways of life of Adam, Cain and Abel. Placing Adam in 5000 BCE would make his punishment to toil the soil(genesis 3:17-19) for food an ordinary task for an ordinary person as everyone toiled the land and herded animals. There is a clear lack of cities but villages and outposts are common enough that mesopotamia has no place to forage naturally.

In a discussion between us, let’s leave Noah out of this. I want to focus on just Adam. (Or does your argument hinge on Noah?) I want to know why Adam’s story makes sense in pre-Chalcolithic times, keeping in mind that Adam is not presented as the founder of civilization in Genesis. It was Cain who is said to have built a city, and Jubal, Jabal, and Tubal-cain who develop culture, music, and metallurgy—outside Eden, east of it, and under the sign of exile.

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The founder of civilization title doesn't come from building cities. It comes from working the land. Which no human does in any meaningful sense until ~10,000 BCE. All the fruits of this labor are derivative. Other Antedeluvian figures don't loose their accreditation. The timeline stretches to fill in the gaps. Tubal-cain would be a historical figure from 3500 BCE. I don't understand removing Noah from the discussion if we are talking about other antediluvian figures that have no lifespans listed in their genealogy.

I disagree. That is a possible setting, but implausible and unlikely due primarily to the genealogies. They are not a sliding scale to be freely relocated wherever one finds a convenient paleoclimatic event. Once you detach the genealogical route starting with Adam from its historical anchor in Abraham, David, and Jesus, you are no longer doing biblical chronology at all; you are doing archaeological harmonization and retrofitting Scripture to it. If Adam is pushed to 14,000 years ago, the genealogies cease to be genealogies in any meaningful sense. They become symbolic placeholders with no temporal density. At that point, appealing to them at all is disingenuous.



There is no hint in Scripture of Adam being situated in the Epipaleolithic. The textual clues in early Genesis—domesticated animals, agriculture, metalwork, human societies, etc.—seem to put an outside limit of 10,000 years on where Adam and Eve are situated historically.

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I understand that disagreement. But at the same time it's just an interpretation of a work of literature that is without it's library. I'm not the only one moving genealogies around. Ask a group of clergy and Jews when Moses lived and you will get answers from 2300 BCE to 1100 BCE. Everyone is harmonizing/retrofitting in their own personal ways.

The passage of time in early Genesis chapters is hard to represent. There's just not a lot of text to work with. In terms of supporting text, Genesis 2:5 clearly dates Adam to a time before man worked the earth. Genesis 2:15 states he works the Garden but not the soil. 3:17 states he's cursed to work the earth and that is will produce thorns and thistles. Which is a known side effect of agriculture. These details would date to the start of the neolithic revolution(end of epipaleolithic).

When you say that “people living in plenty never develop anything complex,” you are simply begging the question against the historical record conveyed in my post—for things like Jericho and Çatalhöyük are fairly complex, and they developed after the Younger Dryas (which represented a shift in vegetation patterns, not an ecological collapse).

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These events all happen comfortably after my time for Adam. 9650 BCE is the upper limit for complex structures like gobekli tepe, 9000 BCE for Jericho. My timeline for Adam is the generations that lived at the very end of the Younger Dryas. But also potentially during the early years of the Younger Dryas(10,900 BCE to 9650 BCE).

The people living in a time of plenty, roughly 13,000 BCE to 11,000 BCE construct no megalithic structures, do not occupy the same structures year round generation after generation(which would result in tells). They do not cultivate fields or raise animals. It's hard to track where they are specifically living in the younger dryas because most settlements are abandoned around the start and if/when they are reoccupied there's distinct agriculture and animals(roughly 9500 BCE). Which is just more evidence that a very small group of people are responsible for agriculture. Had it developed at a large settlement we would have found the first fields by now.

Dale said:

When were dogs domesticated?

“Dogs were domesticated from their wolf ancestors over 15,000 years ago.”

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A dog skull over 30,000 years old has been found...

33,000 Year Old Domesticated Dog Skull Found in Siberian Cave​

Jerry N. said:

The question seems to be, “What is a human?”

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Biologically, any species in the genus Homo. But I realize that's not what you're asking.

Jerry N. said:

I am a creationist, but I have no idea what a “day” is in Genesis 1. If you believe science, all of the humanoids were human, but the Bible says Adam was the first man and seems to have been created 6000 or so years ago. The logical conclusion is that the humanoids were not what we think of human, even if they could interbreed with the decedents of Adam.

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I don't agree with your timeline, but I think you're right about what you call "humanoids."

Jerry N. said:

The humanoids could also have been the source of Cain’s wife. My guess is that Adam received a soul or spirit in the image of God, and that made him different.

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That's what God says, after all. I agree.

Jerry N. said:

Certainly, Neanderthals were not capable of sin, but Adam was.

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My belief is that Adam was born before anatomically modern humans and Neanderthals diverged. It's noteworthy that early Neanderthals looked more like modern humans than later Neanderthals. I suspect that Neanderthals were also descendants of Adam and Eve.

Jerry N. said:

The fact that civilization became prevalent 6000 years ago seems important.

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The oldest worked stone buildings go back about 10,000 years. But it seems agriculture was the key to civilization. And that was closer to 6,000 years ago.

Dale said:

Eleos: “One either believes the clear teaching of scripture of not.”

People tell me that they believe in “newspaper exegesis,” you read the Bible like you read a newspaper. Here’s a question for you: What if the original target audience for the Book of Genesis, the Israelites, had never seen a newspaper? Guess what – they had never seen a newspaper! Symbolic or figurative speech was very common at the time.

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Genesis is history, not poetry, parable, prophetic vision, symbolic or mythology. This is seen in the Hebrew verbs used in Genesis 1,4 the fact that Genesis 1–11 has the same characteristics of historical narrative as in Genesis 12–50, most of Exodus, much of Numbers, Joshua, 1 and 2 Kings, etc. (which are discernibly distinct from the characteristics of Hebrew poetry, parable, or prophetic vision), and the way the other biblical authors and Jesus treat Genesis 1–11 (as literal history).

Several passages show that Jesus believed that man was created at the beginning of creation, not billions of years after the beginning (as all old-earth views imply), which confirms the young-earth creationist view (Mark 10:6 and 13:19 and Luke 11:50–51)

The Bible teaches that there was no animal or human death before the Fall of Adam and Eve. So the geological record of rock layers and fossils could not have been millions of years before the Fall.

The genealogies of Genesis 5 and 11 give us the years from Adam to Abraham, who virtually all scholars agree lived about 2000 BC. This sets the date of creation at approximately 6,000 years ago

eleos1954 said:

Several passages show that Jesus believed that man was created at the beginning of creation

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Genesis 1 makes it very clear what was there at the beginning, and man was not.

eleos1954 said:

The Bible teaches that there was no animal or human death before the Fall of Adam and Eve.

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But you can't find a verse that says so? Why not? God tells Adam that he will die the day he eats from the tree. Adam eats from the tree, but lives on physically for many years after. If God is truthful, then it was not a physical death He was speaking of.

eleos1954 said:

So the geological record of rock layers and fossils could not have been millions of years before the Fall.

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Here, you're assuming what you proposed to prove.

eleos1954 said:

The genealogies of Genesis 5 and 11 give us the years from Adam to Abraham, who virtually all scholars agree lived about 2000 BC.

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There are two, contradictory genealogies for Jesus in scripture. So we know they can't be literal genealogies.