As I have blogged repeatedly, I think the Biblical Genesis account is scientifically accurate, and provides a very useful model to understand both archaeoanthropology and human nature (=not Greek). There are a number of guesses, however, that give both theologians and paleontology hiccups. For quick reference, here's a sketch of "Yet Another Creation Candidate" (YACC). The biblical exegesis is here, and the science is summarized below.

The Big Bang is taken as a background of Genesis 1:1. "Hovered over the waters" might be a reference to comets, and "formless and void" appears to describe proto-solar nebula, so that Gen 1:2 picks up about 5 billion years before the present. Another 4.9 billion years rush by in a hurry, and in Genesis 1:26 we arrive at 40,000 BC. (Some details of Gen 1:2--26) are given in the previous blog.)

So by Gen 1:26, we have Neanderthal humanoids roaming some regions on the planet, and God creates the first humans, which for nostalgic reasons, I like to call Cro-Magnons. These people are DNA-equivalent to modern man, but they do not talk. Because they do not talk, they do not handle abstract concepts, and while I may change my mind later, I would say this disqualifies them from having souls, despite being great artists. You will note that this is not the Greek  material/immaterial distinction. Cro-Magnons go out to populate the globe, and we refer to it as the Paleolithic and Mesolithic cultures.

Thirty thousand years go by in a flash, and then we get to Gen 2:7, where God epigenetically "tunes" a Cro-Magnon so that he can talk. Since he can talk, he gets a name, "Adam", and from this point on, everything in Genesis has a name. Adam's turf is called "Eden", and is on the bottom of the dried up Mediterranean, in a climate not unlike California's Central Valley. In other words: hot, dry and incredibly fertile if irrigated.

Why is it dry? Because something has blocked the 3-mile wide Gates of Gilbraltar, and such is the climate of the region, that more water evaporates from the Mediterranean than comes in from the Nile and the Danube. So several times in the ancient past, the Gates have closed, and geologists found thick salt deposits from the resulting evaporation.

Well it would seem that Adam's race stayed in this region, because by the time we get to Genesis 6 and Noah a mere 2000 years later, nearly all of civilization lay in this wide basin, and was drowned in an event where "the gates of the deep were opened", and the Atlantic poured in.

 Well why wouldn't Adam's race be as hardy as the Cro-Magnons and "fill the earth"? Possibly because a mini-ice age had enveloped Europe and ice-sheets were inhospitable in the North, and deserts on the East and South. A glacial dam might also account for the blocked Gates.

So after Noah and some domesticated animals escape the deluge, they spread out of their Middle East home in what paleontologists refer to as "The Neolithic Revolution", bringing language, technology, and DNA to Europe at a snail's pace of 1 km/year.

Okay, it sounds speculative, but I would encourage you to read some of the details before you make a snap judgement.  In one of my many debates on this subject, a colleague asks whether there is any evidence that Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons couldn't talk, which is tricky because written language wasn't invented till a long time later. We stalemated on that one, but it would seem there should be evidence for a dry Mediterranean  about 10,000 years ago. I knew of none, which made him shake his head and suggest that my speculation was unfounded.

Well, a paper has just come out that provides some evidence. It seems that 12,800 years ago, a mini-ice age hit Europe. Glaciers, flash-frozen mammoths, the whole nine yards. After some sleuthing, the general consensus was that a vast lake in the USA, formed when a glacier had made a dam across the St Lawrence channel, had suddenly burst and flooded the North Atlantic with fresh water. Well fresh water floats on salt water, and the hot-water conveyer belt we call the Gulf Stream which keeps Britain warmer than it should, has the down-roller in the North Atlantic off of Iceland. All this fresh water stalled out the conveyer belt, the Gulf Stream stopped and in a matter of 3 months, lakes were freezing over in Ireland. It took some 1300 years for the Gulf Stream to restart, and so we had 1300 years of glacial advance in Europe.

All this would be great if it were 8,000 years ago, but it happened four millennia early for Eden. I'll bend my chronology a millennia if I have to, after all, that is one Adamic lifetime, but four millennia is a stretch. What a shame it the Younger Dryas doesn't fit the Bible.

Wait, but it did! There was a second cooling event at precisely 8200 years ago, and lots of speculation what caused it. Everyone is sure it was related to global ocean circulation, but no one has a burst dam to show for it.

However, there's more than one way to sabotage a conveyer belt. Robert Johnson wrote in 2002 that the salt water coming into the Mediterranean through the Gates, has a deep current of even saltier water going out. He believes it is this heavy, salty water that promotes the sinking of the down-roller side of the Gulf Stream. Therefore blocking this exiting water, will also shut off the conveyer and throw Europe into an ice age.

So it would appear that 8200 years ago, we had an ice age event, which I would take to be a blocking of the Gates of Gilbraltar by a glacial dam. This led to a change in climate in the Mediterranean, and a conditions for Eden. The event ended when the Gates were opened, and Eden was flooded some 2000 years later. The fly in this ointment is that the 6200BC event lasted only 300 years in the temperature records. But at this point in the theory, the significant thing is the timing of the breach, rather than the duration, because it lands right about where we needed Noah's flood to be.


And as for evidence for the lack of speech, my usual response (see the paper), is that the 1km/yr spread of the Indo-European language with the farming technology and with the same genes suggest a strong link between science, DNA and language. Furthermore, if the natives could talk, why wouldn't they learn about the technology rather than being overwhelmed at a 1km/yr pace for 3000 years? Still, the argument seemed a bit weak.

Science reported recent work on the "language gene" called FOXP2, which was  different in two places in chimpanzees and doesn't work the same way in humans. So they made those changes to the gene in human neurons growing in a Petri dish, and looked for differences. The figure above shows that there were lots of differences. Furthermore, it appears that Neanderthals had DNA in those two places that was human. Since we know that chimps don't talk, this is might be evidence that Neanderthals did. But in any case, now we have to await the Cro-Magnon genome sequencing to see whether FOXP2 is modified or identical to modern man. I'm predicting it is identical, because I think the Gen 2:7 change was "epigenetic" rather than a genetic change to FOXP2, but we'll have to wait and see.

So I won't say it is vindication of YACC, but it is evidence in the right direction.