“I have considered the days of old, the years of ancient times” – Psalm 77:5 KJV
“Remember the former things long past,
For I am God, and there is no other;
I am God, and there is no one like Me,” – Isaiah 46:9 NASB
The ways of God in ancient times are meant to be appreciated and understood. Most modern generations tend to think of themselves as superior, forgetting the lessons and the people who have shaped history. Technology and “advancement” may keep moving forward, but God does not change. His Creation continues to remind us of who He is and what He has accomplished. His past deeds, which include his original creation and the intelligent accomplishments of “ancient man,” are still evident throughout the world.
We can never understand the present, nor the future, without first understanding and believing in God’s account of Creation, and in the significant events of world history.
A couple of months ago a guy in my brother’s Bible study sent a video of a brilliant man named Graham Hancock talking about the marvels of the Great Pyramids. Don’t you love listening to smart people? 🙂
[Watch the following 5 minute video…it’s highly worth it! : “How Were the Great Pyramids built?” ]
I would like to respond to his insightful comments from a Biblical perspective. I would agree with him that we do not know how the great pyramids, or the great pyramid were built. Although this is perplexing, it should not be so surprising that such a great structure was built by ancient people! Why? Because the Bible gives us some very clear understanding of past people.
I would suggest that there is not a lost civilization, as Hancock postulates, but there is a “lost understanding” of what the Bible says about God’s first created generations.
Let me start with Adam and Eve. “Then God said, ‘Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness . . .’ ” – Genesis 1:26
I believe Adam and Eve were THE most intelligent people in God’s creation. Imagine, they were the very first of God’s awe-inspiring creation! Just think — no mutations had entered into the genetic pool.
— They had a language and all languages have complexities and nuances that make each of them nothing short of marvelous. We take languages for granted but behind each language is extreme intelligence.
— They had a conscience, the freedom to choose, and the ability to reason.
These qualities are not the characteristics of a grunting evolutionary Neanderthals living in caves.
The first children of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, showed skill and occupational ability:
“Abel was a keeper of flocks [and] Cain was a tiller of the ground” – Genesis 4:2)
Contrary to what Bloomberg says, it takes tremendous skill and knowledge to be a farmer ☺. Adam and Eve had many other children and they married their brothers and sisters (Genesis 5:4). Once again the mutations we would see today on account of these types of actions, were not an issue in the early stages of humanity. Later on in Exodus, however, God prohibits marriage between relatives (Leviticus 18:6 NLT). Oh, the wisdom of God!
Just as we train our children and extended families about how to live, so too Adam and Eve, as well as subsequent generations, passed on skill, wisdom, and knowledge. There were written accounts from generation to generation (Genesis 5:1; 10:1), and guess what? This requires intelligence!
In addition, these early people were quick to make a living for themselves. Their intellect helped them carry out meaningful and productive work in the world. Moreover, we read about early musicians such as Jubal, “the father of all those who play the lyre and pipe” (Genesis 4:21), which shows us they had an appreciation for art, beauty, and the detailed knowledge required to craft musical instruments. Some were skilled in metallurgy such as Tubal-Cain, “who forged and instructed how to make all kinds of tools out of bronze and iron.” (Genesis 4:22) While some, like Cain, had the incredible skill to design and build cities: “Cain was then building a city, and he named it after his son Enoch” (Genesis 4:17). I would, personally, not be surprised if in heaven we learned that that great pyramids, Stonehenge, The Temple of Inscriptions in Mexico, or the sites of Machu Picchu, were built by the descendants of Cain! Just think of the intelligence and technological skill it required to move the massive stones of the pyramids, and, in some cases align them to true north or according to the constellations.
Ancient man’s advanced technology can be clearly seen in what has been left behind.
The evidence of ancient man’s intelligence can be seen in monuments and structures all over the world. These same buildings also testify to the dispersion at Babel due to their similar characteristics. There are pyramids, ziggurats, temples, mounds and stone circles, and mysterious sites spotting the globe. The fact that these structures are so common, and their architecture is so similar, directly link them to each other and the original Tower of Babel (Genesis 11:1-9).
Most megalithic projects around the world are thought to have been completed around the same time, commonly dated to around 2000 B.C. Experts are baffled that thousands of years after construction the joints are still precise, the cracks haven’t weathered but, rather, have possibly become an even better fit. Currently, most of the cracks are so thin that you can’t slide a credit card between them. The structures are so stable that people throughout history have built upon them because they have passed the test of time. Yet, even with so many well-preserved examples to study, scientists have not found a way to explain how the ancients accomplished such feats! Of course, working from an evolutionary timeline, the level of technology and skill needed doesn’t fit their paradigm. For this reason they have a hard time explaining how they could have been constructed. And yet, if we begin with the biblical understanding that man was created as highly intelligent, one can easily theorize that the ancient people had advanced technology and abilities that don’t exist today.
Whether it be calendars and the accuracy of time keeping, or the megalithic structures that have no explanation, it’s obvious that the present secular mindset of the modern world has greatly underestimated people of the past.
Another interesting proof of advancement and intelligence is the ancient sanitation and irrigation systems found in these various cities. In the book Technology of the Gods, David Hatcher Childress lists many examples of ancient plumbing and irrigation, such as the wall and terraces that the Nabatean people built to utilize a small amount of rainfall. Childress also explains how, 3,000 years ago, ancient Persians built underground aqueducts to bring mountain ground water to the dry plains. Today, their ancient system is still functioning and supplying Iran with 75% of its water! (Look to The Genesis of Ancient Man, page 54, by Don Landis.)
Some say the mark of any advanced civilization is the level of their sanitation and plumbing. If you have toured Europe, you likely learned how an ignorance with regard to plumbing and sanitation contributed to the black plague. Ancient man seemed to be on to something that more modern generations missed! [Look to a previous article I wrote titled: “Coronavirus: Is Cleanliness Really Next to Godliness?”]
These early ancient people were not dense, dull-witted creatures, but perfectly designed and intellectual beings.
The biblical paradigm stands in stark contrast to the evolutionary premise of early man. The naturalistic model depicts the first humanoid beings as brutish creatures evolving from animals, looking more like apes than humans. The further back into history, the more the evidence should support unsophisticated ancient civilizations with little or no culture, refinement, architecture, or advanced skills.
However, if one looks at the text of Scripture, we discover just the opposite. And when we search the world, we find good evidence of civilizations and cultures with intelligent human beings capable of feats that stagger the mind.
I find their sophisticated knowledge of the universe and astronomy particularly intriguing. Accurate charts and perfectly aligned monuments testify to careful study of the night sky. There is even evidence from many structures which reveal how ancient man had an advanced knowledge of astronomical movements, including the process of precession. (Precession is the minute shifting of the constellation as the earth wobbles its spin, approximately 1 degree per 72 years). Even in their legends, they use numbers indicating knowledge of precession and many other structures that are aligned with these movements. Researcher James Nienhuis, author of Ice Age Civilizations describes how these numbers and this precession of knowledge is found everywhere in the cultures and legends of ancient peoples. He brings this a step further and says that they were able to easily travel and accurately map the globe. Further evidence of advanced astronomy is clear in the worship of Sirius A and B, binary stars. The Dogon people of Africa, as well as the Egyptians, and Babylonians worshiped these two stars which, from the naked eye, seem to be only one star. (Look toThe Genius of Ancient Manby Don Landis page 49).
If you are interested in learning more about ancient men, I would suggest that you go to the website: answersingenesis.com and look for a variety of books like The Genius of Ancient Man by Don Lands and many more. Probably more important, you might choose to read these resources to help inform your children or grandchildren.
Hosea 4:6 says, “my people are destroyed from lack of knowledge. Because you have rejected knowledge (God’s instructive Law), I also will reject you as my priests (present day pastors and fellow believers who are, in reality, priests, 1 Peter 2:9), I also have ignored your children.”
Hey, you all, you might be the key to saving the lives of your children and grandchildren and perhaps a little less dramatic, you might position them to be able to speak into the secular culture that has lost its Biblical roots.
In the Intelligent Name of Christ,
Dale