Crocodiles and Humans Coexisting in African Village

A series of photographs published by the Telegraph document African villagers who enjoy a “startlingly close relationship” with local crocodiles. The villagers believe the crocodiles are sacred and feed them chicken—no doubt a key to keeping them happy (or full) enough to allow the villagers to “play and do chores just yards from them.” (Follow the link above for photographs.)

Calling it a “magical place,” photographer Oliver Born said, “It shows that crocodiles are not just ferocious and dangerous animals and that they deserve to be protected. Crocodiles are today completely integrated in the life of the population.” The Telegraph also reports that more than 100 of the reptiles live near the village, growing up to 20 feet (6 m) long.

The news is also quite relevant to the creation/evolution debate, because of our often-mocked belief—which comes straight from Scripture—that dinosaurs and humans coexisted (at first peacefully) all the way back to the Garden of Eden. This is from a straightforward reading of Scripture that clearly teaches that humans and dinosaurs were both created on Day 6 of Creation Week.

Of course, while many dinosaurs were always plant-eating, the diets of other dinosaurs went from herbivorous to carnivorous after the Fall. This is the perhaps the most salient basis for evolutionists’ mockery of our human–dinosaur coexistence claim, even though humans inhabit the same world as many dangerous carnivores even today!

Crocodilians are one such dangerous carnivore, considered closely related to dinosaurs and believed even by evolutionists to have lived alongside them. We suspect that if crocodilians weren’t so widespread today, they might have been considered just another type of long-extinct dinosaur-era reptile—until they turned up living in the present! The same goes for Komodo dragons and other monitor lizards, along with tuatara.

Thus, the scenes of the African villagers mingling with the crocodiles corroborate that humans could have lived alongside (or nearby) even carnivorous dinosaurs. The original “magical place” where that happened was the Garden of Eden, before any animals had turned to carnivory.