One of Evolution’s Most Famous Stories Gets a Rewrite

In an article from New Scientist titled “The Civilisation Myth: How new discoveries are rewriting human history,” the author shares:

In an evolutionary eyeblink, our species has gone from hunting and gathering to living in complex societies. We need to rethink the story of this monumental transition…

Their most prevalent narrative describes a sort of trap: once people started farming, there was no way back from a cascade of increasing social complexity that led inexorably to hierarchy, inequality and environmental destruction. This bleak view of civilisation’s rise has long held sway. However, the more societies we look at, the more it falls to pieces. Confronted with inconvenient evidence, we are being forced to retell our own origin story. In doing so, we are also rethinking what a society can be.

Indeed, the author, science writer Michael Marshall, goes on to state this regarding the popular narrative of early human history:

“Now, growing evidence suggests it is a fiction.”

Yes—yes, it is fiction! But more on that in a bit.

Why does Marshall say the evidence now suggests this “fact” of evolution is “fiction”? Well, the major problem is:

“It misrepresents hunter-gatherer societies, which turn out to be far more variable and complex than we thought . . .

[There] are dramatic examples of hunter-gatherers acting in unexpectedly sophisticated ways.”

Various archaeological findings, including structures such as Turkey’s amazingly complex Göbekli Tepe, confound archaeologists by subverting their expectations for these “simple” peoples. And it’s not just ancient peoples. Modern hunter-gatherer societies are not “simple.”

In recent decades, studies of modern hunter-gatherer groups have upended our ideas about their social structures, too. “Typically, people think of hunter-gatherers as living in small, nomadic bands that are fairly egalitarian and cooperative,” says Adrian Jaeggi at the University of Zurich, Switzerland. “But actually, there are quite a few examples of what some call ‘complex hunter-gatherers’. Those are people who can be fairly sedentary and have a high degree of political stratification. There can be a hereditary ruling class, for example, where you have chieftainship that is inherited. They have slavery and warfare.”

In other words, people are complex, and the simplistic view of the past that evolutionists have touted for decades doesn’t match the archaeological record or studies of modern hunter-gatherer peoples.

Humans were created intelligent from the very beginning!

The remainder of Marshall’s article shares the “twists and subtexts” that he believes “shed new light on our past”—but he still doesn’t get it right! Because he has the wrong starting point (evolution and millions of years), he interprets the evidence in the present incorrectly.

You see, it’s not a great mystery as to how and why human civilization developed because humans didn’t spend hundreds of thousands of years hunting and gathering. Humans were created to tend and care for the earth right from the very beginning (Genesis 1:28). Within just one generation, humans had flocks and herds (Genesis 4:4), practiced farming (Genesis 4:3), and even built cities (Genesis 4:17). And a few generations later, they had instruments (Genesis 4:21) and used bronze and iron (Genesis 4:22). Humans were created intelligent from the very beginning!

Now biblical history tells us that human civilization was interrupted by a catastrophic global flood. The human population was reduced to just eight people, and all of humanity’s achievements (other than the ark and what was saved aboard the ark) were lost to the floodwaters. After the flood, the population began to grow, and civilization was reestablished, only to be broken up again at the time of Babel (Genesis 11). As the new language families spread out from Babel and settled in different parts of the world, they began to build their own civilizations—and that explains why we see civilization “beginning” at around the same time in various places all around the world, particularly in the Near East and surrounding area.

We must begin with the right foundation, the history that God, the eyewitness to all of history, has given us in his Word.

The groups that left Babel and headed for northern climates soon had to compete with a harsh world under the grip of an ice age. Farming would be difficult, so many people likely lived a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, making their homes in caves and other temporary structures as they followed the herds and seasons. This wasn’t a lifestyle that endured for hundreds of thousands of years, but for only a few hundred years until the ice age peaked, the glaciers retreated, and the land became farmable again.

If we want to understand history properly, we must begin with the right foundation, the history that God, the eyewitness to all of history, has given us in his Word. This history provides the framework we must use to understand the world around us. Without it, evolutionists will just have to write, rewrite, and re-rewrite mankind’s “history” because the evidence will never confirm evolutionary ideas! The Bible has never changed and never will.

Get more answers on Answers News

This item was discussed today on Answers News with cohosts Bryan Osborne, Bodie Hodge, and Rob Webb. Answers News is our weekly news program filmed live before a studio audience here at the Creation Museum, broadcast on our Answers in Genesis YouTube channel, and posted to Answers TV. We also covered the following topics:

• Is virginity a “patriarchal” concept?
• Is the earth breaking climate records?
• Good news from the Supreme Court of the US!
• And more!

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Thanks for stopping by and thanks for praying,
Ken

This item was written with the assistance of AiG’s research team.