KitKit

i am a bit confused on some things. could someone here with a better knowledge of archeology help me out? and i am not sure on dates of the bible either, compared to dates in actual history.

we have remains of humans from how for back? we have remains of dinosaurs from how far back? did the humans in the bible come before or after the dinosaurs.

in the old testament there are accounts of humans living to be hundreds of years old. have we found any of their remains & would their remains have come before or after those of the dinosaurs (or living creatures before the dinosaurs even)? i was always taught first there were dinosaurs & then there were humans. and if that were the case wouldn't we have remains of humans who lived for hundreds of years. my impression is that all the human remains we have found point to very short life spans.

if we have remains from that far back what are the average ages of those people? not hundreds of years i assume. but maybe we don't have remains from that far back to begin with.

just trying to get a few facts straight. anyone have any links to sites that would also help me with these questions?

thanks for your help!

Jan Haugland

I don't have the sources here now, but investigations of neolithic bones reveal an average life expectancy around 21-23 years. In fact, this seems to have remained unchanged until around 1600, when it slowly started to climb upwards in Europe.

Dinosaurs went extinct 65 millionish years ago, and didn't come even close to coexist with anything resembling primates or humans. Except, apparently, Fred Flintstone.

The long lifespans in the Genesis myth seems to affect a period of no more than two millennia from creation to the flood. No single lifespan exceeded 1000 years, Metushalem at 969 being the oldest (from memory).


- Jan

...who rants and raves every day at Secular Blasphemy

caravelair

if you want to know about human fossils, i'd say the best place to look would be here.

Roland

Some Sumerian patriarchs were thought to have lived for tens of thousands of years! Apparently, even the Hebrews, when they stole the concept from these earlier people, didn't find THAT credible.

Coragyps

Hi, Kit from Texas, and welcome aboard!
To give the pretty short answers to your questions, but more or less in one go:
Dinosaurs, except the ones we now call birds, died out about 65,000,000 years ago.
The first of the apes that would have really reminded you of a human lived roughly 2,000,000 years ago, and the first that you would really consider for a neighbor maybe 200,000. The first "modern" looking and acting humans were maybe 40,000 years back - language seems to have been around by then (but words don't fossilize, so we can't be sure.)
If you add up the ages given in the Bible, it puts Adam roughly 6000 years ago, but the first Bible story even remotely confirmed by archaeology is more like 3000 years back. If you believe that the ages given in the Bible for those pre-Flood guys are accurate, I have an ocean-front property out by Monahans, Texas that you might be interested in buying.
Jan quoted a life expectancy of twenty-some years in the Neolithic (9000 yr ago?). That may well be accurate, bur remember that a fair number of folks would make it to their 50's or 60's even with the average that short: the average includes all the kids that never see their first birthday in the pre-medicine, pre-clean water world.

Dr.GH

The oldest modern human (Homo sapiens) remains are around 60, 000 years old, the molcular data from mitochndrea suggests around 150 to 200 thousand years ago. This is well into the time span occupied by H. heildelbergensis, H neanderthalisis, and others. Any of them other than H. neanderthalis

http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abst...=&FIRSTINDEX=0

(or other yet to be discovered species) could be our collective ancestors.

http://www.modernhumanorigins.com/

http://www.becominghuman.org/

http://www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/humanor...ta/encarta.htm

The youngest dino fossils are about 65 million years old, the oldest arre around 200 million years old. Now, as most people realize that birds are decended from dinosaurs, you might say that the dinos never became extinct. ( I disagree, but I don't have time to explain just now).

Re: Ages of Patriarchs

There are a few points that are worth consideration. First, there were several numerical systems in use in Mesopotamia from 8,000 to 800 B.C. which made translation of documrents very difficult. Also, vast periods of time were apparently used to imply the might of some rulers. This could be somewhat realistic, in the sence that a Kingdom established by a powerful leader can be continued to be refered to them through the years well past the founder's death. Similarly, there is a common practice in folk geneology of naming an entire group of people after their founding leader. Thus, the longevity of a named "Patriarch" could reflect the duration, and status of a group of people which traced their collective origin to a named culture hero/founder.

As to the question of biblical dates, I would suggest :

Finkelstein, Israel, Neil Silberman
2001 “The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin
of Its Sacred Texts” New York: The Free Press

Friedman, Richarrd Elliott
1987 “Who Wrote the Bible” New York:Harper and Row (Paperback Edition)

Jabu Khan

Dr. Gh what about the microraptor?

Peez

Dinosaurs are not mentioned in the Bible, which is pretty odd given how notable some of them would have been to any humans present. Fundies will try to stretch references to Leviathan, an apparently unique aquatic beast, or behemoth, an animal "which feeds on grass like an ox ," but it is clear that there is no mention of dinosaurs.

Peez

SULPHUR

The question had already been answered.

Peez

No, I don't believe that it had. I could find no mention in any of the previous posts of the order in which dinosaurs and humans appear in the Bible. Perhaps you could point out where you think that it was addressed, since you seem to be on a mission to correct my errors.

Peez