Problems in Dating Early Homo Sapiens' Sites, Fossils, Etc.

Discussion about scientific issues as they relate to God and Christianity including archaeology, origins of life, the universe, intelligent design, evolution, etc.
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Philip
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Problems in Dating Early Homo Sapiens' Sites, Fossils, Etc.

Post by Philip »

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I came across this really fascinating post by Hugh Ross / Reasons.org on the immense difficulty involved in scientists assessing accurate dates for modern humans and their ancient sites: https://reasons.org/explore/blogs/today ... gins-dates

We often see all kind of old dates published in popular media and scientific literature for the oldest-known humans (Homo Sapiens!) - like this from a May 2020 Discover Magazine article:

"The oldest Homo Sapiens bones that anthropologists have found thus far date to around 315,000 years ago. That means we can say that modern humans are at least that old. But our lineage likely extends further back in time — we just don’t have the fossils to prove it."

But there is NO way we can currently know such numbers to be even remotely accurate. There are human bones found in Ethiopia that are asserted to be be between 233,000 and 196,000 years old. Now, at their very oldest, while I don't know how far off that guesstimate might be, I do know it's a great problem for those who believe that ALL of humanity came from Adam and Eve and that the Flood of Noah wiped out ALL humans on earth, as at the time, humans would have been limited to have populated a relatively narrow region of Ancient Mesopotamia (see it discussed prolifically here: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=41843) - especially if we use the Biblical genealogies that would place Adam and Eve's creation around 5 to 6,000 years BC and the flood of Noah around 3,500 BC. As Ethiopia is a LONG way outside of the location of Eden (somewhere near modern Iraq) - well,I can't believe the dating for Homo Sapiens is THAT far wrong - but something sure is wrong, and Ross' article certainly suggests some huge challenges to the various assumptions made in the dating of ancient humans!
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