This topic is based on an article at Answers In Genesis by Kurt Wise, one of YEC's star performers, with a genuine scientific degree from Harvard (geology).
I think the article will certainly interest some on both sides of the debate here. It shows a completely new and radical interpretation of hominid fossils from a creationist.
For example:
quote:
While the animals were diversifying and spreading out from the Ark, the Bible tells us that humans rebelled against God and stayed in one place, desiring to give themselves a name above that of God. When God forced them to obey His command by creating distinct languages, they dispersed from Babel in small family groups.
In these small populations, built-in human variety revealed itself in large regional differences in brain size and body form, with no discernible difference in intelligence, cultural prowess, or spiritual sensitivity. For example, in Europe are found Neanderthals (neanderthalensis) with larger brains than modern humans, and in Indonesia are found “hobbits” (floresiensis) with smaller bodies and brains than any modern human.
This is supposed to describe the situation some time after the Babel dispersal, because the only hominids immediately after Babel, in Wise's opinion, were small brained Homo Erectus, who therefore must have built the tower.
quote:
Preserved in post-Flood sediments older than any Neanderthals and Hobbits are Homo erectus fossils.3 Aside from the skull, Homo erectus skeletons are virtually indistinguishable from modern humans, so the evidence indicates they are human. And, since humans did not disperse across the world until after Babel, the distribution of Homo erectus across the Old World (Java, China, Africa) suggests they not only date from after the Flood, they also date from after Babel. Homo erectus is thus not only the oldest human fossil we have following Babel but the only human fossil for some time after Babel. From this we infer that the Homo erectus form is probably what humans looked like at the time of Babel.
Complete article
here
Wow! Strong stuff, and I would have thought highly controversial in creationist circles. Instead of explaining away non homo-sapiens hominids as deformities or apes, Kurt Wise, a YEC guru, is embracing them as our ancestors, and the implications are that Adam, Eve and Noah were all small brained Homo Erectus, the original "kind" from which Homo Sapiens, Neanderthal, and Homo Floresiensis all evolved.
From an "evolutionist" point of view, we see Wise attempting to squeeze hundreds of thousands of years of our evolutionary history, from erectus to sapiens, into a few hundred years (after Babel and presumably before Abraham).
So, what are we to think of this? Do our EvC creationists agree with Wise's view? And do the rest of us think this is a reasonable direction for Young Earth Creationism to take, or is it madness?
I have to admit that the latter was my initial impression, but maybe Wise is being err...wise. The fossil hominids have to be explained, and more will be unearthed, so is this a reasonable attempt to fit the evidence in with Genesis?
{Admins, this is creation science, so human evolution and origins might be the best place (not a Bible discussion, as literal genesis is assumed)}
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