Did Homo Erectus build the Tower of Babel?

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:

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Complete article hereWow! 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)}

That's a damned good point, gluadys, and he doesn't cover it in the AiG article I linked to. But he doesn't (obviously) accept conventional dating anyway, so it's just one of his many problems.Another is that there are many archaeological sites that show Homo Sapiens in a prolonged stone-age phase, when he would not have had the technology to build either the Ark or the tower of Babel, yet Homo Erectus, with his small brain and very basic tools is supposed to have built these things.Frankly, I think this theory of Wise's will divide young earth Christians, because there are loads of obvious problems with it.

It just makes things easier for God, as he only had to invent a few hundred words or so per language when doing the Babel curse, instead of the thousands per language Homo loquacious sapiens would have required.Of course, there may have been problems in Ark and tower construction, although modern builders have been known to get by with "pass the fucking whatsit" level of verbal communication, could Erectus have managed the architectural drawings for a skyscraper, I ask myself?

This is the kind of thing I wanted to ask our local EvC creationists about. What is their favoured view of the hominid fossil record, and who evolved into whom when, where, and why?I'm fascinated by all this speeded up evolution. But if we came from Erectus, as Wise seems to think, then that's a damned interesting piece of micro-evolution, IMO.

Kurt Wise certainly knows about his subject. What I'm wondering is, how many of our EvC creationists agree with him.After Babel, according to Wise, we find nothing but H. erectus, who disperses over the planet, then evolves into H. sapiens (both us and neanderthal) and also H. floresiensis.This means erectus to us in a very short time. There are transitionals (archaic H. Sapiens with brow ridge) Microevolution or Macro?So, having read Kurt Wise's AiG article, Alpha (and all other YECs), do you agree with his analysis?

Aside from the skull, he says. Although erectus could make basic tools and was likely to have been the first user of fire, we find his tools, and the idea of him building an Ark or a tower of Babel (or anything more than a basic shelter) is an interesting one. In relation to the ark, some do think he managed to raft between islands, but it's controversial. The idea of him making a wooden ocean going liner would make paleo-anthropologists laugh. Wise's model is that there is nothing but H. erectus in layers of post-flood sediment until after the Babel event, when erectus spreads and also, somewhere, evolves into us. That requires a firm belief in a fast, spectacular degree of evolution.When you've got the first H. Sapiens, what date would that be, do you think?

Good. Do you think you could attempt a timeline for us? I think Wise probably puts Babel at about 4,000 years ago, but you might know otherwise. So, we might be able to work out an approximate date for the emergence of H. Sapiens, and for all the civilizations before recorded history.

Was H. erectus human, in your opinion?As a matter of interest, Lucy, when do you think humans first arrived on your continent?And on the topic, do you agree with Kurt Wise that we descended from H. erectus after the Babel dispersal?Wise also thinks that you, dear Lucy, were semi-erect, and that you spread out and speciated along with the other apes after the flood, before going extinct.

We also have "foxes", creatures that controlled our population in the past, and to an extent, now. Sometimes, half the population of a continent might disappear.Black Death - WikipediaBut on the topic. Do you, as a creationist, agree with Kurt Wise on his interpretation of the hominid fossil record? Did Homo Erectus build the tower of Babel?The article is here.Incidentally, in the article, Wise does not agree with your rapid expansion view of population, and points to the extinction of humans that were not us (H. Sapiens). Here:

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The narrow differences among modern humans, in turn, suggest that whole people groups were wiped out after Babel, narrowing the variation within the human population. Was this extinction entirely due to the challenges of survival in an earth still recovering from the Flood? Or could it be that human violence is responsible for some of this extinction? Could greed, national wars, or even overt racism be responsible? At this point no one knows. But at the very least, we can say that neighboring people groups made no apparent effort to aid their fellow man when threatened with extinction.

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Such cruelty would not be surprising. Scripture tells us that humans at Babel were rebellious against God. They were forced to fill the earth. Rather than caring for God’s animals and their human brothers, human families spreading out from Babel may have even hunted many of them down and driven them to extinction.

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He's talking about Erectus, Neanderthal, and Floresiensis. He has to account for both the emergence and extinction of the latter two after the Babel event, as his view is that only Erectus exists in the bottleneck of the flood to Babel period.He's trying to explain the fossil record in a young earth scenario. AlphaOmegakid, one of our young-earthers, supports his general view Message 23. What about the rest of you? Is Wise taking Young Earth Creationism in the right direction, or is his only use in life making "evos" laugh.If there's going to be a creationist science and a creationist theory of origins, it's essential that the hominid fossil record is explained by YECs. Wise realises this, to his credit.Did Adam and Eve look like Homo Erectus, or like us? Adam? Did God give Adam and Eve skulls like this?

Ah! I didn't read this before posting above. So, we can count you as disagreeing with Wise, and agreeing with mainstream science that he shouldn't be taken seriously?Is this a divide in creationism? Would you like to debate the point for us with AlphaOmegakid?

Message 29It was brief, but I asked you for a timeline. I think that Babel is usually put at about 4000 tears ago, but you should know more about the YEC view than I do.

Steady on! Remember, you're not supposed to be in disagreement with the evolution of Erectus into H. Sapiens Neanderthal, H. Sapiens Sapiens, and H. Floresiensis. That's Kurt Wise's view, which you said you were in general agreement with.Of the creationists, you are the only one who's come out in agreement with Wise's view, although Beretta may well agree too, when he's had time to think about it.As I said earlier, it would be nice to have a timeline. Wise is going for a pattern of relationship between the later hominids (the definite uprights) which is pretty much the same as the old earth "evolutionist's" one. The main difference is the time scale, of course.So do you think you can give us a timeline? It need only be tentative. Like evolutionists, you need more information to come up with a clear explanation, but Wise, to his credit, recognises that creation science has to address what evidence is there.The main thing is, IMO, that you need H. Sapiens to evolve very quickly after Babel, because you've got to squeeze what we see as layer upon layer (and thousands of years) of prehistoric H. Sapiens civilizations into the short time between Babel and the first written datable historical evidence.Anyone else, Creo or Evo, got any opinions on the question in the thread title? I think this is an important departure for creationism. Kurt Wise has decided, because H. Erectus is the only hominid found for a period in what he sees as post flood deposits, and because the fossils are widely distributed on three continents, that H. Erectus must be the Mankind of the flood and the Babel tower building.Edited by bluegenes, : missing word