A Biblical Analysis
A friend told me other day that they did not know whether they could believe the Bible, and they mentioned Cro-Magnon Man as evidence that the Bible could not be taken seriously. After all, isn’t Cro-Magnon Man a million years old?
I looked, for starters, at the old Encyclopedia Britannica my mother bought for us in 1973. This is what it says:
“CRO-MAGNON MAN, the name originally given to a small number of human skeletons of prehistoric age found in a rock shelter at Cro-Magnon near Les Eyzies in the Dordogne department of France.”
Encyclopedia Britannica 1973, volume 6, p. 795
The Encyclopedia went on to say, “The skeletons themselves were fragmentary, but three crania were fairly well preserved…” and “proved to be typical of a race widespread throughout Europe at this time, most common in France, but stretching north to Belgium and from Wales to eastern Europe.”
What did they mean, when they used the word, “race”?
The authors went on to say:
“In classification he (Cro-Magnon Man) falls into the ‘caucasoid‘ subspecies of modern man…(and) only had a few characteristics which would serve to distinguish them from some modern western and north Europeans.”
Encyclopedia Britannica 1973, p. 796
So–all that being said–how do we know how old these fragmentary skeletons actually are?
The Encylopedia says:
“Radiocarbon age determinations from certain sites in France suggest that the earliest known Cro-Magnon skeletal remains date from about 330,ooo years B.C…”
Encyclopedia Britannica 1973, p. 796
But one thing you should think about: Radiocarbon dating CANNOT be used to date remains that are thought to be 330,000 years old.
“Samples that are older than about 40,000 years are extremely difficult to date due to tiny levels of carbon-14. Over 60,000 years old, and they can’t be dated at all.”
National Geographic, JULY 12, 2019
