Pity the poor Bible believers - Australian Native People left Africa over 70,000 years ago

by fulltimestudent 9 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  fulltimestudent

  Many Bible believers accept the Genesis documents explanations of human origins. But the modern science of genomics is making that a very difficult intellectual position to hold.

  Increasingly, to believe the bible, is to accept superstition over rationality.

  Three papers published in the scientific journal Nature demonstrate the point:

  1. The ancestors of Australia Aboriginal and Papuan peoples left Africa around 72,000 years ago.

  2. They arrived in the geological locations we now identify as Australia and Papua around 50,000 years ago

  3. By 31,000 years ago, most of these communities were genetically isolated from each, a situation that allowed a great genetic diversity to develop.

  Australia's ABC media cover the story in this overview:

  http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-09-22/world-first-study-reveals-rich-history-of-aboriginal-australians/7858376

  Now think of the intellectual problems for bible believers:

  1. The Genesis documents account of a divinity creating humans circa 5000 years ago cannot possibly be true, if it can be demonstrated that humans have been on the earth for a far longer period.

  2. The other racial origin myth in the Genesis document, tracing all modern humans back to the family of Noah, must also be discarded.

  3. If Luke 17:26 -27 accurately records the words of Jesus, then Jesus believed the superstitious story of a global flood, the destruction of all humans accept Noah's family, and the genesis account of humanities spread after the flood, a story contradicted by the science of genomics.
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  fulltimestudent

  In this video from the Natural History Museum of Denmark:

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kbRxSzDE4k

  Professor Eske Willerslev discusses the conclusions of the studies.
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  LoveUniHateExams

  Interesting article.

  I knew that European peoples contain some Neandertal DAN and sub-Saharan Africans don't, but I didn't know that the ancestors of Australia's Aboriginal people picked it up en route to Australia.
  

  "There is greater genetic diversity in Aboriginal people living in the east and west of Australia then there is between people living in Siberia and the Americas" - the prof uses a poor example here, I think.

  The ancestors of native Americans (First Nations people, Meso-Americans, etc) crossed the Bering Straight and possibly originated in some part of Siberia. As the article is in English, it might have been better to compare the genetic diversity of Aboriginals with different European peoples.
  
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  sir82

  Allow me to practice my full-on JW brain-dead response....

  <Ahem>

  "All 'scientific' dating methods are flawed and enormously inaccurate for dates preceding 2370 BCE. At that time, the flood of Noah's day occurred, and the cloud canopy which completely surrounded the earth was broken. This allowed additional radiation from the sun to fundamentally change the rate of decay of carbon-14 and/or any other substance used for dating artifacts. Thus, any and all testing which reveals a date prior to what the Bible allows is completely and utterly wrong."

  Sir82, of the "Facts? We don't need to stinkin' facts" class
  
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  OrphanCrow

  Sir82, you left out the part that says "Satan did it"

  
  
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  Schnufti

  When I was still in, this made me doubt the bible most. How could mankind be only 6000 years old when science and aerchology prove wrong? I sincerely wanted to solve my doubts and asked other JWs how I could explain this to a householder. This is what they answered:

  "I wouldn't go into this. Just discuss with the householder what you have in common." - a regular pioneer

  "There are other things that prove the bible is God's word." - a young sister

  "Science can be wrong. When they dig out things from the earth, it could be full with radiation and that changes everything." - my mother-in-law

  (So that it is not 100,000 years old but only 20,000, but it's still older than 6,000 years.)

  *rolls with eyes* "Do you believe that this is the truth?" - an elder
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  dropoffyourkeylee

  Bible thumpers aside, why were the aborigines so isolated? Did they not have any knowledge of boats? The Chinese and the Polynesians were travelling long distances, why didn't they touch Australia? There must be reasons for this.
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  James Mixon

  What is so surprising to me is Christians and JW's have no idea about the timetable in the Bible.

  I have been ask several times , how do you know when Adam was created? People didn't

  keep records back then, that's what they will tell me. Christians and JW's deep down know that Adam

  is not the first man 7000 years ago they can't be that dumb, with all the factual information we have today.

  Is there one university today that teach man is 7000 years old or any school of higher learning???
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  fulltimestudent

  dropoffyourkeylee : Bible thumpers aside, why were the aborigines so isolated? Did they not have any knowledge of boats? The Chinese and the Polynesians were travelling long distances, why didn't they touch Australia? There must be reasons for this

  There certainly are reasons, the problem is that while one could think of possible reasons, it is almost impossible to verify them. Language is one way to attempt to work out how peoples moved, but it's only with the advent of genomics that it became possible to work out relationships. Likely we will never have all the answers as to what occurred.

  The native peoples of Australia possible reached the Australian land mass during a period when a land-bridge existed between the Malaysian peninsula, through the Indonesian islands and N.W. Australia. If that occurred some 40,000 years B.P. and later ocean levels rose to the extent necessary to isolate these peoples, then we can see some reasons for the isolation. Aust. native peoples did not (it seems) develop the skills neccessary for large boat building. The earliest Europeans to reach Australia noted the types of water craft used by the native peoples and there does not seem to have been any observed large boats. But, we need to note that these people were not as primitive as some Australians of European descent have described.

  A Wikipedia entry offers some of the theories that have been developed to explain the origins of Pacific basin peoples. You can find it at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polynesians

  When the entry speaks of Taiwanese, it does not mean the Chinese inhabitants, but refers to the earlier native Taiwanese people (descendants of whom still live in Taiwan)

  See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwanese_aborigines) - Its theorised that the Polynesian peoples originated there. Note some similarities in this image:

  
  

  The original peoples of Taiwan certainly had the maritime skills to make ocean journeys, as you see of some of them in the watercraft they still build.

  
  

  This diagram illustrates one concept of migration.

  
  

  and another slightly different concept:

  

  You may also find this reference helpful:
  

  ttps:/ /www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/090122141146.htm

  Its also important not to conflate time periods. What people did 40,000 years ago is different to what people did 2000 years ago when the Chinese initiated coastal shipping and moving across the South China sea, and one thousand years ago when Polynesians began their voyages.
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  Mephis

  If Noah only had 3 sons and all humans came from them, why have we got genetic evidence that humans interbred with neanderthals, with denisovans and with a species which we haven't yet pinned the bones to (Homo Erectus is current best guess)? It's that super-fast evolution like what happened to the animals, right?

  (https://www.newscientist.com/article/2098566-mystery-ancient-human-ancestor-found-in-australasian-family-tree/)