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Plimpton 322
Never heard of Plimpton 322? Neither had I until I recently watched a video on it. “Plimpton 322 is arguably the most interesting, most sophisticated mathematical document from the ancient world. It tells us that past civilizations understood mathematics a lot better than we thought. In particular the Mesopotamians understood Pythagorean triples at a level of sophistication that we never expected” (Dr. Daniel Mansfield, University of New South Wales, BBC Reel, 11/25/21).
Dating back to ca. 1,800 B.C., the clay tablet roughly parallels the time of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Further, the era of Egyptian pyramid-building ended about this time. Mansfield suggests that early Babylonians were using such advanced calculations in surveying, especially in an era where private ownership of land was a new development in human affairs: “And when you’ve got land owned by private individuals, you’ve got disputes over who owns which parts of the land or who owns which date palms …”.
This is just one illustration among many that tells us about the advanced intellectual capability of ancient man. From our modern vantage point – with the accumulated knowledge of all previous humanity; with sophisticated instruments of micro and macro exploration; with ego-centrism that is common to all generations; with Darwinian models of human evolution – we tend to see early societies as ignorant and clueless. There is no doubt that man has “evolved” in knowledge and awareness of his environment, but he didn’t begin from scratch as a caveman hunter/gatherer who grunted his will or desire.
In Scripture, the first humans had advanced speech and reasoning skills. On the very day of his creation Adam named the animals brought to him (Gn 2:19-20). After Eve was made from his rib, Adam recognized the exclusive role she would play in his life, and both understood the charge given to them by God to “be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing …” (Gn 1:28; 2:22-23; Cf. Mk 10:6).
When their ungodly, murderous son Cain was banished, “he built a city …” (Gn 4:17). The children of Lamech developed animal husbandry, musical instruments and metalsmithing (Gn 4:30-32). Several generations later Noah built an enormous ark to preserve life during the upcoming global flood – likely using knowledge and skills that were already in existence. While God gave the blueprints, there is no suggestion that Noah needed divine assistance in construction.
On and on we could go, but the upshot is that the Bible flatly contradicts evolutionary theory that modern man and apes descended from a common ancestor. But desperate to find archaeological links between humans and ape-ancestors – we all learned in our school textbooks about so-called hominid fossils – you know, the ones where they found a tooth or a sliver of bone and then reconstructed an entire imaginary creature out of them. “Though many similarities may be cited between living apes and humans, the only historical evidence that could support the ape ancestry of man must come from fossils. Unfortunately, the fossil record of man and apes is very sparse. Approximately 95% of all known fossils are marine invertebrates, about 4.7% are algae and plants, about 0.2% are insects and other invertebrates, and only about 0.1% are vertebrates … Finally, only the smallest imaginable fraction of vertebrate fossils consists of primates (humans, apes, monkeys, and lemurs)” (Dr. David Menton, Answers Book 2, p 84-85). I can only imagine the howling from skeptics if Christians supported their beliefs with such flimsy, sketchy evidence.
“Knowing from Scripture that God didn’t create any apemen, there are only three ways for the evolutionist to create one:
1. Combine ape fossil bones with human fossil bones and declare the two to be one individual – a real ‘apeman.” (This was actually done with the Piltdown Man hoax in the early 1900s – jj.)
2. Emphasize certain humanlike qualities of fossilized ape bones, and with imagination upgrade apes to be more humanlike.
3. Emphasize certain apelike qualities of fossilized human bones, and with imagination downgrade humans to be more apelike.
These … approaches account for all of the attempts by evolutionists to fill the unbridgeable gap between apes and men with fossil apemen” (ibid 89).
An additional observation about early intelligence: When we read about ancient idolatry, which often involved images carved in wood or stone or crafted from precious metals (Is 44:9-20; 46:6-7), we may think this was done by superstitious cave-dwellers who ignorantly thought thunderstorms were the work of angry gods. But when describing heathen idolatry, Paul says, “although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man – and birds and four-footed beasts and creeping things” (Rom 1:21-23).
In other words, they deliberately chose to reject what they knew about the true God and willingly embraced false gods that rationalized their wickedness. It was a calculated choice, not a mentally dull attempt to explain the forces of the natural world. While they lacked deeper scientific knowledge that we now possess, ancient societies were not only good mathematicians but astronomers, meteorologists, metallurgists, builders, sea-farers, farmers, herdsmen and historians. The ancients were smarter than we think they were, and we’re often dumber than we think we are. If you don’t believe it, just look up Plimpton 322 on Wikipedia and try to understand what the ancient Babylonians knew about geometry. Go ahead …
