This fun little number is my choice for this month’s selection. I had a blast reading it, will make just a few general comments about it, and then leave you to your own devices.
First, for those of you who are not dispensationalist, as I am not, will notice that certain dispensational forms of expression are woven through the book, but not in a way that really detracts from the point. Just consider that a broadening cultural experience, and besides you Reformed types need to get out more anyway. On top of that, given what the book is about, there is no one better than a godly dispensationalist for teaching you how to not be embarrassed by anything in the Bible. This does not rise to the level of a universal law, but it does serve nicely for a rule of thumb. Different folks have different litmus tests for modernity-accommodation — I use the Star of Bethlehem myself — but dinosaurs will do nicely.
The Genius of Ancient Man is subtitled Evolution’s Nightmare. This is well named, because there are certain things that you would expect ancient man to have mastered . . . in evolutionary terms.
The reason this is such a great book is that it collects a number of uncontroversial facts, assembles them in one place as to make an unanswerable controversy. There are two kinds of statements that creationists can make about the ancient world that draw laughter from the secularits. There are those statements which the secularists deny (Noah’s flood, say), but then there are those statements that everybody accepts and agrees with, but if we point to them, we get laughed at anyway. This book assembles numerous incontroverible facts, and does so in a way that plays old Harry with the evolutionist’s tale of the history of man.
Say that you suggest that Central America was settled by men from across the Pacific, men who clearly understood trans-oceanic navigation. Ho, ho, ho, you cornpone, you. But what did Captain Cook discover when he got to Hawaii? Well, not to put too fine a point on it, there were people there, who had not, as I have modestly suggested on previous occasions, did not float out there on a coconut. Somebody understood trans-oceanic navigation.
Say you are watching our ancestors at the moment when they finally climbed down out of the trees. The leader of that little group — leader Malook, let us call him — has decided that there is an evolutionary advantage that will come to his tribe if they leave the bananas behind, and start chasing gazelles with rocks. That primate was one grand visionary, and ought to receive more recognition than he has so far.
There are certain things that this little group ought not to be able to do, and building pyramids would be among them. High levels of astronomy would be another, and hoiking huge rocks that weigh as much as Rhode Island would be yet another.
This book is wealth of information about henges and mounds, and pyramids, mechanical ingenuity, and ancient astonomical wisdom, and global travel, and much more. And all of it is utterly inconsistent with the standard narrative of mankind’s origins.