Why did Civilization Develop only Recently

Accessible Evidences of a Young Earth
Young Earth Creationism is now able to offer several affirmations that our earth is not of the great antiquity which 'evolutionists' and 'uniformitarians' have been insisting for around 160 years...

Where are all the graves? Whilst a military cemetery, like the one in our picture, may contain many graves, overall, there are a lack of graves and tombs to be found on our planet, even with much excavation. What one actually discovers fits a human civilisation which is less than about 8,000 years old.

Sometimes people forget that the concept that our earth is many millions, or billions, of years old is rather a new concept here in the western world. Two men: Charles Lyell and Charles Darwin did more to popularize this view than anybody else and this only happened comparatively recently (mid to late 19th century). Both Lyell's uniformitarianism and Darwin's evolution (of course, evolution is much, much older than Darwin but it's widespread acceptance only dates to Darwin), insisted that our earth is very, very old, indeed many millions, if not billions, of years old. At length, Society and Academia went 'hook, line and sinker' for this approach and - in the process - many strong evidences for the belief that our planet is only a few thousand years old became neglected, and - with time - largely forgotten. Certainly 'Modernism' was keen to suppress our various ancient histories, especially since they often spoke of a Great Flood and an age of the world's populations within 6 thousand years! Encouragingly, however, 'young earth' support is again growing. Nowadays, strong scientific evidences for a young earth are becoming available through several sources, including, for example, people like Robert Gentry, the nuclear physicist. However, this particular article will keep things on a simple level by looking at just two or three very accessible points:

1. Human Population Growth.
At present (2007-9) our planet contains about 6 billion people. Despite screams to the contrary from certain leftist environmentalists, the truth is that the world population is currently surprisingly low. We need to ask: How long would our earth take to reach this 6 billion level of population? There is currently a population growth rate of 2% per year, this, of course, will have varied, nevertheless let us start by looking at the current human population growth rate and view things from where we stand right now.
If a 2% growth rate had been consistent, how long would it take to get from just two people upon earth to 6 billion people? Several people have done the calculation, including Dr Marc Surtees PhD. The answer will be surprising for some: only 1,100 years!

Now that is not very long. However, there have been wars, diseases and catastrophes along the way and, especially in the West, contraception has been strongly promoted during the last 40 years. However, even allowing for such things, if this world should be many millions of years old and if 'fully evolved man' has now been around for something like 100,000 years (as evolutionists confidently tell us)... where are all the people?
A current world human population figure of only 6 billion people is far too low! As we have already noted, such a figure was achievable in less than 2,000 years! Certainly we see nothing in the histories of the last few thousand years to explain our amazing lack of people, that is, if 'fully-evolved' mankind has been around for 100,000 plus years - as evolutionists insist. Far more likely is the fact that our earth is not many millions of years old at all but just a few thousand years old.
The second of the two very clear and straightforward points which we are going to look at is closely related (if you'll pardon the expression) with the first:

2. Human Civilisation is Too Short.
Evolutionists tell us that Stone Age Homo sapiens existed for anything from 100,000 to 160,000 years before beginning to make written records around 4,000 to 5,000 years ago. Yet Prehistoric man built megalithic monuments, made beautiful cave paintings, and kept a full record of the lunar phases. Why would he wait two thousand centuries before using the same skills to record history? It just does not hold water! Also why, if evolutionists are correct, did it take fully-evolved mankind so long to form cities and civilisations? Catal Huyuk in Turkey and Jericho in Israel are often considered the world's two oldest cities with very early evidence of civilisations, but only going back to around 6,000-8,000 years (the second figure actually very dubious)- Nothing before that! But - again - if mankind has been around for 100,000 years, why are the "oldest civilizations" so young? After all, we speak here of 'fully evolved' men and women with brain capacities just like yours and mine! Isn't the need to build homes for shelter and security a fairly obvious human activity? Families will tend to stay reasonably close, so towns and cities could soon be expected - why the unfathomable delay?

Let us look at what we know about the major early civilisations:
* The Sumerians go back to about 4.000BC
* The Egyptian dynasties go back to circa 3,000BC
* The oldest Chinese dynasties go back to about 1,700BC
* The Mayans go back to circa 1800BC

If people have been around for so long, why did it take them so long to establish cities and civilisations? All the evidence which the vital discipline of archaeology is able to produce suggests a human population of this earth which is only a few thousand years old. This, of course, was also generally accepted until Philosophical Naturalism (allowing no concept of God or of the supernatural) started to become applied to science, especially from the days of Darwin and Lyell.

Even beyond the points we have covered in this brief article, there are other associated ones which one could puzzle over. One question which has been occasionally asked is: Why don't we have more human graves? If during a period of 100,000 years you have a population of, say, 1-10 million (far from unreasonable, in fact, probably unrealistically low), where are all the graves? Even on this low estimate about 4 billion people should have died. It has been calculated that if you calculate the land surface of the world, you should now have a density of about 80 graves per square mile - where are they? There are far fewer than that, planet-wide probably closer to 1-4 graves per sqare mile. Now it is true that some have not buried their dead but have cremated them or disposed of the deceased in some other way, nevertheless the burial of the dead has been a very strong human tradition from all kinds of societies. Again, this itself is a strong pointer to our human history being just a few thousand years old and not anything like 100,000 years!

Okay, the points which we have covered are not, perhaps, 'deep science' yet they are points which have been too abruptly 'brushed under the carpet.' Fact is: there is, and always has been, very strong evidence indeed that this earth is not of the great antiquity that some have claimed and much of this evidence has unquestionably been suppressed during the era of Modernism.

Robin A. Brace, March 17th 2009. http://www.ukapologetics.net/09/accessibleevidences.htm

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