The Puzzle of Ancient Man and His Degenerating Children

The received world view of humanity is that we developed out of simpler creatures via a random and mindless process into the wonderfully complex beings we are today. This view is accepted by most people in Britain. Some theists cleverly manage to combine it with faith, whilst retaining the initial premise- that we are becoming more advanced as time moves on. Donald Chittick’s book The Puzzle of Ancient Man challenges this view. He cites the evidence of advanced technologies from the ancient world to argue that ancient man had expertise to rival, if not exceed, our own. For example, the Great Pyramid’s base in Egypt was constructed with an error of only 7/8 of an inch over its total thirteen-acre base. That’s less than half the thickness of a human hair. The builders must have therefore had access to some kind of optical surveying equipment, something not officially available to the human race until the twentieth century. 

 

Furthermore, he examines the granite blocks used inside the pyramid. Evidence on their exterior shows that they were sawn. Hand sawing is unimaginable, says Christopher Dunn, an expert in machine tools, on account of the blocks’ sheer size, weight and the neatness of the cut. Chittick therefore asserts that the ancient Egyptian masons had access to some kind of power tool. 

 

Shifting his attention to ancient remains from South America, he focusses on Sacahuaman in Peru. The site of the ancient city there contains stones weighing between 100 and 20,000 tones. Our modern cranes can lift 300 tons, so how did these supposedly primitive people manage it? 

 

Similarly, he points out that the ancient Mayan calendar is a more accurate way to measure time’s passage than our own Gregorian calendar, which incorporates leap years to compensate for its errors. The Mayans began their calculations at creation- within half a century of Bishop Ussher’s famous calculation of 4004BC. 

 

He therefore concludes than ancient man, especially antediluvian man, was highly advanced technologically. Most of this knowledge was lost in the flood, but some of it, or the memory of it, left the ark. This accounts for the prowess of ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt. They being closer to the purer genetics of Adam and Eve, though corrupted by sin, had not yet degenerated as much as we have. They lived longer and they were more intelligent. Contrast this with what Michael Snyder, of Stanford University’s Genetics Department, writes:

 

So we are not the advanced race we imagine ourselves to be. Our ancestors were far from primitive, and we are more prone to physical illnesses and failure than they. 

Matthew 24