When did language develop?

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Written by Kim Wall

Thursday, 27 May 2010 22:57

Questions from a friend of a student named Yuchen:

When did language develop? How could Moses have writing skills during his time? When did Homo Sapiens appear on the Earth?

Answers

Yuchen, your friend might want to review history before making those kind of comments! Moses was raised by the Egyptians, Pharaoh's daughter in fact (Exodus 2:1-8). He was educated in all the ways of the Egyptians (Acts 7:20-22). Moses authored the first five books of the Bible (Exodus 24:4). How could he write? Because he had been educated by the Egyptians. The New Testament also reveals that Moses could write (Mark 10:5; Luke 20:28; John 1:45). Even Jesus Himself referred to the fact that Moses wrote about Him (John 5:46).

The reason there is confusion is that your friend is dealing with an incorrect timeline of history. There are two ways at looking at the past. One way is through Biblical lenses, and the other way is through any other lens but scripture (let's call these secular lenses). The secular lenses indicate that mankind (Homo Sapiens) has been around with our current brain capacity for as long as 200,000 years (although this is debatable even among evolutionary scientists). The secular lenses also suggests that humans did not evolve language skills right away once they had their big brains. Once Homo Sapiens developed language skills (more than simple grunts), it wasn't until very recently that written language had evolved (about 3,000 to 4,000 years ago). Again, this is one view of the past (the secular view). But there are many problems with this view.

First of all, this view is in direct opposition of the Biblical view. If we look through our Biblical lenses, we see that when God created the first human, Adam, that Adam had a language from the very beginning. How do we know? Because he gave names to all of the animals (Genesis 2:19-20). We also know that Adam had this built-in language from the beginning because he understood what God told him about the garden and the rule about the tree he was not to eat from. Otherwise, when God told Adam not to eat of that tree, how would Adam even know what "tree" was unless he had been given language skills by the Creator?

We also learn that within a few generations from Adam, that mankind was already building cities (Gen 4:17),

http://creationwiki.org/pool/images/d/d2/Vocalizing_chimpanzee.jpg

raising livestock and building tents (Gen 4:20), making musical instruments (Gen 4:21), and mining and forging metal (Gen 4:22). Our Biblical lens does not leave room for primitive, grunting, humans that is shown by the secular lens.

The question then becomes, which lens more accurately reflects reality? Which lens is better for interpreting the evidence? As Christians, we should always ask critical questions of any ideology that is in direct opposition of the Bible. We need to be critical thinkers rather than accept as true the interpretations from the secular worldview.

So, let's think critically about what the secular worldview wants us to believe about part of their timeline. I mentioned that secular scientists believe that the genus Homo Sapiens has been around for 200,000 years. But they also believe that humans (homo) and Neanderthals split from a common ancestor about 650,000 years ago. These are very large numbers and we need to put this into perspective. Consider the following quote:

"Even more nonsensical is the idea that modern humans, virtually identical in every way to us, walked through Europe for over 100,000 years without ever inventing a wheel, building a city, riding a horse, or planting a farm. That’s 10 to 12 times the length of all recorded human history. Anyone who does not see the patent absurdity of the evolutionary claim needs a serious deprogramming session. Not only that, evolutionists are telling us that human ancestors were capable of fire and cooking and hunting and upright walking, and maybe verbal and symbolic communication, for half a million to a million years. As Duane Gish rightly asked in 1993, “what in the world were our advanced hominid ancestors doing for almost a million years? Why was evolution, both physical and cultural, so quiescent for such a vast stretch of time? If Homo sapiens had evolved perhaps as much as 150,000 years ago or even longer, why was it that he invented agriculture and domestication so recently and so abruptly?” (Creation Scientists Answer Their Critics, p. 354)." (1)

Do you see how this timeline makes no sense at all? Just think about how much technology has increased over the past 200 years. We have gone from steam powered locomotives to sending men and women in space via rockets and space shuttles. We have moved from delivering messages through telegraph to being able to instantly send a message to anyone, anywhere on the globe through the Internet. Man has advanced from using Colt revolvers to nuclear weapons capable of leveling entire cities. In medicine alone there have been numerous advances including artificial hearts, the gamma knife, and nuclear medicine.

It is difficult indeed to think that our ancestors were content with making fire, grunting, and living in caves for nearly a million years without advancing in any area whatsoever. And then, suddenly, after nearly a million years (and only 3,500 years ago), we are supposed to believe that they learned farming, agriculture, city building, complex languages, long-distance trading, mining, manufacturing, and shipping all at once. But this is what the secular lens would like for all to believe. This view requires a great deal of faith.

The Biblical lens provides us with a much richer interpretation. Why did all of these things suddenly show up between 3,000 and 4,000 years ago? Because this would be the time period following the global flood (The flood of Noah took place about 4,500 years ago). Think about it. All humans not on the Ark would have been destroyed during the year long world-wide flood. All technology learned and gained up to that point would have perished along with them. Noah and his family (eight people in all) would have to start over. For the next 500 years, the population would have been expanding, technology regained, and activities and skills that were practiced before the flood would have once again been widely employed - between 3,000 and 4,000 years ago. It's not the case that our primitive ancestors remained stupid for a million years before deciding to advance their thinking. The better interpretation is that it took several hundred years after the flood to rebuild and repopulate. This is what it means to look through the Biblical lens and it provides a powerful explanation of the evidence over that of the secular lens.

And yes, during the first few years following the flood, there would have been ample caves (carved out from the receding flood waters) for Noah and his progeny to live in while civilization was being rebuilt. The only cavemen in the history of man were these kind of cavemen - intelligent, fully functional, language-bearing humans!

Richard Dawkins is perhaps the most influential evolutionist of our time. He has this to say about the origin of human language, "My clear example is language. Nobody knows how it began. Equally obscure is the origin of semantics; of words and their meanings". This just about sums up the secular view on where and when language developed. Nobody knows, according to Dawkins. But this is simply not true. Perhaps Dawkins should read the first 11 chapters of Genesis to learn of the origin of language and the dispersion of languages at the Tower of Babel. But then again, he would have to change his glasses in order to do that!

So, you have a choice as to which worldview you will allow to guide your thinking. Your friend has chosen the secular lens and is sadly trapped into the absurd scenarios described above. But perhaps you can gently and humbly show them that there is a choice and it matters which worldview is adopted.

Keep thinking!

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