Pre-Flood Civilization: Was early man technically advanced?

Question: Do you think the Pre-Flood civilization was very technologically advanced?

Answer: The biblical evidence seems to support an early development in this area. To begin with there were inborn abilities of language and science, given by God to Adam and Eve, from the very first moment of their existence. Otherwise, God could not have communicated with them, or given them key responsibilities, as He did.

As formed by the Lord, Adam and Eve were surely ideal human beings, made “in the image of God, and equipped to exercise dominion over creation” (Gen. 1:26-27). “You [God] have made him [man] a little lower than the angels, and You have crowned him with glory and honour” (Ps. 8:5). That does not sound like a grunting, hairy ape-like creature, barely able to walk upright!

They tell us that today we’re only using about 10% of our brain’s capacity and capability. Would not our first parents, made by God only a little lower than angelic beings, use far more? Adam was not an inarticulate caveman. In truth, I would expect that he was far more intelligent than modern man.

We’re told: “Out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them. And whatever Adam called each living creature, that was its name” (Gen. 2:19).

Even if this involved identifying merely broad classifications of animals, it took wisdom and intelligence, and the gift of speech, to do so. And the fact that God fully accepted Adam’s decisions is also remarkable. Adam knew what he was doing.

Genesis 4 gives us a picture of early civilizations. Cain (the next generation after Adam) build a “city” (vs. 20), which suggests not isolated cave dwellers, or even a little cluster of mud huts, but something larger and more complex. These early humans were involved in agriculture (vs. 20), the arts (vs. 21), and industry (vs. 22)–where developments in metallurgy also suggest that mining was going on.

The longevity of pre-flood man is significant. The fact that human beings lived for centuries (with Methuselah approaching a millennium!) enabled not only a more rapid expansion of the population, but also a more rapid accumulation of knowledge.

Just after the flood, the Lord says of the founders of Babel, “Now nothing that they propose to do will be withheld from them” (Gen. 11:6). This posed a significant danger. As we have seen with modern technology (atomic energy, the Internet, etc.), the sin-darkened heart of man can quickly turn engines of progress into engines of destruction, both physical and moral.

The post-flood climate quickly reduced the lifespans of man, and the miraculous division of languages at Babel pushed them apart, and slowed the progress of evil in the world for a time. Even so, the presence of human remains all over the globe suggests there was exploration and mapping going on, early in ancient times.

Huge building projects, astronomical calculations, and medical developments from early on, all have been discovered. Electric batteries have been found in the Ur of Abraham’s time–likely used for electroplating. Evidence of the latter has been found from even earlier, 500 years before Abraham.

Solomon wrote, a thousand years after Abraham: “There is nothing new under the sun. Is there anything of which it may be said, ‘See, this is new’? It has already been in ancient times before us” (Ecc. 1:9-10).

The records and artifacts of much of life in earth’s earliest era were apparently destroyed by the flood. But for me it takes much less faith to believe what I’ve outlined above than to swallow the ridiculously flawed theorizing of the evolutionists–that an amorphous blob, floating in some ancient sea, turned into man by some accident or chance, over aeons of time.