How old is man?
Introduction
Man has always wondered
how old is the man on this place we call earth; to be precise, he asked himself
where his ancestors come from and he sought the answers in mainly two different
areas: anthropology and religion. Since the early times of the human kind, man
looked around to define his position on earth and for that matter, sought the
aid of the stars and the nature. And for his most immediate past, he sought the
memories of the older men in the clan which was transferred from one generation
to the other. But, even with this process, one was limited to the extent of the
knowledge it had about the real past of the mankind and with the advent of
basic religion in around 50000 years B.C., that knowledge started to take shape
in a form that moved towards its written form in 3000 B.C, commonly known as
the holy books. With the development of the science and mainly the anthropology
during the 18th and 19th century, man was able to answer
the question regarding the age of the mankind. But, though the science has
enlightened the question “how old is man?” in various forms, the conservative
minded persons still rely on Holy Books in order to find the right answer.
Under these circumstances, we will try
to answer this question by first asking to ourselves the age of the man
according to the anthropology, followed by taking the point of view of the Holy
Books on this matter, and finally to arrive to debate of the conservatives and
the scientists on the matter.
I.
The age of the
man according to the anthropology
1.
The term anthropology
was first used in its proper sense by Emmanuel Kant who wrote one of the first
majors treaties on anthropology, his Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of
View which took him 25 years to write it but who begun teaching an annual
course in anthropology in 1772. Anthropology is thus primarily an Enlightenment
and post-Enlightenment endeavourer this movement evolved rapidly with the
advent of colonialism and imperialism with the quest for the origins of the
man. Charles Darwin wrote the book On the Origin of Species in 1859 where he
postulated the theory of natural selection which in turn turned to become the
basic mechanism of evolution from the 1930s to the 1950s. Thus, one would ask
to itself when did the first man appear on earth or who is our first parental
man and how old is he?
2.
The
anthropology has many views on man as a whole but the main breakthrough it had
was to solve the mystery of the age of the man on earth. Based on facts, the
oldest man maybe as old as 7 million years. How old is the man depends on what
one call “man”. The skull of a hominoid who lived 7 million years ago looks
partly like a chimpanzee’s skull and partly like a human’s skull. Is that
creature a man? No sharp line separates early apes from early men. Instead, it
is a continuation whose nature we decipher from sparse fossil remains. Earliest
men looked much like we do now; they walked on two legs as we do and by 3
million years ago, they were nearly as efficient walkers as we: their pelvises
(round like a bowl for stable support) and feet (long and skinny with arches
for strength) looked more like ours than a chimpanzee’s. Their heads were
different from modern humans. Tiny brain cases (about a third our size) big
faces, big teeth with thick enamel, large jaws, and powerful jaw muscles. How
to tell if an early hominid was an early man? Walking upright is the hallmark.
Apes first learned to walk on two feet and that allowed them to develop
intelligence. Bipedality is the first critical criterion; the other thing would
be a reduced canine (smaller than in other primates). If a creature meets these
two conditions (walking upright and small canines) we define him to be a man.
3.
From here, we
shall follow hominids forward and look at candidates for the “earliest man”,
thus arrive to the answer to the question “how old is man?”
7 to 6 million years ago: Sahelanthropus tchadensis. This creature is a
good candidate but we know too little yet about the species to be certain. The
way the neck muscles attach to the skull indicates an upright walk and its
teeth are more like ours (small canine).
6 million years ago: Orronin tugenensis. Though not a promising
candidate but an early ape, it was perhaps bipedal and a tree climber. If it
turns out that the creature was bipedal, then it would likely be the early man.
5.5 to 4.5 million years ago: Ardipithecus ramidus. It was possibly a
bipedal and may have been a forest dweller thus a fair candidate as an early
man.
4.2 to 3.0 million years ago: Australopithecines. This group of hominids
was definitely bipedal, had small canine teeth and, therefore, were early men.
2.4 to 1.5 million years ago: Homo habilis. It was bipedal and similar
to the australopithecines; definitely an early man and possibly able to talk.
So, the answer to this question would be: man is, maybe, as old as 7
million years old and surely, as old as 2.4. Million years.
II.
The age of the
man according to the holy books.
1.
The Holy Books
state that the first man came from heaven through a seed. Though they have been
written in the past, the writers did not differ too much about the past of the
man, thus his age. From the first civilizations of the Mesopotamia (Sumer,
Assyria) and the Nile region (Ancient Egypt) and the first holy book (the book
of the dead) to the most recent holy book (the Quran), people have always
stipulated as to the origin of the man and to his age. This task was left to
the priesthood who preferred to simplify the matters by sticking to a theory
they came up with, which placed the man in a relatively short period of time in
the human history inside the books but sufficiently long enough to endure the
passage of time due to the lack of knowledge until the Renaissance period, by
stating that Adam was the first man who was sent away from heaven.
2.
After the fall
of the Roman Empire, the confrontation of man with the realities of the time
necessitated the preservation of the knowledge and thus, the question “how old
is man?” remained unanswered for more than 1000 years, a period we refer to as
the “Dark Ages”. The holy books and scripts were read out to people as the true
knowledge and no one contested them, to a point where the true age of the man
was answered trough the calculation present in the Holy Books, without any need
for inquiring any further the matter, possibly by the fear that the true answer
would destroy the credibility of the Holy Books and thus the religious
institution which based its foundation.
3.
HOW OLD is the
man according to the Bible?
If we go back 500 years, we come to the time of martin Luther (born in
1483), and Colombus, who sailed the Atlantic in 1492.
If we go back 1000 years, we come to the time of Leif Ericson, a
Christian Explorer who preached Christ to pagans.
If we go back 2000 years, we come to the birth of Jesus Christ. The
Western calendar is dated from His birth.
If we go back 3000 years, we come to the time of David and Solomon; they
ruled Israel about 1000 B.C.
If we go back 4000 years, we come to the time of Abraham (2000 B.C.),
the ancestor of Arabs and Jews.
If we go back 5000 years, we come to the time of Enoch, who walked with
God 300 years and God took him into Heaven.
If we go back 6000 years, we come to the time of Creation, and Adam and
Eve (4000 B.C.). Luke, evangelist and historian, records Adam as the first man
(Luke 3:38).
The man is about 6000 years old. Let the people of the God rejoice in
Him who made them! (Psalm 149:2)
III.
Conservatives,
Materialists and Scientists: How old is the man?
1.
People prefer
to limit themselves to what is already known and they try to find the answers
in the Holy Books by accepting them as the absolute truth on any matter
relating to the man. Thus, when wondering about the age of man, they rely on
the simple arithmetic calculations postulated in the Holy Book without questioning
it. At this point, the inquiry on the matter seems to be pointless though some
scientist are able to separate religion and science in their real world and
thus be able to provide an answer to the question. But, when Charles Darwin
stated that the man’s origin was an ape like creature and later the science
proved the theory as to be right, many conservatives tried to refute the thesis
by attacking it strongly through the Holy Book and thus tried to bring an
answer to the question “how old is man” by simply substituting the essence of
science with the metaphysical element of the matter, thus bypassing the issue
through ignoring the reality in order to implement the old point of view. This
way, they solved the mystery of the question “how old is man” by eluding any
possible inquiry of the believers in faith.
2.
When
criticizing with the religion, the materialists state that, by its very nature,
the religion refutes the existence of the man as the predecessor of the ape
like creatures (hominids) and replace it by a false vision of the man’s age,
fabricated on the basis of the old school which has very limited depth as to
knowledge itself which was limited to common things such as stars and natural
events. The advent of the agriculture forced man to adopt a hierarchal
organization, placing the state and the priesthood at the top. The duo wrote
the rules of ruling the ancient society and thus kept the monopoly of the
knowledge at hand for thousands of years, which in turn permitted the
preservation of the social dilemma where men were subjected to the duality of
bad and good, set in the interests of the ruling class. To avoid any
questioning of the set order, written Holy Books were declared as responding to
everything unknown in the name of God and the State backed it up, thus
preventing any inquiry as to the age of man, among other matters. The advent of
scientific development refuted this situation with the Renaissance and the
matter became a major topic of the Materialists who were in quest of the answer
as to the age of the man, among other questions which still remain unanswered.
3.
Interestingly,
the scientist, mainly anthropologist, came up with an answer this question: man
is older than what the Holy Books stipulate. With the passage of time, the
man’s knowledge developed and forced its way through and joined partially the
materialists’ point of view where science and materialism converge on the
meaning of life and the origin of the man, both of which provide a justified
answer as to the age of man. While early man differ from the ape by the fact
that he is a bipedal hominid and is able to speak (a sign of developed
intelligence), the dynamic behind the
concept is sound and is opposed to the Holy Book which postulates the Adam
theory as stated above. But there’s a point that one must not forget: science
is dynamic while the Holy Book is static.
We have currently entered into the second decade of the 21st
century and with the rapid development of science in many fields, the answer to
the question “how old is man?” has been a major event. The development in
genetics and biochemistry has opened new ways in the quest of the answer while
the Holy Books and the religion itself remained stoic; they represent a three
dimensional aspect of the man which is static by its nature and is in total
contrast with the science which, in turn, represents a four dimensional aspect
of the man. Motion outpaces immobility and the anthropology provides the answer:
the man is 7 million years old…
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