Man’s Pre-Flood Potential

Ever wondered what man could have accomplished in the 1,600 years before the Flood? Could Noah really have built a massive ship? If you have been influenced by evolutionary ideas, maybe you think he couldn’t.

What we sometimes forget is that man at that time was a relatively recent creation of God, given a perfect brain and an immense life span. Imagine if everyone in your neighborhood was as smart as Einstein, as clever as Galileo, and as observant as Newton. Add to this nearly 1,000 years to learn, to experiment, and to increase knowledge. What could be invented?

Consider this simple historical progression. In the 1500s, mining was on the upswing and a big problem was water would flood the tunnels. A simple suction pump solved this, except, curiously, the pump did not lift water any higher than 32 feet.

In 1630 Baliani presented this problem to Galileo, who was joined in 1641 by Torricelli. Torricelli suspected the answer had to do with air pressure, and he invented the mercury barometer to prove it.

Then 1675 came along, and French astronomer Picard, using Torricelli’s barometer, noticed that it glowed when shaken. Hauksbee, a pupil of Newton, discovered the glow was static electricity, which let to the invention of a basic battery that enabled Oersted to electrify a wire and produce a magnetic field.

From this, Sturgeon invented the electromagnet, which enabled Faraday to generate the electricity that von Helmholtz used to activate a tuning fork, which inspired Alexander Graham Bell in 1875 to invent the telephone!*

From 1630 to 1875 is 245 years. Allowing an average life span of 70 years, we have a little over 3 generations, which would equal only about one quarter of the life span of our pre-Flood builder Noah!

It seems clear that pre-Flood man had the intelligence, the time, and the potential to develop a world that was much more advanced than we are used to thinking about!

*Timeline from James Burke, Connections (Little and Brown Company, 1978) pp. 72-79.