Now, the Evolution believers who think man as Homo sapiens sapiens (excluding Neanderthals, Denisovans, Heidelbergians, Antecessors) have been around for 300 000 thousand years and civilisation only started like 10 000 years ago, they have an answer.
The answer is not pretty, but not quite for the reason you think.
Before "end of the last Ice Age" and a plenty in the Fertile Crescent, so they say, man was always on the move. This means, groups were small, so skills couldn't be reliably transmitted and "next year" was so unpredictable, it was useless to make technologies involving the future.
So, it doesn't involve one ugly answer that Lefebvre knew was being discussed in Seminaries under Pius XII.
This answer is, Cro Magnons were simply not human. If they had been human, they would have made inventions and thus, the 97 % of our existence (96.667 %) that we have had settlement, larger groups, inventions building on each other, need to have been done by subhumans. Adam, on their view, came after these. If we are related to them, maybe Adam had non-human progenitors, who couldn't teach him to speak, which makes God a child abuser.
Now, the friend of mine who was on an FSSP seminar and later an FSSPX seminar and later married didn't mention Adam having non-human progenitors or this making God a child abuser. Perhaps the Seminar where Lefebvre was didn't even touch that with a pole. But the idea that Adam had non-human progenitors existed, as it is mentioned by Humani Generis. And it logically leads to God being a child abuser against Adam. When someone becomes a feral child now, maybe handicapped for life if it lasts long enough, this is punishment for Adam's sin. But, by definition, in his own childhood, Adam would not yet have sinned, so
he couldn't be punished that way. It would have been an act of injustice on God's part.
Now, this is not the actual reason why the more modern version is ugly too. Here it comes.
In a pre-settled society, women can only carry one child and therefore cannot afford a second child before the first one can walk. Child spacing for four years ... if contraception fails, abortion or abandoning children is a back-up plan.
This is the modern version of what happened to us before the Fertile Crescent. If it happened to men before Adam sinned, it was evil, unless they were subhuman, which arguably they weren't. Modern archaeologists have picked that apart very well. If it happened for 300 000 years
after Adam sinned, it means the historical transmission of Genesis 3 as well as the faithful waiting for the Messias are compromised.
I am not a fan of Vatican II, but Dei Verbum in § 3 at least is better than this idea.
God, who through the Word creates all things (see John 1:3) and keeps them in existence, gives men an enduring witness to Himself in created realities (see Rom. 1:19-20). Planning to make known the way of heavenly salvation, He went further and from the start manifested Himself to our first parents. Then after their fall His promise of redemption aroused in them the hope of being saved (see Gen. 3:15) and from that time on He ceaselessly kept the human race in His care, to give eternal life to those who perseveringly do good in search of salvation (see Rom. 2:6-7). Then, at the time He had appointed He called Abraham in order to make of him a great nation (see Gen. 12:2). Through the patriarchs, and after them through Moses and the prophets, He taught this people to acknowledge Himself the one living and true God, provident father and just judge, and to wait for the Savior promised by Him, and in this manner prepared the way for the Gospel down through the centuries.
Do you see the pre-Abraham parts happening over 300 000 years in conditions of continuous instability? I don't.
The current Vatican II-ers, or here majority of them, by being Evolutionists, are getting themselves in objective conflict, if not a social roast, with the Vatican II they claim to follow. Oddi and Ottaviani, whose initial schema would have been far closer to Young Earth Creationism or at least the Old Earth Scenarios with a recent humanity, perhaps after a gap or after creation days that were periods, the kind of things Fundies go for when they aren't Young Earth Creationists, and some Catholics did too between Lyell and
l’École biblique et archéologique française de Jérusalem* (which around 1919 came out with the Framework Hypothesis, 5 years before Prof. Arie Noordtzij did so in 1924**) and that was it, they didn't say "men existed 300 000 years" ... especially not under those conditions. Oddi and Ottaviani are already buried in the cardinal mitres, and they aren't here to roast anyone socially. Alfredo Ottaviani died in 1979. Silvio Oddi in 2001, before the second edition of CCC.
But roasted or not, they are in an objective contradiction with Dei Verbum § 3. And it's
they who claim that was a council of the Church.
Now, what would I say as a Young Earth Creationist?
First, as a Catholic. Nothing before Vatican II came even close to dogmatising the modern view, and as we see from the citation, not even Vatican II. Young Earth Creationism is the historic staple view of Catholicism, not an exotic import from Protestantism.
But second, the main problem is the timeline.
For carbon dates less than 39 000 years old and older than c. 11 600 years old, the actual dates of real history are 2958 to 2608 BC, the remainder of Noah's life.
For non-carbon dates, and most of the range older than 39 000 years is that, we have other dating methods involved, for instance K-Ar dating of the lava above, and those methods with the distortion would point to the Flood. Just as the dates of 1.8 million years for the oldest Homo Erectus, if I recall correctly.
For carbon dates older than 39 000 years and this would include Denisovans and Neanderthals, we have another problem.
Third, the other problem, after the timeline, is, God deliberately
hid the Nodian civilisation. You think Muslims are bad? You haven't seen Azteks. You think Azteks are bad? Well, what about Nodians the centuries before the Flood?
The mostly Neanderthals but also actual members of the sapiens sapiens phylum, the majority race on the Ark, what we see from before the Flood is a limited view. Peoples living lives like those of the men just after the Flood. Peoples who were welcome as part admixture on the Ark, because of their expertise in this kind of life. Peoples who lived in cities, apart from Noah and his family,
if they did, were corrupted. Very corrupted. Like things that would probably make even an exorcist who has seen most shrink back.
That angered God, that is one main thing He wanted to cover irretrievably or unretrieved up to the end times, under waters and mud of Noah's world wide Flood.
But while corrupted those last generations, they had knowhow and Noah profited from what they could (indirectly perhaps) teach him of woodworking or making wood resin pitch. Or perhaps it wasn't so indirect. Perhaps he paid an apprenticeship in Nodian Henoch City by the 500 years of possibly celibacy, finding no one whom he could in good conscience marry or nobody who wanted him and her parents did too. Though, given the pre-Flood corruption, that could have come even to someone in the countryside.
But first, let's cover the older ugly story, not in water or mud, but in argument. The video that deals with the conditions of early men, which I have alluded to in nearly every outlining of the modern evolutionary story, has this to say about men before "10 000 years ago", namely:
2:25—2:49
These are not cavemen grunting at a fire. These are people with plans, beliefs, fashion, and the patience to spend weeks on a single object. That's the entire recipe right there. Brains, fire, tools, cooperation, language, art, and the ability to pass it on. Every civilization that ever existed was built from exactly those ingredients and nothing else.
A brute, such as some Seminarians back in Msgr Lefebvre's days in
Séminaire français de Rome contracted to Pontifical Gregorian University, or in days when he looked into other seminaries, took "pre-Adamite Cro-Magnons" to be would not have planned spending weeks with a single object. It totally breaks down on this alone.
So, fourth, this is the progress of Civilisation before and after the Flood.
Adam had supernaturally acquired knowledge that, along his life, he could naturally test and transmit. He was, like his son Cain, fully adequate to have ploughed fields. And to educate his other son Abel to have livestock.
Cain added, to stone tools, bone tools, skins, agriculture and pastoralism, also the dimension of city life and statehood.
Seth and his line added the dimension of civic opposition out of piety.
The Nephelim added loads of barbarism. Some consider them to have been involved in the generation when Tubal-Cain was adult, and Tubal-Cain added metallurgy, his sister Noema added textiles.
The barbarism arguably was part of what led to the Mahabharata war.
Which I find spoken of indirectly or in very general terms like this:
Now giants were upon the earth in those days. For after the sons of God went in to the daughters of men, and they brought forth children, these are the mighty men of old, men of renown And God seeing that the wickedness of men was great on the earth, and that all the thought of their heart was bent upon evil at all times
[Genesis 6:4-5]
And the earth was corrupted before God, and was filled with iniquity And when God had seen that the earth was corrupted (for all flesh had corrupted its way upon the earth, He said to Noe: The end of all flesh is come before me, the earth is filled with iniquity through them, and I will destroy them with the earth
[Genesis 6:11-13]
[Lamech, mentioned in previous verse] Who took two wives: the name of the one was Ada, and the name of the other Sella And Ada brought forth Jabel: who was the father of such as dwell in tents, and of herdsmen
And his brother's name was Jubal; he was the father of them that play upon the harp and the organs Sella also brought forth Tubalcain, who was a hammerer and artificer in every work of brass and iron. And the sister of Tubalcain was Noema And Lamech said to his wives Ada and Sella: Hear my voice, ye wives of Lamech, hearken to my speech: for I have slain a man to the wounding of myself, and a stripling to my own bruising Sevenfold vengeance shall be taken for Cain: but for Lamech seventy times sevenfold
[Genesis 4:19-24]
Jubal playing on "organs" would have played sth like a flute or a pan flute. His brother Jabel's sons dwellt in tents. Now, Krishna plays the flute and the Pandavas, in exile, lived in the woods.
Five Pandavas and Draupadi are exiled to the forest.
They lived in the forests and mountains for twelve years. There they performed many deeds of virtue and valour, and would go out now and then on a long round of pilgrimages, visiting many holy places.
That part of the poem is very interesting and instructive, and various are the incidents, tales, and legends with which this part of the book is replete.
There are in it beautiful and sublime stories of ancient India, religious and philosophical. Great sages came to see the brothers in their exile and narrated to them many telling stories of ancient India, so as to make them bear lightly the burden of their exile. One only I will relate to you here.
The words for "tents" in Genesis 4 is 168. ohel. The words for "huts" in the Feast of Tabernacles in Leviticus 23 is 5521. sukkah.
ohel: tent, tents, home
covering, dwelling-place, home, tabernacle, tent
sukkah: Booth, Tabernacle, Hut, Shelter
booth, cottage, covert, pavilion, tabernacle, tent
I think both of these can describe the actual dwellings of cavemen. Like, not caves, but deliberately built huts or tents. The sons of Jabel / the Pandavas in their exile / would have invented this, but living outside the system, off the grid, caught on in pre-Flood times, not least with Neanderthals in various places. Yes, these are also Adamites. Probably Denisovans too came (in part) to live like that, but we have so little left of them.
The "earliest" human remains are actually from the Flood itself, and not early at all, except in so far as all pre-Flood things are early. Homo erectus soloensis would have been skeletally hearing impaired, he would have heard consonants like K and Ch, not those like P and T. If a whole population shared the same incapacity to form or hear a speech sound, they would arguably develop a dialect going around it. Their very old dates are due to very much argon being trapped in lava and giving very excessive dates, like Stw 53:
Stw 53 was discovered in August 1976 near Krugersdorp, Transvaal in South Africa and was described in 1977 by palaeoanthropologists Alun R. Hughes and Philip V. Tobias as a skull probably from an early species of Homo.[3] Though many palaeoanthropologists recognised the fossil as representing a species of Homo, possibly H. habilis, this has never been universally accepted, many instead seeing it as a specimen of Australopithecus africanus.[4] Though the site of the fossils was initially dated to over 2 million years old, work from 2012 suggests that the site was significantly younger, at 1.78–1.43 million years old.[1]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_gautengensis
Whether it's actually a man or an ape, doesn't really matter, the salient thing is, it has a very old date, this isn't carbon, and while I can't access the exact method on the previews in the footnotes and elsewhere, I can mention that K-Ar is a very common one, which has a very simple answer from Young Earth Creationism: argon was trapped in lava, because lava cooled quickly and this because of the Flood bringing loads of cold water to the places, in succession. Lower lava flows are dated earlier because earlier on in the Flood the water was less shallow under the build up of lava cones, and less already heated up by the process.
The city dwellers from this time are so far lost to us. And that's probably good.
Noah survived, but tools on the Ark could not rebuild cities straight away, or at least the terrain was not suitable straight away. For 350 years, Noah brought those on the Ark and those descending from them, mostly repose, not just from city life, but even from agriculture. Noah himself excepted, but he got mocked, as Genesis 9 tells.
After he died, Nimrod used the knowhow in theory to start reconstructing mainly pre-Flood features like agriculture, pastoralism and (later on, if he lived long enough) metallurgy as in gold, copper, bronze ... he didn't live to see iron rediscovered. When Agriculture was finally standard in the Fertile Crescent, it took another 500 years or so before it arrived in Britain and Ireland.
The modern times aren't the first times of rapid discovery (or rediscovery), Nimrod had done one such period before, in Göbekli Tepe and its region, which the Bible calls Babel.
After Babel, the main difference I have with the standard view is the timeline. 9600 or 9500 BC actually is a carbon date for 2608 BC. 3500 BC, end of Copper Stone Age in Ein Gedi / Asason Thamar (thank you Osgood), is a carbon date for 1936 BC. 6000 years translate to 672 years.
Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
after either
Second Vespers of the Holy Name of Mary
or First Vespers of XVI LD after Pentecost
12 or 13.IX.2026
[Festum sanctissimi Nominis beatae Mariae, quod Innocentius Undecimus, Pontifex Maximus, ob insignem victoriam de Turcis, ipsius Virginis praesidio, Vindobonae in Austria reportatam, celebrari jussit.]
Three not fully Catholic sources:
DEI VERBUM
https://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19651118_dei-verbum_en.html
Why Did Ancient Human Progress Suddenly Explode 10,000 Years Ago After 300,000 Years of Slow Progre[ss]
Ami | 9 Sept. 2026
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jjI71UHutc
Mahabharata Summary | A Concise Retelling by Swami Vivekananda
by Pulkit Mathur, The Spiritual Bee
https://www.spiritualbee.com/posts/mahabharata-summary-by-swami-vivekananda/
Notes:
*
L’École biblique et archéologique française de Jérusalem
https://www.ebaf.edu/lecole-biblique/
**
CMI: The Framework hypothesis, missionary societies and the Gospel
By Russell M. Grigg | Published 18 Sep, 2019 | Updated 02 Sep, 2023
https://creation.com/en/articles/framework-missionary-societies-gospel
