Does Robert Carter Understand What Archaeology Can Do?

CMI: The extreme rarity of long-lived people in the post-Flood era
by Robert Carter | 11.X.2024
https://creation.com/rarity-of-long-lived-people-post-flood

The post-Flood patriarchs had extended lifespans, yet scant evidence exists for extremely old people in the archaeological record. There is a simple mathematical reason for this discrepancy: their extreme rarity in the exponentially growing post-Flood population.

While that solution may be part of the thing, there is another issue. If you want to read more on that, read his article, it's not bad per se, it's just overlooking sth.*

How exactly would an archaeologist identify a skeleton in archaeology as "extremely old"?

And Heber lived thirty-four years, and begot Phaleg 17 And Heber lived after he begot Phaleg, four hundred and thirty years: and begot sons and daughters
[Genesis 11:16-17]

16 Καὶ ἔζησεν ῞Εβερ ἑκατὸν τριάκοντα τέσσαρα ἔτη καὶ ἐγέννησε τὸν Φαλέγ. 17 καὶ ἔζησεν ῞Εβερ μετὰ τὸ γεννῆσαι αὐτὸν τὸν Φαλὲγ ἔτη διακόσια ἑβδομήκοντα καὶ ἐγέννησεν υἱοὺς καὶ θυγατέρας καὶ ἀπέθανε.

16 And Heber lived an hundred and thirty-four years, and begot Phaleg. 17 And Heber lived after he had begotten Phaleg two hundred and seventy years, and begot sons and daughters, and died.

LXX Genesis 11 / Ellopos

34 + 430 = 464
134 + 270 = 404

Whether Heber was 464 or 404 when he died, he was clearly older than 90. So, you know how a skeleton looks if you estimate it to 90, you imagine how it would look if it were even older, you look for that, right?

Wrong.

If at age 90 Heber had had the physique of someone aged 90 today, he would not have lived to over 400. Longevity must imply slower tear and wear, or it won't work.

In Anglo-Saxon England, some 40~60 or whatever persons died and were buried who have been found, and medical studies concluded that they must all have died before 45. This was then pushed as evidence that 45 was, not medium, but closeish to normal maximum, of the normal lifespan. Well, it turns out, someone then proceeded to look at the teeth, and concluded that people were often enough dying at 60 sth. The first investigation had simply not taken into account that they were overestimating the tear and wear they expected someone to have.

For one thing, the people they found may not have been farmers. But for another, sitting on tractors pretty much of the year may take a heavier toll than a more communal and slow way of working the earth. A farmer today may be sowing and harvesting wheat for 100 times more than the size of his family. Ten people's families back then would have involved the families and labour of nine farmers' families. Or, possibly, twenty heads of family can have involved nineteen farmers. If you produce for 100 times your needs, even with modern machinery, you work more than if you produce for the needs of perhaps as little as 1.11 times your needs, even without modern machinery.

So, the people in Anglo-Saxon England, if farmers, were less worn out than modern scholars expected them to be. Or they weren't farmers in the first place. But, they had the same organisms and same aging mechanisms as we have today, and Heber hadn't, he clearly aged slower.

So, one reason we don't find very long lived people is, we don't identify them. For the Upper Palaeolithic, which I put between Flood and beginning of Babel (with Noah's farmstead and vineyard just pioneering and doing very little impact on the overall economy, though CMI has mentioned they found starch dated to 20 000 years ago), anyone alive then would have had a life expectancy into the Neolithic, and so, anyone who died back then died prematurely. A man dying at 200 might well look like if he had died at 30 or 40 or sth.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
St. Francis Borgia
10.X.2024

Sancti Francisci Borgiae, Sacerdotis e Societate Jesu et Confessoris, cujus dies natalis pridie Kalendas Octobris recensetur.

* Not totally. He does discuss it further down in the section "Discussion" below figure 5. As he mentions specifically the post-Flood patriarchs as such, one can on the subject of delayed puberty mention that if Hagar was not a giantess, it is conspicuous that she could carry a son at least around 14 on her back, when exiled. I think he's wrong to include Neanderthals in a consideration of post-Flood patriarchs, as he already knows and some readers of this blog already know. They were pre-Flood.