Throughout this series of posts on the primeval history of the Bible, we’ve seen how the biblical account is not only consistent with but supported by modern science. Based on archeological and paleoclimatological data, the garden of Eden existed in the modern-day Persian Gulf around 10,000 BC. Genetic evidence supports the biblical description of an extremely violent pre-Flood world, peaking in the mid-7th millennium BC. The biblical data can also be used to date Noah’s Flood to ~6,500 BC, the exact time that there is known to have been a massive local flood in the ancient Near East. In this post, we’ll take a look at the account of Noah’s descendants and their spread across the post-Flood world (Gen. 10).
The Table of Nations
After describing the devastating flood that took place in Noah’s day, the author goes on to give a detailed account of Noah’s descendants and where their lineages lived. Although his wasn’t the only line that survived the Flood, it’s clear that it has a special significance in the biblical account, as he was the ancestor of the Hebrews and the nation of Israel (Gen. 11:10-32). [1] After human civilization in the Near East was devastated, Noah’s descendants spread out across the land and repopulated it.
Figure 1. Map of the locations of Noah’s descendants according to the biblical Table of Nations (Genesis 10). Note the lack of representation east of the Zagros mountains, in modern-day Iran.
However, when viewed in light of the extent of civilization in the ancient Near East, the extent of the Table of Nations is rather selective. No people group east of the Zagros mountains in modern-day Iran is represented, even though Neolithic human civilization existed as far as the Indus Valley. This is even in spite of the fact that Indo-Iranian cultures were in contact with Mesopotamian cultures (see, for example, the legend of Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta). Why is the Table of Nations selectively describing the spread of human civilization over the Levant, Europe, and North Africa, while ignoring Indo-Iranian cultures?
The Neolithic Migration
This mystery becomes much less problematic in light of the findings of genetics and archeology, which have identified a migration of Neolithic people from the Levant into Europe and North Africa beginning in the 7th millennium BC. [2] The initial migration of farmers, from eastern Anatolia (modern-day Turkey) into the Aegean, can be dated to after 6,500 BC on archeological grounds. [2] Incidentally, this is the date of the massive flood that was suggested to be Noah’s Flood in my previous post. Neolithic civilization spread slightly later to North Africa, from groups of farmers living in the Levant and Europe. [3] In contrast, the Indo-Iranian Neolithic developed separately from the Levantine-European-North African Neolithic, and forms a distinct genetic grouping. [4]
Figure 2. From Fig. 4 of [4]. There are two distinct genetic groupings separating cultures east and west of the Zagros mountains, which stretch all the way back into the Neolithic.
Thus, once again, the biblical account and modern science support each other! The biblical primeval history, including the Table of Nations, is primarily concerned with the origin of Israel and other Semitic peoples. Therefore, it ignores the origin of Neolithic civilization east of the Zagros mountains, as this was distinct from the spread of civilization in the Levant, Europe, and North Africa.
Based on the Table of Nations, it appears that Noah’s descendants mixed with the other Neolithic farmers of Anatolia after the Flood, who subsequently spread their culture across Europe and North Africa. This makes even more sense if the “mountains of Ararat” on which Noah’s vessel landed (Gen. 8:4) were in northern Mesopotamia, as usually supposed, rather than in southern Iran (see my previous post for a brief discussion of this). Noah’s lineage would only have been one of many in the ancient Near East, so we wouldn’t expect any specific genetic evidence of his descendants’ spread, but the extent described in Genesis 10 is totally consistent with what we find from genetics and archeology.
Conclusion
After the account of Noah’s Flood, the biblical author describes the spread of Noah’s descendants across the land. But strangely, no people group east of the Zagros mountains is mentioned in the Table of Nations. This corresponds well to the findings of modern science, that Neolithic culture spread from eastern Anatolia throughout Europe and North Africa after around 6,500 BC, but Indo-Iranian Neolithic culture was genetically and archeologically distinct. This is a remarkable confirmation of the accuracy of the biblical account, once again showing how the Bible and modern science, rather than contradicting, perfectly complement each other!
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[1] See footnotes 7 and 8 of the previous post. According to the biblical author, the lines of Jabal, Jubal, and the nephilim survived the Flood (Gen. 4:20-22; 6:4; Num. 13:33), which indicates that the universal language of Genesis 7 is hyperbolic (cf. Josh. 10:40).
[2] Mark Lipson et al., “Parallel palaeogenomic transects reveal complex genetic history of early European farmers,” Nature 551 (2017): 368-372; Ayça Omrak et al., “Genomic Evidence Establishes Anatolia as the Source of the European Neolithic Gene Pool,” Current Biology 26 (2016): 270-275.
[3] Luciana G. Simões et al., “Northwest African Neolithic initiated by migrants from Iberia and Levant,” Nature 618 (2023): 550-556.
[4] Farnaz Broushaki et al., “Early Neolithic genomes from the eastern Fertile Crescent,” Science 353, no. 6298 (2016): 499-503.
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