What was Noah's IQ?

Studying ancient history has given me a radically different perspective on one of the most well-known Bible stories. We have been taught that evolution is a farce and would proclaim that modern thought has had minimal effect on our view of the Bible. We smirk and chortle at secular descriptions of Neanderthal or Cro-Magnon man. We say Adam was created in God's own image, but what mental image do we conjure when we think of Noah and his sons building an ark?

Do we see an unkempt, hunched old man in crudely tanned animal skins toiling away with a hardwood mallet and crude flint tools? Do we subconsciously think it took supernatural intervention to build a boat big enough to survive a global deluge?

Unfortunately, that is the mental image I had for many years. Now I realize there are compelling reasons to believe otherwise, and Noah has become one of my favorite Bible characters. I want to share a few things from ancient history that secular archaeologists have a hard time fitting into their narrative. It should give anyone pause who subconsciously believes the ancients were intellectually inferior to us moderns.

London, Texas hammer

In June of 1934, Max and Emma Hahn took a hike along Red Creek near London, Texas. On a ledge beside a waterfall, Max discovered a loose rock with weathered wood protruding from it. In 1947 their son cracked apart the rock to discover a metal hammer head attached to the wooden handle. They used a file to make a small cut into the head to verify that it was metal. In the seventy years since then, this cut has not rusted. Testing has shown the hammer head to be 97 percent pure iron, 2 percent chlorine, and 1 percent sulfur. Density analysis shows that it has been surface hardened. Part of the wooden handle has turned to coal. [1]

Secularists try to discount the importance of this artifact, but from a biblical perspective, it is quite interesting. It is clearly a man-made instrument, made of an iron whose purity is only achievable with modern technology, encased in solid Ordovician rock along with marine fossils and a wooden handle that is partially carbonized. Since the secular dating methods are only as good as the assumptions behind them, there is no good way to know exactly how old this instrument is. The possibility that it could be antediluvian is very real.

Mayan calendar

The Mayan culture ruled in Central America from around 2000 BC until they were conquered by the Spaniards in 1542. [2] The cities and pyramids they built are impressive, but what seems even more amazing is their calendar. According to some historians, they kept the most accurate time the world has known, being even more accurate than the Gregorian calendar we use today. [3] It utilizes the base-20 number system, which I do not profess to understand, so I will not try to explain how it all worked.

There are two points about their calendar that I find astounding. One, their time system began with the creation of the world which they calculated to be only fifty-six years fewer than the 4004 BC date James Ussher arrived at in his famous biblical chronology. [4] Two, the Mayans had calculated the solar year to be 365.2420 days which is off by only 0.0002 of a day according to modern measurements. [5]

Saqsaywaman, Peru

Saqsaywaman, is a hilltop fortress north of Cusco, Peru, that rivals the architectural achievement of the Great Cheops Pyramid of Egypt. Secular history claims that it was built by the Incan empire, but according to an Incan prince interviewed in the 1500s when they were conquered by the Spaniards, the cyclopean walls had always been there. They believed them to be the work of gods or magic. [6]

Many call it a fortress, but the megalithic boulders would be better described as retaining walls. The walls are built in a zigzag, averaging eighteen feet high and made of myriad shapes and sizes of granite rocks. The largest rock is estimated to weigh in the neighborhood of four hundred tons. Even though the walls consist of a mind-boggling array of shapes, angles, and sizes, the rocks were set without mortar, and yet there is not a spot where a credit card can be fully inserted between two rocks. [7]

The quarry has been identified as being over a mile away so the contemporary idea that ropes and manpower were all that was needed to transport and set such gargantuan rocks defies common sense. Also, the notion that men could hammer and chisel such rocks to a tight fit doesn't make sense either. The exact manner of construction may never be known to us moderns, but the walls will continue to stand as a testament to the intelligence of their builders.

Nazca lines

The Sechura Desert of southern Peru contains manmade artwork on an astounding scale. Shallow ditches dug into the surface of the desert have created an array of shapes, designs, and straight lines. Some of the lines are perfectly straight for thirty miles; others create the outline of animals, plants, and even a human. One of the figures that has been measured is a monkey that was formed from a continuous line inside an area one hundred ninety feet by three hundred five feet. The combined length of the known lines is over eight hundred miles. [8]

The lines were made by removing the surface layer of reddish-brown iron oxidecoated pebbles to reveal a yellow-gray subsoil. The lines are typically 4 to 6 inches deep and anywhere from twelve inches to six feet wide with most being about thirteen inches wide. The plateau where these lines are found, also called the Nazca Desert, is one of the driest places on Earth, receiving only about twenty minutes of drizzle per year. [9] Due to the geography of the area, there is almost no surface wind, and the temperature stays around seventy-seven degrees year-round. [10] Because of this stable climate and the flatness of the surface, there has been almost no erosion to these lines since they were made.

The original purpose of these lines remains a mystery. Various hypotheses have been put forward, but there is scant evidence to support any of them. The intrigue of the lines lies in the skill it took to make them perfectly straight for thirty miles or to outline a four-hundred-forty-foot long symmetrical condor with a continuous line. To add to the mystery, few of the designs can even be viewed from the ground. It wasn't until the advent of the airplane that modern men realized there was something there to study.

Piri Re'is map

The continent of Antarctica was believed to exist for hundreds of years, but no European laid eyes on the continent until the early 1820's. How then could a Turkish cartographer of the early 1500's have an accurate map of Antarctica at his disposal?

Piri Ibn Haji Memmed, an admiral of the Turkish navy known as Piri Re'is, published a map of the world in 1513. It was painted on parchment and only a portion of it remains, showing most of the west coast of the Atlantic Ocean and part of the east. In his notes, Piri Re'is says the map was compiled from about twenty source maps, one being drawn by Christopher Columbus and another during the time of Alexander the Great. [11]

There are two interesting points about this map. One, both coasts of the Atlantic Ocean are shown in the correct relative longitude. Two, it shows the Antarctic coast of Queen Maud Land, with surprising accuracy, free of ice.

Europeans did not have an accurate way to determine longitude until the mid-1700s, so who and by what means drew the source maps? Antarctica ice-free? Even scientists who believe the Bible expect the continent would have been completely covered with ice before the end of the first millennium after the flood.

Much could be said about the skills required to draw an accurate world map as well. An accurate understanding of the size of the Earth is a must. Knowing exactly where one is on the surface of the Earth is another. It is one thing to travel around exploring new areas, but returning to one's starting point requires an increasing amount of skill the farther one has traveled. If the sun and stars are used for navigational aid, an accurate understanding of their movements and the mathematical correlation to the earth is required. To use the earth's magnetic field for navigation, an accurate understanding of its orientation and magnitude is required. To portray the surface of the earth accurately on a flat map requires math skills that go well beyond my education level as well.

Charles H. Hapgood, a professor at Keene State College in New Hampshire, and his students undertook an extensive study of the Piri Re'is map. Their conclusion was that some of the source maps were drawn with plane trigonometry and would have been identical to modern maps in relative latitude and longitude.

It is doubtful that every invention we have today existed at some point in the past, but that does not necessarily make our generation more intelligent than any generation before us. From the evidence, I think it is more accurate to say that men are very adaptive, and each generation seems to make the most of the knowledge available to them.

I am of the persuasion that Adam and Eve were not equivalent to the secular description of Neanderthal man. Biology shows that all living things are in a slow state of degeneration. It is only logical to believe that since Adam was created to live forever, he would have been genetically perfect even after the fall. An honest look at ancient history leaves no room for the notion that humanity has been improving itself socially or ideologically.

What does all this have to do with Noah? Let’s suppose the pre-flood civilization was on par with 21st century western society. Noah is our intellectual equal or superior and is fully aware of the universe the way we are (human population, natural world, physical size and scope of the universe, etc.). He knows what a tiny speck his ship will be in the all-encompassing flood.

Would I be faithful if I knew I was the only person on the face of the earth who believed in the God of heaven? Do I have the connection with my children it would take to get them onto the ark with me?

God informed Noah of the coming flood and gave him specific details concerning the ark he was to build. God may have had daily audible communication with Noah, but scripture does not specify that. God's second recorded conversation with Noah was over one hundred years after the instructions to build an ark and only seven days before the windows of heaven were broken open. The ark was complete, fully furnished, and Noah was waiting.

Lord, increase my faith.

[1] “The London Artifact” (www.creationevidence.org/displays/london_artifact.php)

[2] Arthur Demarest, Ancient Maya, Cambridge University Press, 2004, p13

[3] Donald E. Chittick, The Puzzle Of Ancient Man, Creation Compass, 1997, p83

[4] Ibid. p85

[5] Ibid. p83

[6] Gabor Joseph Kish, The Saqsaywaman Mystery, Pannonus Editions, 2019, p20

[7] Bruce Malone, Brilliant, Search For The Truth Publications, 2014, p58

[8] “Nazca Lines” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazca_Lines)

[9] Donald E. Chittick, The Puzzle Of Ancient Man, Creation Compass, 1997, p69

[10] “Nazca Lines” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazca_Lines)

[11] Charles H. Hapgood, Maps Of The Ancient Sea Kings, Adventures Unlimited Press, 2014, p2