Job 9:5 He who removes mountains, and they know it not.

By Jan Louw (Many thanks to Doon Bester who helped with the language editing)

I wish to bring under attention in this document that the Bible probably make mention of the division of the continents in Genesis 10:25. It means that the dramatic shifting of the continents actually happened during human history and not millions of years ago. It deeply affected all life on earth as I shall explain further on.

Genesis 10:25: And two sons were born to Eber. The name of the one was Peleg, for in his days the earth was divided.

Commentators of the Bible debate about the meaning of the sentence “for in his days the earth was divided”. The Hebrew word which is used here for “divide” is פלג (palag) and the word for “earth” is ארץ (erets). “Palag” is also found in Job 38:25: “Who has cut a channel for the flood”. “Erets” is the same word that is used in Gen 1:1: “God created the heaven and the earth”.

I am of the opinion that the obvious meaning of the text in Gen 10:25 is that the surface of the earth (that which man can see) was ruptured and divided, but commentators shy away from that interpretation and choose an interpretation that amounts to a division of nations. The Good News Bible actually translates the text as: “the people of the world were divided”.

Although at first we cannot understand the meaning of a division of the earth, I believe it is precisely what the writers of the Bible intended to communicate with us: the earth was divided – literally. Probably this concept was such common knowledge during their times that the scribes of Genesis didn’t bother to explain in more detail to their readers what they meant. I would thus propose in this article that the division of the continents took place during the time of Peleg.

1. Current view about the formation of the continents

Students of paleogeography suggest that there was originally one supercontinent called Pangaea. Some 300 million years ago the continents started to divide. Scientists suggest that people and animals started migrating from one continent to another approximately 40 000 years ago and that the continents were populated in this way. Evolutionists and creationists generally agree that there were land bridges between the continents in the past. These bridges supposedly facilitated the movement of people and animals across the continents. With time the bridges disappeared and these are now below sea level.

2. Early migration of people

Let us ponder for a moment on the implications of the theory of land bridges:

According to the theory of evolution the first humans migrated from Africa to Europe approximately 1 million years ago and from there to the rest of the world.

As a creationist I would like to start my proposition about the migration theory by outlining a situation closer to accepted history, namely the civilization around the Euphrates River.

The migration theory implies that some of the ancient peoples who lived in the Middle-East must have had a strange motivation to travel. They supposedly migrated from the Fertile Crescent (modern-day Turkey, Iraq and part of Syria), where they had been living in comfort and where the influential Sumerian civilization flourished, to far-flung corners of the globe. Inexplicably these discoverers ended up in impossible places across the earth. During these migrations there was no time to rest. Livestock, children and possessions had to be moved over vast areas with great difficulty. Their route must have followed from Iraq and surrounds through most of present-day Russia, crossing a land bridge to Alaska and then traveling further through Canada, the USA, Mexico, and Central America to end up in South America.

In this process a distance of more than 20 000 km must have been covered. That is halfway around the world. These pioneers had to have found their way in unknown and dangerous worlds and had to have endured the cold of the northern Arctic areas, as well as the heat of the deserts of the Americas. They had to have kept travelling non-stop for countless generations. It implies an accomplishment far greater than those of Alexander the Great and Napoleon, who in later years conquered the world with their armies.

But even this is not the full story.

For some unknown reason a number of these nomads decided to settle in Central America and to build a civilization which flourished for a number of generations and then mysteriously declined into near oblivion. Today the remains of pyramids similar to those in Egypt can be found in the jungles of Central America. The demise of these civilizations is still a mystery today. Upon his arrival in Central America in circa 1500 AD, Columbus encountered a people who had been unable to uphold and sustain the remarkable efforts of their ancestors and had fallen into hardship. The decline of the once mighty Aztec and Mayan cultures was palpable and rather resembled a Third World country as we know it today.

This same migration theory includes Australia and the Pacific Ocean islands. Here people and animals are said to have crossed land bridges in the Malaysian Strait and to have populated these areas. The Peloponnesian Islands are thought to have been inhabited by people crossing the oceans by boat. Hardly convincing theories if one looks at the vast expanses of water in the Pacific Ocean!

Evolutionists have the luxury of having time on their side.

A time span of 40 000 to 60 000 is utilised to explain the migration of people from one continent to another. The migration to the Americas and other continents are explained within this arbitrary time framework.

Creationists on the other hand don’t have this luxury.

We believe the Bible. According to genealogical registers in the Bible God created Adam and Eve 6000 years ago[1]. We also believe that all living beings excepting Noah, his family and the animals in the ark were wiped from the face of the earth during the Great Flood of Noah approximately 4400 years ago. Everything started anew after this event. This in turn means that the time span between the Great Flood of Noah and the arrival of Columbus in Central America is less than four millennia. According to the land bridge theory which even some creationists support[2], the ancient migrants therefore had to have travelled 20 000 km, start civilizations in faraway places and then again lose the skills of their forefathers in less than four thousand years until Columbus arrived. An impossible feat!

I am of the firm belief that the solution to the question regarding the formation of the continents and the answer to other archaeological mysteries which will be discussed later in this document, can be found in the words of the ancient writers of the Bible when they report to us that “the earth was divided in the days of Peleg”.

3. A scenario of what happened in the days of Peleg

It was in the time after the flood

The time is about 2200 BC.

A century and a half after the flood Abraham has not yet been born, but Noah and his sons are still alive[3].

The signs of the great catastrophe that has been brought to the earth by God are still very real. Everybody knows exactly what happened and why it happened, because Noah and his sons are there to tell them everything. It however seems as if the new generations of people that started to inhabit the world after the catastrophe of the flood have not learnt from the past. They do not humble themselves before the God of Noah.

Nimrod is a powerful leader, ‘the first on earth to be a mighty man’ who starts a great and successful kingdom (Gen 10:8-12), and whose followers multiply and settle in cities. Successful social systems are established in these cities. Enough food is produced and logistical systems are in place for cities and the citizenry to function optimally. The heavenly bodies, the paths of the sun and the moon are studied. Engineers find ingenious ways to erect huge buildings and statues. Truly a mighty civilization of great splendour!

However, they forgot God, their Creator. Once before, during the time of the Great Flood of Noah, God had bemoaned the fact that He had created man. ‘It was grief to the Lord ever having made man on the earth: He felt grieved at heart.’ (Gen 6:6). Here the same apostasy is on the verge of happening again.

‘The sons of men’ (Gen 11:5) embarked upon an enormous project, to build a city and a tower ‘with its top in the heavens.’ Their thinking was, ‘to make a name for ourselves’ and to reach heaven which was the dwelling of God, thus becoming famous and to prevent being scattered across the world. Again mankind was not cognizant of God’s will and rather acquiesced to Satan’s megalomania.

God intervened.

Strange things began to happen

Through God’s intervention chaos ensued. It was a strange and terrifying experience to realize that they were unable to communicate with each other as in the past. The common language they had shared in the past had disappeared[4]. This had grave consequences. Unable to communicate, they were therefore unable to finish the tower and to uphold the systems that were so important for their city life. Social systems started to disintegrate. They started to quarrel among themselves. Many people left the cities that they had built with so much passion and moved with their families and friends to new places in total disarray.

They were stunned to realize that they were unable to control the world that they thought they owned. It was humiliating to realize that they were not so bright and unconquerable as they had thought themselves to be. Yet they did not humble themselves before their Creator. Instead they kept on worshipping the creation.

Then things became even worse.

Earthquakes shook the world. Mankind became really afraid when rumors of great ruptures in the earth became known. The situation had become so bad that certain well-known areas simply disappeared. Great lakes which seemed to become bigger and bigger, appeared in the vicinity of these mysterious ruptures. Within weeks lakes had become oceans that separated them from friends and family.

They did not understand what was happening to them.

In fact, God was dividing and moving great land masses, including plants, animals and people to new destinies. These landmasses were drifting like huge boats on the melted lava below them. God’s almighty hand was pushing them thousands of kilometers in all directions across the globe.

Within a relatively short period of time the face of the globe had been changed completely. In the years to come people would speak of continents which had been separated from one another by oceans of water.

As I sit here in my study, I stare in amazement at the globe on my desk. Once again I am filled with wonderment at God’s hand which is so clearly visible in the beautiful and dramatic division of the land masses and the true greatness of it all.

Humankind is disrupted.

These developments on earth in the days of Peleg had severe implications for many people.

Many of them found themselves imprisoned on islands in the sea, with the roaring waves of the ocean that prohibited them and their descendants forever to find their way back to the world they had previously known and loved. Others experienced dramatic climate changes. They were engulfed by cold winds and snow. Many died and only the young and the strongest managed to survive. Others were overcome by droughts. The world around them changed into a desert.

In many areas people lost hope. They became a degenerated people, far from the glory of their ancestors. They lost their motivation to build proper houses and instead took refuge in temporary huts and even in caves. They did not bother to make proper clothes for themselves as in the past. Their aim was just to survive, which they accomplished by foraging for plants and hunting wild animals. The technique and the will to plough, to plant, to care, to cultivate and to civilize had been lost.

Many groups aimlessly moved in and around the buildings, the temples and the statues that their energetic forefathers had erected in previous, prosperous times. Inexplicably the new generation had lost the motivation to keep up the legacy of their past in just a few years.

Reuniting after millennia

Of course there were many people whose lives had not been so severely disrupted by the events that took place in the days of Peleg. There were people who were able to keep contact with their origins. They were blessed with the vigor to cultivate the world and to build on the techniques that their ancestors had handed over to them.

It however took several millennia before these “blessed” people were able to expand their world. They managed to explore the globe and to conquer the oceans by ship and later by airplane. In this way contact could again be taken up with relatives that had previously not been heard of or lost. Because of the division of the earth, they had earlier become strangers to each other, even though related.

God had, in the distant past, physically scattered them all over the globe. Their sin in the days of Peleg had led to God’s wrath being unleashed.

Now the Grace of God after the dark millennia had brought about the possibility for mankind to take hands again after many, many years. Culturally strong and blessed people were able to help their lost brothers and to share their abundance with them.

4 A civilization scattered around the world!

The pyramids and the sphinx are well known wonders of Egypt. There are many theories of how the ancient people erected the mathematical wonders of Egypt. Egyptians today are not capable of re-building the pyramids. In fact the techniques used to erect the pyramids are so advanced that no building contractor even today would dare to imitate the work of those ancient builders.

Egypt’s monoliths are not the only curious phenomena to be found. Signs of extinct civilizations are all over the world. There is a remarkable correlation between the monolithic structures and statues found in remote areas. We find pyramid-like temples in Central America and even in Japan. There is a correspondence between these building techniques and especially the staggering complexity of these structures.

Another phenomenon is sculptures from the past that were made in such a way that we can hardly explain how it was done. The pictures below give an idea of the remarkable remnants of an old civilization that was scattered over the globe.

1. Sphinx in Egypt.
2. The Great Pyramid of Giza.
3. Stonework at Delphi in Greece.
4. Poulnabrone dolmen (hole of sorrows) in Ireland.
5. Pyramid of the Sun in Mexico. It is the third largest pyramid in the world – 75 meters high.
6. One of many colossal sculptures in Mexico weighing as much as 40-60 tons. The Aztecs called them Olmec. They depict a Negroid face that is alien to the Americas. The first African slaves were brought to the Caribbean Islands in 1501, a distance of 7000 km across the Atlantic Ocean.
7. There are about 300 of these ancient stone spheres in Costa Rica. They have become the icon of the country’s cultural identity.
8. Easter Island is known for its 887 statues carved from volcanic rock. Some of them are 10 meters high and weigh 80 tons. Easter Island is one of the 1000 Polynesian islands in the Pacific Ocean, about 163 square km in size. It is the remotest island in the world – 1600 km from the next inhabited spot.
9. A megalithic structure at Sacsayhuaman in Peru. Some of these stones weigh 360 tons. Everyone marvels at the huge blocks used to build the pyramids of Egypt and the tight tolerances between them, but these stones in Peru have equalled those tolerances with huge multi-sided blocks which are all completely irregular in a kind of three dimensional jigsaw puzzle.
10. Pumapunku in Bolivia is known for its remarkable ancient precision stone cutting.
11. One of the obelisks in Egypt. We still do not understand the technique that the ancient people used to erect these monuments.
12. Remnants of a pyramid in the ocean near Japan?

The pictures above do not necessarily represent the most impressive ancient buildings around the globe. I could have included Stonehenge, Mycenae or Baalbek, but these are enough to illustrate the reality of the mysterious history of mankind. The objects are definitely man-made, but the question is: How did they get there? As far as we know, they appear on all of the continents except Australia and Antarctica. Look for more examples at The Top-50 Megaliths.

My proposal is that these monolithic structures and statues were already on the different continents when the landmasses were divided by an act of God four millennia ago.

5. Who were these magnificent builders?

I do not agree with the notion of aliens visiting our planet at some stage, like some writers suggest. The Bible tells us nothing about aliens. This is God’s world and we are created in the image of God. God has not revealed to us that there are any beings in the universe that are superior to us. These buildings must have been made by human beings, even though today it may seem extraordinary, even impossible to us.

If not by aliens, then by whom were these structures created? Were they built by the people who lived in the time before the flood? The Bible speaks of them as “the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown” (Gen 6:4). To my mind Noah’s Flood had had such a devastating impact on the earth that I don’t think a single stone that had previously been laid by men was left in its place. We read in Gen 7:11: “On that day all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were opened”. The great forests of “the world that was then” (2 Pet 3:6) were covered by 100 meters of mud. Today these fossilised forests are excavated and used as coal by in ordinary households without so much as a single thought to their origin[5].

Could any man-made structure have withstood the onslaught of God’s wrath?

My contention is that these magnificent buildings were erected by Noah’s descendants. They still had some of the abilities of the people before the Flood, but this genius was rapidly eroding. One of the signs was that people did not live as long as before the Flood[6]. Within a few generations Shem’s descendants’ average ages declined from 400 years to 200 years. See Genesis 11:10-32.

There are some more realities that substantiate my idea of the dividing of the continents.

6. Fossils on all the continents

It is interesting to note that specimens of the same fossils are found on different continents as the picture below illustrates.

(Picture taken from Rejoined continents, United States Geological Survey.)

Creationists believe that the fossils were deposited in the crust of the earth during the time of Noah’s Flood in 2348 BC. We must conclude from the picture above that the continents were divided after the flood.

7. The Ice Age

The Ice Age animation movie series produced by a division of 20th Century Fox tell the stories about the adventures of Manny, a mammoth in the time of the ice age. It is significant that the name of the latest production (2012) is called: Ice Age 4 Continental Drift. (Maybe the producers of the movie series thought along the same lines as what I propose here, namely that the so-called ice age is a result of continental drift!)[7]

All the research on mammoths and their mysterious extinction could not produce a really acceptable explanation in my opinion for their quite recent extinction. There are so many mummified mammoths in the cold areas of the Northern Hemisphere that people have been gathering mammoth tusks for centuries now to be sold as ivory. Today nearly 90 percent of all mammoth tusks hauled out of Siberia—estimated at more than 60 tons a year, though the actual figure may be higher—end up in China. Millions of mammoth tusks, perhaps more, are still locked in Siberia’s permafrost. (See Tracking Mammoths.)

Woolly mammoths are not the only fossilized mammals found in the permafrost. There is a wide range of other mammals, large and small, that accompany the mammoths. These include the woolly rhinoceros, wolf, fox, lion, brown bear, camel, deer, ground sloth, pika, wolverine, ferret, ground squirrel, moose, reindeer, yak, musk ox, giant beaver, lemming, porcupine, coyote, skunk, mastodon, antelope, sheep, voles, hare and rabbit, plus many species of birds, rodents, horses, and bisons. Frozen carcasses of these animals, especially the woolly rhinoceros, are also found. Generally, the same animals are found together throughout much of the mid and high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere. (See The extinction of the woolly mammoth: was it a quick freeze?.)

We are even told of mammoths that were found with food still in their mouths: “Its death must have occurred very quickly after its fall, for we found half-chewed food still in its mouth, between the back teeth and on its tongue, which was in good preservation. The food consisted of leaves and grasses, some of the later carrying seeds. We could tell from these that the mammoth must have come to its miserable end in the autumn.” (See Woolly Mammoths Remains: Catastrophic Origins?.)

Another amazing revelation amidst these discoveries is the fact that the stomach content of some of these creatures indicated they had been grazing on vegetation that grows only in warm regions, yet they were quite near today’s frozen North Pole.

(See The Woolly Mammoth and the Ice Age and Woolly mammoth).

Russian scientists opened up a squirrel’s burrow in Siberia containing fruit and seeds. It was the frozen remains of a Silene stenophylla plant. They managed to revive the frozen remains of the specimen into full flower, producing delicate white blooms and then fruit. The revived plant looked and acted very similar to its modern version, which still grows in the same area in northeastern Siberia. (See Ice Age Flower, Silene Stenophylla, Becomes Oldest Plant To Be Revived.)

The importance of this discovery is that we can believe that the areas that are now uninhabitable because of the cold were once areas full of vegetation with fruit and flowers. Mammoths and many other animals grazed there. Things changed overnight and the change in weather has prevailed until today. In a short time, millions of animals and vegetation got stuck in a change of climate that they could not handle. They died of hypothermia, then they became frozen as in a deep freeze and that is the way we find them after a few millennia.

It is clear from the information that the mammoths co-existed with human beings (also see Ice age ‘house’ made from bones of more than 60 mammoths mystifies archaeologists). Their extinction was rapid through drastic climate changes. What caused the Ice Age? People who study the subject speak of Ice Ages (plural) and the theories they propose are about a tilt in the Earth’s axis, the way the Earth wobbles on its axis and how close the Earth gets to the sun. Other theories center on atmospheric gases, an unusually high amount of dust in the air, sunspots or even a meteorite.

I have so far reasoned that the continents drifted apart about 4300 years ago. They drifted apart, fully populated with people, animals and vegetation. It is clear to me that the drifting of the continents in new directions provides a perfect answer to the drastic change in climate in the Northern Hemisphere. The animals (and the people) in those areas were not only confronted with a cold front similar to what we are regularly told of by the weather bureau, they were also confronted suddenly with a new latitude on the globe that forced a climate upon them that they were not prepared for – and they were annihilated in a flash.

8. Conclusion

If we understand the text in Gen 10:25, “in his days the earth was divided”, as the time of the division of the continents, many things start to fall into place.

We have an explanation for the population of the continents, including plants, animals and humans. There is in my opinion no other way that especially animals and people, could be transferred to the distant places on the globe.

This understanding of Gen 10:25 also provides us with an explanation of the remnants of a wonderful human civilization around the globe, civilizations that have since disappeared and are no more.[8]

We have an explanation for the annihilation of millions of animals and plants that we find in the permafrost of the Northern Hemisphere.

GOD MOVED THE CONTINENTS, WHILE THE PEOPLE WERE ON THEM!

Footnotes

[1] See Biblical chronogenealogies and 6000 years.

[2] See ‘In Peleg’s days, the earth was divided’: What does this mean?

[3] See Real history: The timeline of the Bible, which contains a diagram of timelines.

[4] Also see Apes, words and people and Linguistics Questions and Answers.

[5] See Coal: memorial to the Flood.

[6] See Living for 900 years.

[7] See Ice Age and Mammoths Questions and Answers and The Ice Age: Causes and Consequences.

[8] Also see The people that forgot time (and much else, too).