Review by Greg Neyman
© Old Earth Ministries
This question was published in Dr. John's Q&A by John Morris in January 1992. This is an example of an argument that has good reasoning on both the young and old earth sides. Morris explains that based on the young earth model, human fossils would be exceedingly rare, and hard to find. Given the rate of fossilization for land creatures, I would agree, except this presents a problem.
If a person dies on land, there is a low chance for rapid burial and fossilization. However, all the deaths caused by Noah's Flood would have been in the water, where the chances of burial are greatly increased. Therefore, you cannot apply the rate of fossilization of land animals in this case, because they all died in the water.
Morris partly addresses this, saying that animals that die in water are scavenged. However, given the young earth global flood model, with its 194 mile per hour currents1, it is unlikely that scavengers would be eating...they would merely be trying to survive.
Although he does not bring it up, another thing to consider is animal graveyards. There are several dinosaur graveyards, and young earth creationists point to these as evidence that they fled to high ground, and gathered together, until they finally perished in the Flood. If faced with a flood, humans would do the same thing! We should find evidence of human mass graveyards as a result of the Flood.
However, one must also consider how this would affect the old earth, local flood scenario. How do you keep people from fleeing the floodwaters? They must be rising rapidly to cut off any means of retreat. This is true of both the young earth (preventing them from massing together) and the old earth models (preventing them from escaping).
The final issue Morris brings up is with evolution. If humans have been evolving over the past 3 million years, where are there trillions of fossils. Of course, trillions is an over-exxageration for effect. The answer has already been given by Morris in his response to the question.
1 “Patterns of Ocean Circulation Over the Continents During Noah’s Flood,”
Dr. John's Q&A #139, published on the web at https://www.icr.org/article/why-dont-we-find-more-human-fossils
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