Mammoths, Mastadons, Siber Tooth Tigers

by NewChapter 23 Replies latest jw friends

  • NewChapter
    NewChapter

    So, I've been thinking a lot lately about the chinks in my "spiritual armor" and my journey from JW to Atheist. I realize now it all started with a mastadon. I visited one of my favorite places, The Natural History Museum, where I stared contemplatively at LUCY. Even though I firmly believed she is definitely not a human ancestor, for some reason, I still feel almost a reverence while looking at this astounding discovery.

    Around the corner is a mastadon. Fear speeds my heart a bit as I look up at this monster towering so high over my head. I imagine its trumpets vibrating the walls and rattling the atoms that pull together to make up my body. I look at Mammoth jaws and learn the difference between mastadon and mammoth. It's all in the teeth you see. And SABER TOOTH! I love me my FLINTSTONES.

    But then I read how mammoths were hunted to extinction. Evidence of HUMANS hunting MAMMOTHS is right there in the fossil record. My mind sped as it made unwanted connections. WAIT, I thought. I wanted to turn back, but too late. I had always thought these animals were drowned in the flood! What about all those flash frozen mammoths that prove there was a flood? Weren't the elephants and regular tigers chosen as the representative "kinds" to be taken on the ark?

    But, no, please let me go back. Still too late. The bible says HUMANS didn't eat meat before the flood. The climate was beautiful, so they didn't need heavy furs. Why would they have hunted the huge beasts? They would only have needed to hunt them after the flood--when the climate changed and they needed heavy fur for clothes and meat for food. And even if they did dress in skins, as did Adam and Eve, wouldn't they have chosen something just a bit more domesticated?

    According to the flood account, humans would never have hunted mammoths. They were already DEAD when humans developed a need for such hunting. I walked back to my little LUCY. She really is small. I notice one of her toes are missing--one that was supposed to be there---and I wondered if they had sent it off to a fresh batch of white coats to examine in a stainless steel lab.

    I have been searching through my WT CD for some "explanation". All I can find--over and over and over--is how flash frozen mammoths support the flood theory. I would love to read any comments you have. Any facts about mammoths, mastadons, and saber tooth tigers. AND ANY EXPLANATIONS the WT has given for these monsters. How do they explain HUMANS hunting them? I think they just don't mention it at all, because if the flood myth is true, humans did not hunt mammoths. Except, they did.

  • bohm
    bohm

    from memory: untill 1961, humans had found 38 mammoths with some tissue still attached.

    four of those were partially intact, but still so decomposed they stench was terrible for the teams which dug them up and showed evidence of drowning and then slowly freezing and rotting over weeks.

    yep, those four mammoths are the "millions of flash-frozen mammoths".

    i dont know what has happened since 1961, but if we are generous and say 4 more rotten mammoths have been found, its not exactly something that keep dawkins awake :-).

    Thanks for sharing your experience.

  • TD
    TD
    All I can find--over and over and over--is how flash frozen mammoths support the flood theory.

    As evidence of the flood, it's an idea that was discredited many years ago and even the Witnesses don't repeat anymore. They're believed to be the result of volcanic mudslides in arctic regions. In other words, a volcano thawed the permafrost on it's slopes, which triggered a mudslide, which engulfed the mammoth some distance away and then quickly refroze again in the subzero temperatures.

  • NewChapter
    NewChapter

    Thanks TD. I do see the last mention of mammoths made in this context was in 1989--however it was in a book that we studied some time after 2000 in BS (The Bible, God's Word or Man's). Of course, there are no corrections or updates mentioned in later literature. So far, the answer seems to be they simply do not address the issue.

    They encourage young people to use the publications as research tools for school projects, then they don't bother updating bogus info. Anyway, it was thinking about this part of Mammoth history that made it all explode for me.

  • TD
  • moshe
    moshe
    According to the flood account, humans would never have hunted mammoths

    They have found mammoth skeletons in the USA with Clovis type flint spear points in the rib cage. How could this be? If before the flood, then humans hunted them, but why didn't the flood of Noah wash the bones away or cover them with silt? If after the flood, where did Noah find the cold-adapted mammoths to take on the ark and how did humans and mammoths find their way to North America?

    We had to have a flood, then immediately after the flood, a glacial ice age to lower the oceans so a land bridge allowed humans and mammoths to cross over, then just as fast melt away so the oceans could rise back to the levels we have today. Yeah, that makes perfect sense as a plan for God.

  • NewChapter
    NewChapter
    We had to have a flood, then immediately after the flood, a glacial ice age to lower the oceans so a land bridge allowed humans and mammoths to cross over, then just as fast melt away so the oceans could rise back to the levels we have today.

    LOL! That is an EXCELLENT point.

    Those damn Clovis. But really--even looking at that---Clovis would not have even been on the Western Hempisphere until AFTER the languages were confused at Babel. Right? Isn't that when humans were dispersed throughout the earth? And time just kept ticking. Flood, glacier, melt, somewhere in there Babel, Finding the Beringia Strait, populating an entire hemipsphere. Tick Tick Tick And don't get me started on Kennwick man.

    So, I'm a critical thinker. I mentioned in another post that my brother never understood how I was JW when I was such a critical thinker about OTHER things. It really must have been pure emotion. I honestly thought I had a good hold on general science, but I'm but one dumb little girl. I just can't believe how quickly my world is changing. I can't believe how close minded I was, and how I thought I was really broad minded.

    The trouble with the WT, is they feed enough info to make a person feel like they've been educated. People who THINK they are educated are worse off because they don't search any further. In that way, WT is much like Fox News, imo. Adherents are walking around ignorant thinking they are smart. sigh prayforme. I'll be out of posts soon--again. I'm still very new, so I'm limited.

  • moshe
    moshe

    NewChapter, I have really gotten JWs all twisted up with this mammoth paradox story. ( I never saw it mentioned on the Internet as a flood paradox when I first checked to see, if anyone else had thought of it 10 years ago- so maybe I was the first) I also ask the JW's why the flood didn't wash Oetzi, the iceman mummy off the top of that 9000ft high Italian alps mountain, too. All he had was a flint knife and a copper axe- try building an Ark with those tools.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%96tzi_the_Iceman

    Or, why the flood didn't destroy the prehistoric Lascau cave paintings in France- if they say it was done after the flood, then I ask them where all the whoolly mammoths, woolly rhinos, cave bears and cave lions came from? Wasn't the climate all nice and balmy before the flood, and it was only after the flood that it got bitterly cold with snow and animals needed heavy winter fur?

  • Botzwana
    Botzwana

    Mosche, Perhaps the cavemen used indelible ink?

  • NewChapter
    NewChapter

    NewChapter, I have really gotten JWs all twisted up with this mammoth paradox story

    Moshe, here is the strange thing. This time period fascinates me. I'm a writer, and I'm a fan of Jean Auel, who used research to reconstruct a world where Neanderthals were on the way out, and Cro Magnon was taking over. I'm sure a lot of my information is disjointed, because my mind was in CONSTANT EDIT. As I took in information, my brain rearranged it to fit in with my belief system. I may need to do some reading about this phenomena, right now I'm just figuring it out on my own. But apparently, my brain rebelled and gave it to me straight that day in the museum. In a split second, there was NO WAY I could reconcile the facts with the flood.

    I was so comfortable with the facts/flood issues, that I even did a huge amount of research (WT Lit) so that I could write a story set in preflood days. Needless to say, my pointy little muse has given me the finger on that story.

    My brain has been swirling like a tornado this last week. I only came "out" about a week ago, and it has been cathartic. Ideas are slamming together at a scary pace, but I guess I'm trying to catch up. LOL On the other hand, it's kind of fun, and I have a lot of peace. Now I KNOW I NEVER have to go back. I will never look up and think I'm mistaken. There is no taking this knowledge back. Talk about the truth setting you free. LOL

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