NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC’S “ICE BABY”
(DOES IT SUPPORT EVOLUTION OR THE BIBLE?)
May 12, 2009
Steve Collins
The cover story of the May, 2009 issue of National Geographic magazine is entitled “Ice Baby,” and it is about the remarkably-intact body of a baby mammoth which was unearthed in Siberia. This magazine has an evolutionary mindset which permeates all its articles about nature and history, but it still has articles with much good information. I’ve been a subscriber for many years. This particular article has hard information which, I think, strongly supports a viewpoint that this preserved baby mammoth died in the Deluge of Noah’s time.
The Geographic article assumes that the baby mammoth died a rather routine death in routine times for wooly mammoths. The evidence confirms that the baby mammoth died in a way in which “The end of her trunk and her throat, mouth, and windpipe were filled with dense sediment, which suggested…that she died by asphyxiation in mud” (p. 44). An autopsy of the mammoth “noted a dense mix of clay and sand in her mouth and throat.. the sediment was packed in [the mammoth’s] trunk so tightly that [it was seen] as a possible explanation for the dent in her face (p. 48). One researcher saw “more evidence for drowning than asphyxiation.” The autopsy confirmed the mammoth was in a “healthy, well-fed state” when she came “to an abrupt end” (p. 49). The region of Siberia where the mammoth baby was unearthed also became a graveyard for many now-extinct types of mammals–“wooly rhinosceroses, enormous long-horned bison and bear-sized beavers…saber-toothed cats, cave hyenas and giant short-faced bears” (p. 37). Then they “disappeared” and the “extinctions were so sweeping that scientists have evoked a number of cataclysmic events to explain them” (p. 37). Let’s examine these facts in light of the biblical account of the global Deluge of Noah’s time.
Genesis 1:3-31 records the events of Creation Week, a six-day period where God “worked” to recreate life on the earth and then he rested on the seventh day. I say “recreated” life because Genesis 1:2 describes the earth as being in a destroyed, darkened and lifeless state before Creation Week, but the earth was clearly already here before Creation Week began. Genesis 1:1 states God made the heavens and earth at a time indefinitely further into the past before Creation Week ever happened, and Job 38:1-11 records the angels sang for joy when they saw God create it. Isaiah 45:18 records God made the earth to be inhabited and that he created it not “tohu” (“in vain” in the KJV), but Genesis 1:2 says the earth had become “tohu” (“without form” or a “ruin”) before Creation Week began. This primordial global catastrophe, in my view, occurred when Lucifer and his angels rebelled against God and there was a war in heaven in which Lucifer and his rebels were thrown back to earth (Luke 10:18). It wasn’t just the rebellious angels that were hurled to earth. The Chixulub crater by Mexico’s Yucatan has convinced many in the scientific community that heavenly objects hitting the earth caused the extinction of the dinosaur world. The full story of this primordial extinction is found in my article “Is the Earth 6,000 Years Old?” at this website [Hint: the article asserts that both the Bible and science confirm the earth is far, far older than 6,000 years.] This previous extinction is not the one which killed the “ice baby” mammoth.”
The Creation Week account relates that God reformed the earth’s surface and created, not the previous reptilian/dinosaur world, but rather new species dominated by mammals and mankind. Science has confirmed that a transition to a mammalian-dominated world occurred on earth after the end of the dinosaur age. The book of Genesis is entirely-consistent with that scientific finding. The Bible then records that mankind became so sinful and corrupt (Genesis 6:5-7) that God decided to “start over” by ending all air-breathing life on earth in a Divinely-caused planetary extinction which would be survived by only Noah’s family (eight souls) and the species of animals which they could pack on the Ark. When the Deluge hit, a pre-Flood canopy of water-vapor which surrounded the earth (called the “firmament” in Genesis 1:7) condensed and the amount of water that fell from the sky was so vast that it rained everywhere on earth for 40 days, temporarily submerging the earth’s land masses. Genesis 7:11 also notes that there was cataclysmic tectonic activity (“the fountains of the deep were broken up”). Genesis 2:6 says a “mist” watered the entire surface of the pre-Flood earth, and this is explained by the global layer of water vapor that surrounded the earth. This canopy equalized the temperatures all over the earth and the Arctic and Antarctic regions were then habitable. The Arctic Siberian regions of the earth had rich grasslands before the great extinction which killed the “ice baby” and vast numbers of other mega-fauna. When the canopy was gone, temperatures at the northern and southern polar regions would have frozen very quickly-especially if the axis of the earth tilted as well at that time. The tectonic activity and massive walls of water that occurred as the earth was being flooded would have been awesome. One such wave of water and mud hit the herd of the “ice baby” that had its head dented by the impact which also instantly crammed its entire frontal cavities full of dense sediment. The purpose of the deluge in Noah’s time was to kill everything that breathed on earth except for the 8 humans of Noah’s family and the animals on the Ark; therefore this extinction was very violent. Noah’s Ark only held the subspecies of each species which were indigenous to the region where the Ark was built. Other subspecies of each species around the earth went extinct…suddenly.
The circumstances of the “ice baby’s” death are entirely supportive of the Bible’s account of an early near-extinction of all life in mankind’s history on this earth. However, do not expect the evolutionary mindset of the world community to see this fact. They are “ever learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth” about God. Paul referred to the “oppositions of science falsely so-called” in I Timothy 6:20. In Romans 1:17-32, Paul wrote that sinful people who wanted to run from the awareness of a Creator God would invent a belief system which “worshipped the creature rather than the Creator.” That belief system of darkened reason is now called “evolution.”
Mankind has deluded itself into thinking that there is no Creator God who will eventually demand an accounting of every individual and will dispense punishments to each individual based on their sins. The redeeming sacrifice of Jesus Christ is the “ticket” which frees all who accept it from that eventual judgment (Romans 8:1). Accepting Jesus’ sacrifice is called repentance and a genuine repentance will lead to individuals changing their lives to live in accord with God’s laws and standards of conduct. Accepting Jesus Christ’s Lordship over one’s life eventually leads to eternal life (Romans 6:23) with all happiness and even rulership promises in the age following our current one which is drawing to a conclusion (Revelation 20:4). God is offering to make us his sons and daughters (Genesis 1:26, II Corinthians 6:18), and eventually to be heirs of all he created (Romans 8:17, Galatians 4:6-7). Somewhere in the ages to come (about which Paul wrote in Ephesians 2:7) when mankind is made heirs of all things with Christ, there may even be a galaxy out there with your name on it..
God is offering mankind a deal so incredibly good that we’d be fools not to accept it. God knows that no one can obey Him and live the right way on human power alone (Jeremiah 17:9, Romans 8:7). That is why he gives his Holy Spirit to change and transform our hearts and minds when we repent (Jeremiah 31:31-34, Hebrews 8:6-12, Acts 2:38).
Mankind is a fallen creation. It does not want to admit that we are all merely sentient creations made from the dust of the earth, and that we live on a habitable global “terrarium” painstakingly made for us by a Creator God who made us in his own image (Genesis 1:26). Mankind’s allotted time wherein it can be willingly ignorant of God’s reality is drawing toward an end. As many prophecies show, God is coming back to rule his “terrarium” Himself. Jesus Christ will be the King of the earth and his saints will reign with him as loyal subordinate vassals (Revelation 20:4). Then the earth will enjoy a true “Golden Age” of utopia. Evolutionary fables blind mankind to this overriding truth which will come to pass on this earth.
