https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/did-a-mysterious-extinction-event-precede-adam-and-eve One of my theories has been that humans were far more advanced in the past and some kind of catastrophic event caused us to start over.
I read part of the study that determined "Eve" called the "Eve Project" It was quite a collection of great minds, and was relatively simple compared to tracing "Adam", as mitochondrial DNA is more straightforward and inherited only from the female. A memorable line written by a female sociologist (whose name I have forgotten) referred to Intelligent Design when she wrote, "It appears that men were designed for short brutal lives, while women were designed for long miserable ones."
You are not alone with your theory @Sheldon Scott. There are a very large number of Christians who believe that there is a gap between Gen. 1:1 and 1:2 and to tell the truth, it is still a mystery to me even though I have spent a few hundred hours on the subject. As a furtherance of that issue there is also Gen. 1:28 whereby Adam and Eve were told to go and "replenish" the earth which might lend to the theory that there might have been another civilization prior to the Adamic era. Of course, to some there really isn't a gap and the replenish part is a mistranslation meaning "fill", but still, believing one way or the other doesn't take away from one's Christian belief but is merely yet another thing to entertain one's self with and if peacefully done, makes for good conversation.
Maybe the Aliens came here and saw the rudimentary development of intelligent life forms. Then inserted their DNA into the highest life forms and adjusted the remaining ones to support them.
There are some who believe just that, @Shirley Martin, or at least something along those lines. I have studied all kinds of stuff for over 50 years, and I could start all kinds of discussions. Has anyone ever heard of the "Rape and Pillage" theory of human development? It was one proposed by evolutionists in the 1960s, but it still makes some sense to me.
@Bobby Cole, it's interesting to point out 'replenish' worded in the Bible. For I have always thought it meant to 'fill' the Earth with no question about it.
It's studies like these that shed some light on expressions like 'in another life', 'reincarnate' and others.
It does but still, many hard line gap theorists still refer to the 1611 KJV as being a word for word true translation. In fact, there are 13 small mistakes in the translation which is actually pretty phenomenal considering the vast differences the translators had to deal with. Do note: None of the errors have the ability to change the full message of the Bible but some do have the ability to change how we view some things. The largest reason (from my perspective) for sticking to the gap theory is not only because there really does seem to be a large hole between the two initial verses in the Old Testament but it acts as a bridge of sorts between Judeo-Christianity and science. Whilst the hard line creationists believe that mankind started some 6000 years ago with the advent of Adam, there are human skeletons which are carbon dated to be 168,000 years old. I am a creationist but I’m a tad more pragmatic in that I am not bothered by the archaeological finds for certainly, the Bible is (if we look at it closely) a genealogical sketch of Jesus and does not need to go beyond 6000 years ago even though the earth itself is certainly much older than some seem to believe. If indeed there was another civilization prior to Adam, I’m pretty much okay with it. And if there was, I’m just curious enough to want to know more about it.
I do have to propose a query (following a statement) which at first might seem trivial but it does have some bearing on the type of civilization that is being touted as "advanced". The word, "civilization" only denotes that there is some cultural and social advancement but doesn't necessarily mean that there are any large achievements in gadgetry. The oldest metal tool is an awl which is dated at around 6000 years old but the use of copper goes back some 10,000 years ago. Stone tools on the other hand go back some 2.6 million years but we are still finding stone artifacts dating only 10,000-15,000 years ago which would take away from any hard line achievements in the use of metal prior to the Adamic era. It's a given that metal tools do decompose in the natural after a short period of time, but one would think that there would be some metallurgical instrumentation or gearing found in a sealed area away from mother nature. If there were a "far advanced" civilization more than say, 10,000 years ago, why haven't we found any engineering that would serve as evidence of that proposed possibility?
Stoeckle and Thaler’s discovery is that something happened roughly 100,000 years ago that created entirely new populations from long-existing species. That's a long time for anything to remain. The Earth has most likely gone thorough many upheavals in that time.