How did people seem to be on every Continent at the same time?

Question

The first up right walking person in Africa is named Lucy and she was here 35,000 years ago but science has also found footprints in volcanic ash in Mexico that is also 35,000 years old.

Is it possible there were humans everywhere at the same time?

Sorry I'm putting a science question here but this is a form of evolution which seems to be posted here alot.

Answer 1

Sorry, "Lucy" lived 3.2 million years ago, not 35,000 years ago.

Scientists have a pretty clear trail of the spread of humans "out of Africa." The first signs of humans in North/South America came about 40,000 years ago. In Australia, about 55,000 years ago. They didn't all appear at the same time -- and this is clear from geologic, anthropologic, and biologic evidence.

Answer 2

First of all, "Lucy" has been reclassified as an upright walking chimpanzee. Second of all, the dating methods that scientists use are haphazard at best because they bring presuppositions with them that skew their results.

For instance they use the soil strata layers to try and determine how old a fossil is. They look around at nature and see how long layers take to form and then they come up with an equation based upon that measurement to date fossils. The presupposition they bring to that dating method is that all of the soil layers formed under similar conditions to the ones they observed to come up with the time constants that they use in their equations.

Well, when Mount St Helens erupted there were massive mud slides that formed soil layers in 4 hours that according to the accepted scientific method of dating fossils would have taken 12 million years to form. So if a human being had been caught in one of those mud slides and his body had been fossilized a scientist who was ignorant of the volcanic eruption would conclude that the man had lived here on earth 12 million years ago.

I'm sure that you know that fossils are not the norm when a plant or animal dies. Normally decay sets in and there is no trace left. Now to answer your question about people being on every continent as well as fossil remains, I look to the Bible because that's the most accurate source of information on prehistoric times that we have.

Genesis 7:11 In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened.

A world wide flood that came about because vast underground sources of water suddenly were let loose at the same time as torrential rains were pouring down would have cause dramatic climatic and geological changes on the surface of this planet. That's probably when the mammoths that have been found frozen in blocks of ice in the arctic region met their demise as well as when most of the other fossils on this planet were formed.

Not too long after the flood, maybe a couple of hundred years, the Bible says that God scattered mankind over the face of the earth.

Genesis 11:7 Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech. 8 So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city. 9 Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the LORD did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the LORD scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.

I don't know how He did this or if He scattered animals over the face of the earth too, but since God can do pretty much whatever He wants to do I would theorize that this is how it happened and that's why we have different animal types in areas like Australia than we find in other regions of the earth.

Answer 3

Lucy's upright status is still contested:
http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2006/0926selam.asp

Lucy's status as "human" is also still disputed
http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2006/0926selam.asp

Dating methods give only a guess at the actual age of the rock
http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/faq/dating.asp

Humans dispersed from one central location. Here is a very interesting article discussing the dispersal of humans to all the earth. The whole article is here:

http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v24/i3/babel.asp

Answer 4

the world has only been going 7000 yrs

Answer 5

yes, the world was all connected at that point of time, so it could be possible that there were humans across the world

Answer 6

Um, no... hominids have been around for far, FAR longer than 35,000. Lucy is not the earliest known hominid.

Answer 7

The australian aboriginals go back 60,000 years. I think maybe they were here first. Adam and eve were australian....(?)

Answer 8

Continental drift.

Answer 9

pangea