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Index to Creationist Claims,  edited by Mark Isaak,    Copyright © 2005
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Claim CC381:

Evolutionary anthropologists say Stone-Age people, who buried their dead, were around for about 185,000 years, at a population between one and ten million. If these numbers are correct, they would have buried at least eight billion bodies, but we have found remains of only a few thousand. That is more in line with an age of only a few hundred years before history.

Source:

Humphreys, D. Russell. 2005. Evidence for a young world. Impact 384 (June): vi. http://www.icr.org/index.php?module=articles&action=view&ID=1842

Response:

  1. The fact that some people buried bodies does not mean all did. In many cases, such as wars, plagues, natural disasters, and lone people getting lost, people get killed without even any consideration of funerals. Some land, such as swamps, hardpans, and ground frozen in winter, makes burial impractical at best. Even today, common funerary practices include incineration, exposure to the scavengers and elements, and burial at sea.

  2. Burial alone does not preserve a body.
    All of these are significant factors. Fossilization is not a common process. And we have examined only a tiny fraction of the land where bodies might be buried. The few thousand remains we have found are well in line with a 185,000-year human history.

    We would not expect the burial of artifacts to be common. There would be no reason to bury cheaper tools, such as pounding stones, with people. More valuable artifacts would not likely be buried with poor people.

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created 2005-9-21