NOACH 5783

How Old is Mankind? The Answer Might Surprise You

Last year I taught a course titled, “How Old is the World?” According to the Torah, our world is 5783 years old since a soul was put into Adam. However, anyone who studies science cannot accept the notion that people are only 6,000 years old—especially with all the fossil evidence. Anthropology textbooks and the museums show humanoids like us go back 90,000 years.

50,000 years ago, people were making clever tools. 10,000 years ago, we learn from pollen studies in Israel and Syria that people were farming. It takes a lot of intelligence and foresight to farm, because why would you put grains in the ground unless you had the foresight that later in the year it could give you hundreds of grains? So how can the Torah tell us that humans are only 6,000 years old?

Today’s Torah portion describes how human beings began to spread out after the great flood of Noah and repopulate the world. I thought it would be a good time to speak about the question of how long have human beings been on the earth?

The answer depends on how we define a human being. Anthropology textbooks and museums define a human being as a person that looks like you and I and has your brains and my brains—i.e. Homo sapiens sapiens. The Torah, however, adds a nuance in the definition of a human being. A human being—according to the Torah—is a humanoid that looks like you and me, has our brains, but also has a neshama—an eternal soul! As we learned last week (Gen. 2:7): “Hashem Gd formed man of dust from the ground, vaipach b’apav nishmat Chayim, and He blew into his nostrils a neshama, the soul of life (an eternal soul).” All animals have a nefesh—an animalistic soul. But only a human being has a neshama!

Let me tell you how the advent of the neshama changed the world! I’m going to amaze you now with facts that have amazed me. If you study ancient history, you will see a sociological change in the world about 6,000 years ago that is so dramatic, so extraordinary that the British Museum in London—which has the most important exhibits on Mesopotamia—has an entire exhibit demonstrating this.

The exhibit is called, “The Earliest Cities.” It lists the changes that took place, and what’s so amazing is the exhibit gives a date for when these changes came about for the earliest of cities. The date that they give for the change in society that was so extreme that they devoted an entire wing to it is approximately 5,500 years ago! Sound familiar?

Of course! This is right after the Torah says the neshama was placed into a human being. And this we can count from the dating in the Torah, as being 5,783 years ago! Human beings with a neshama then spread out and bingo, you’ve got major cities within a couple of hundred years.

Israeli physicist Gerald Schroeder, in a lecture, tells us that he spoke with the curator of the museum. The museum lists the changes that appeared 5,500 years ago. Writing was invented, trading was invented. Large cities appear for the 1^st time. Schroeder didn’t mention Torah or the Bible to him. He didn’t mention the concept of neshama. He didn’t mention Adam and the dating of a human being according to the Torah. He just asked him, “What was the change that caused this? What made all this happen?”

A plaque on the wall noted that writing responded to the need to record economic transactions. Before the advent of the neshama, you couldn’t have large cities. People with just a nefesh animalistic soul could only cooperate so much. They literally had each other for dinner. It was a dog-eat-dog world! There were no humans there. There were people, but they weren’t yet human.

Now, because you have a neshama in people—for the 1^st time in the history of Homo-sapiens sapiens—beings that were exactly like you, smelled like you and talked like you could live together. That’s how you now can have a large city. This was not a physical change, but a social change with the invention of writing and trading and the 1^st large cities. The domino effect of all this is that once you have large cities, you have a division of labor. So, farmers outside the city can trade for items made in the city. In the city some people would be builders, and some produce clothes or baskets or tools or whatever.

The British Museum tells us that writing was invented because bartering, trading was invented. Trading was invented because of division of labor. Division of labor was invented because of the appearance of the 1^st large cities with some in the cities and some on the farm. This is all so magnificent! But what the museum does NOT tell us is why the 1^st large cities appear? Schroeder says he asked the curator what was the change that brought about the 1^st large cities? The curator shrugged his shoulders and said, “We have no idea!”

But we know why these changes in the world came about. It was the advent of the neshama into human beings! It wasn’t a population explosion. That goes back 10,000 years with the creation of farming. Once there was farming, you could have big families. Before farming—when hunting and gathering was the main support—with following the heard, there was a limit to how many babies you could carry. Once you had farming, you’re sedentary, and large families are helpful in growing and harvesting the farm.

So again, why did people suddenly come together—from China to Mesopotamia to Europe, and everywhere in the world—to form large cities 5,500 years ago? The curator had no idea, but we know. It was the neshama! The Torah makes clear that 5,783 years ago a spiritual force came into the world that changed beings into humans—not physiologically, but spiritually!

Maimonides (1190CE), in his Guide to the Perplexed (1:7), describes beings at the time of Adam that had the same shape and intelligence as humans: As regards the words [in the Torah], “the form of Adam, and his likeness,” we have already stated their meaning. Those sons of Adam who were born before that time were not human in the true sense of the word, they had not “the form of man.” So, with reference to Seth who had been instructed, enlightened and brought to human perfection, it could rightly be said, “he (Adam) begat a son in his likeness, in his form.” It is acknowledged that a man who does not possess this “form” is not human, but a mere animal in human shape and form. 

So, the notion that there were humanoids—Cro Magnon man, Australopithecus, Homo erectus. Etc.—tens of thousands, even millions of years before Adam is not so far-fetched in the Jewish world. Even Maimonides teaches this. Jews count the years of mankind from the moment Gd placed a neshama (an eternal soul) into man 5783 years ago—remarkably similar to what science tells us.  

And what about how old is the universe? The Sages of Kabbalah maintain (and this is a talk for another time) that the universe is about 15 billion years old—also remarkably similar to what science tells us.

My friends, we don’t really need to know that science confirms what the Torah teaches us. But isn’t it nice to know? Amen!