NOAH’S ARK
JUNIOR SKEPTIC No. 73 (2019)
For many centuries, people thought they already knew the history of the Earth. According to stories in the Bible, God created the world and all living things just a few thousand years ago. The story of Noah’s ark claimed that the surface of the Earth was then reshaped by a world-wide flood.
Eventually scientific thinkers started to realize that this story did not match the evidence they observed in the natural world. When naturalists studied the layers of rocks revealed in mines and cliffsides, it became clear that the Earth was much older than anyone had ever imagined. The fossils found in those rocks posed major puzzles. Some fossils were recognizable, but others were like nothing anyone had ever seen. A famous French scientist proved that mammoth and mastodon bones were different from any species alive in modern times. Mammoths lived long ago and then went extinct. Different kinds of living things existed in the distant past!