Bearing in mind, then, the remote possibility that the solar years before the Noachic Flood were just possibly perhaps not of quite the same length as were those after the Flood — we can assume that man originated not earlier than at the very most some seventy-four centuries ago or in about 5400 B.C., and not later than B.C. 3500 — depending on whether one follows the Greek Septuagint, the Massoretic Hebrew, or the Samaritan Pentateuch. For the reasons already given above, and following the Massoretic Hebrew, we ourselves (with Ussher) place Adam at around 4000 B.C.
It is true, of course, that — apart from the Piltdown and Java Man hoaxes and the clearly non-human African Australopithecines and Chinese Gigantopithecines — evolutionists37 and even some misguided Christian concessionists38 have sought to date genuine fossil hominids such as the Neanderthaler and Cro-Magnon Man at periods ranging from twenty thousand through two hundred thousand years ago. But, as said above, little truly scientific importance is to be attached to the value of the sedimentary, palaeontological, or radioactive dating methods — as all must presuppose a uniformitarianistic rate of past rundown in rocks and fossils in order to give accurate results.
