Following my blog write up here:
https://scientificlogic.blogspot.com/?zx=6002ef2770615bb7
someone in “My Friend” WhatsApp group then was asking how did
Noah preserve and store all those foods, probably in their tens of hundreds of
tons for the animals he brought into his ark without refrigerators or any form
of refrigeration? I have not even thought of this problem before.
Yes, that was a very relevant and interesting question as it
rained for 40 days, and 40 nights, and this was a very long time for food to be
preserved. But the Bible didn’t tell how that was done. I suppose the Bible is
not a science book or a book on food science, food technology or on food
quality control to describe all those logistics.
But I believe even without refrigeration, food can be preserved
and kept for a very long time especially plant-based foods like hay, straws,
grasses, fodders and dry feeds.
All these foods for animals can be dried in the sun before the
rains come for Noah and his family as the adage says “make hay while the sun
shines”.
I also suspect most of the animals Noah brought into his ark
were grass-eating animals and plant feeders and were not meat-eaters like
lions, tigers and crocodiles.
But what bewilders me was how it was possible for Noah to bring
in so many species of animals into his ark.
Exceeding 99% of the estimated four or five billion species that
have evolved on Earth have now gone extinct. At least nearly 1,000 species are
now gone over the last five hundred years.
The Cambrian Period was part of the Paleozoic Era. This period
extended from 541 million to 485.4 million years ago when it saw the most
prolific explosion of life on this planet, Earth has ever known.
This period produced the most intense burst of evolution ever
known. We call this the Cambrian Radiation. It witnessed an incredible
diversity of life that emerged, including many major animal groups in existence
till today.
Most of them were the lower life forms like chordates to
which animals with backbones (vertebrates) like humans belong.
However, there were at least four major extinctions that befell
during the Cambrian Radiation. The first extinction occurred at the Early
Cambrian epoch boundary. During that event, the oldest group
of trilobites, the olnellids, perished as well as the primary
reef-building organisms, the archaeocyathids.
The remaining three disappearances were irregularly distributed
around the Late Cambrian epoch boundary. On the whole, it severely
affected the trilobites, brachiopods, and conodonts.
It was believed that Noah was born in 2448 B.C. in
Shulon, East Eden. He died 1848 B.C. in Salem, Cannan. Noah was then five
hundred years old; and Noah begot Shem, Ham, and Japheth. ' (Genesis 5:32).
This means the Great Flood occurred between those two periods. That period was
485 million years after the Cambrian Period when most life, at least the lower
forms of life had already evolved.
It was mostly the phyla that originated then, but there's been
so much turnover that the families and orders got replaced and became
non-existent over the past 500 million years, most critically during the
Ordovician Radiation, the Permian mass extinction, the Mesozoic marine
revolution and the KT extinction.
Cambrian Period, earliest time division of
the Paleozoic Era, extending from 541 million to 485.4 million years
ago. But we are not clear how many species of life were evolved then. But we
are sure there were no mammals then.
More than 17,000 species are known to have survived until the
mega-extinction that ended the Permian period 251 million years ago.
But I think it was about 3.6 million years ago that human-like
Australopithecus afarensis footprints were seen as well as the emergence of
more advanced animals. These animals were seen in the Galapagos Islands by
Naturalist Charles Darwin. It was then also a rise of other mammals in the
Panama Isthmus and advanced animals probably Noah brought into his ark millions
of years later.
True humans like Adam and Eve emerged after all animals including apes, chimpanzees and other hominids were created or evolved.
Before them it was clear the plants were created first as described in Genesis 11 to provide oxygen through phtosynthesis before all other air-breathing creatures became possible.
It is also clear that life evolved from the oceans and seas first, then the birds of the air as given in Genesis 20 - 27.
Later other land creatures came into existence before humans were created.
Then out of the oceans and seas, the fishes and all other aquatic creatures came into being before they became reptiles to creep into dry land where they further evolved into "glorifed reptiles" as birds of the air
This tallies beautifully from what we know in the time scale on the evolution of life on earth.
See 4 Billion Years of Life Creation here:
https://scientificlogic.blogspot.com/2021/02/4-billion-years-of-life-creation.html
It was around 2.5 million years ago then tools were used by humans
Noah came much later after Adam and Eve. As mentioned, Noah was
born in 2,448 B.C. which was approximately 4,448 years ago. By then a good
number of warm-blooded animals and mammals besides humans were already in
existence, but how many species of animals or even hominids as described in
Genesis 6 before the Flood became possible we are uncertain.
Conservatively, we may put them at least 100,000
versus 5,500 mammals currently. Some half the species have since gone
extinct since Noah’s time, whether destroyed by the Great Flood or through
Natural Selection we are unclear.
Even at these very conservative numbers on mammals alone, not
counting reptiles and other cold-blooded animals, that was an awful lot of
animals even if just one each in a pair Noah needed to accommodate into his
ark?
Our question and a very pertinent one is, would it totally be impossible
for Noah to collect all those few billion types of life, in pairs too, to
accommodate them into his ark, and also supply all of them with food for 40
days and 40 nights during rains and the Great Flood?
Then what about all those aquatic animals like various types of
fishes, different kinds of whales, sharks, manta ray, seals,
dolphins, etc. Were they left alone into the seas and waters or were they also
brought into the ark? Were all these sea creatures also destroyed by the Great
Inundation.
In the insect world, scientists specializing in taxonomy
documented there are currently more than 1 million species of
insects alone. Among the insects, ants are the most abundant.
These colonial hymenopterans may number to the tune of 10-100,000 trillion
individuals globally among the more than 10,000 species.
In the Order of Coleoptera, beetles are known to have
some 350,000 documented species. For instance, in the United
States alone, there are nearly 30,000 types of beetles known.
These figures are constantly rising from new species being found.
Insects evolved at the same time as the earliest land
plants around 480 million years ago, an international study
revealed. The earliest fossil evidence for insects is dated at around 400 million
years old, but the new study uses genetic techniques to corroborate estimates
that they evolved much earlier.
Hence, we can safely conclude insects alone have long existed
even before Noah. Our question would be, did Noah included all those
insects, ants and beetles in pair as into his ark? After all, insects
zoologically-speaking are also animals?
What about the bacteria, microbes, worms and parasites? Were
these
also brought into the ark? Worms, insects too are zoologically
classified as animals.
Another controversy much discussed by the church, debated
by scientists and asked by the ordinary man-in-the-street is, was the
great flood just localized or regional event, and where did the rains get all
those waters? I shall write on this later.
But as far as the number of species of life existed during
Noah's time,
and how many types and species he put inside his ark; I am
afraid my current knowledge does not allow me to answer some of these
issues.
Maybe someone else more enlightened may be able to answer
I am willing to learn from them.
jb
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