The Declaration and the Deep Record

61 entries, in the order they happened: 27 where the Bible speaks and 34 where the historical record answers.

About the dating here: the awakening to Babel: dated by ruling and by the record, placed by story where the text gives no date

About the dating here: the fall to Babel, undated by the text and undated here

Every entry in this era

• undatedPsalm 82: the council judgedIn Psalm 82 God stands among the gods, judges them, and sentences them to die like men: the sentence on every seat above humanity, emptied one by one…
• the beginningIn the beginningThe beginning. The earth without form and void, darkness on the deep, and the Spirit moving on the waters before any light.
• the beginningIn the beginning was the WordThe Gospel of John opens where Genesis does: in the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God and was God, and all things were made by him.
• 13.787 ± 0.020 billion years…The universe beginsThe universe has an age: 13.787 billion years, measured from the light it left behind.
• about 50,000 years after the…The unseen gathers firstAbout 50,000 years in, matter overtakes radiation and the dark matter begins to gather into wells, before any light travels free.
• the first lightLet there be lightThe light is spoken, seen to be good, and divided from the darkness; the evening and the morning, the first day.
• about 380,000 years after…The first free lightAbout 380,000 years after the beginning the universe turns clear and light travels for the first time: the glow still seen as the cosmic microwave…
• about 100 – 300 million…The first starsStars light inside the dark-matter wells a hundred to two hundred million years in; telescopes now see galaxies already shining about 300 million…
• day fourThe two great lightsOn the fourth day the sun, the moon and the stars: the lights come after the light.
• about 4.6 billion years agoThe Sun formsThe Sun and its disk form about 4.6 billion years ago, nine billion years after the first light.
• day twoThe firmamentOn the second day a firmament divides the waters under it from the waters above it, and is called Heaven.
• about 4.4 billion years agoWater on the young EarthZircon crystals from the Jack Hills of Western Australia, 4.4 billion years old, carry the oxygen signature of liquid water: an ocean under an early…
• day threeThe dry landOn the third day the waters under heaven are gathered into one place and the dry land appears; the land is called Earth and the waters Seas.
• about 2.5 billion years agoLand rises above the seaThe oxygen isotopes of shales from every continent show land standing above the sea at near-modern height and extent by about 2.5 billion years ago…
• day fiveThe waters teem, the fowl flyOn the fifth day the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that has life, great whales among them, and winged fowl fly above the earth.
• 538.8 million years agoThe seas fill with animalsAbout 539 million years ago, at the base of the Cambrian, animal life diversifies in the seas: most of the major body plans appear within some twenty…
• day threeGrass, herb and fruit treeThe earth brings forth grass, the herb yielding seed and the tree yielding fruit, each after his kind: the third day, before the lights of the fourth.
• about 475 million years agoPlants reach the landThe oldest accepted traces of land plants, spores in rocks of Oman, date to about 475 million years ago; whole plant fossils follow about 50 million…
• day sixThe living creature after his kindOn the sixth day the earth brings forth the living creature after his kind: cattle, creeping thing and beast of the earth.
• about 395 – 375 million…Animals walk onto landFish with limbs such as Tiktaalik, about 375 million years ago, and tetrapod trackways in Poland about 395 million years old mark the first animals…
• about 325 million years agoThe first flyersInsects were the first animals to fly. Science dates the oldest winged insects in the rocks to about 325 million years ago, and genetic clocks put…
• about 150 million years agoThe first birdsBirds such as Archaeopteryx appear about 150 million years ago. They branched off from small feathered dinosaurs: birds are the dinosaurs that…
• about 430,000 – 540,000…A mark before our kindA zigzag engraved on a freshwater mussel shell at Trinil on Java, about half a million years ago, by Homo erectus: the oldest known geometric…
• day sixIn the image of GodGod makes man in his own image, male and female, and gives them dominion over the fish, the fowl, the cattle and all the earth: the last work of the…
• 315,000 ± 34,000 years agoThe first of our kindFossils at Jebel Irhoud in Morocco, dated about 315,000 years ago, are the earliest known Homo sapiens: modern faces, older braincases.
• about 164,000 years agoRed ochre on the coastAt Pinnacle Point in South Africa, about 164,000 years ago, people processed red ochre and gathered shellfish; whether the ochre made marks meant for…
• by c. 150,000 years ago (c.…The breathThe LORD God forms the man of the dust of the ground and breathes into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man becomes a living soul.
• a range, c. 150,000 – 79,500…The gardenA garden planted eastward in Eden, and the man placed in it.
• in the garden's rangeAdam names the animalsEvery beast and fowl is brought to the man to see what he would call them, and whatever he calls each living creature, that is its name.
• at least 142,000 years agoThe oldest known beadsPierced sea-snail shells worn as beads at Bizmoune Cave in Morocco, at least 142,000 years ago: the oldest known personal ornaments, signs of who a…
• about 100,000 – 135,000…Beads at SkhulPierced Nassarius shells worn as beads at Skhul, on Mount Carmel in Israel, about 100,000 to 135,000 years ago.
• about 92,000 years agoOchre, shells and a burial at QafzehAt Qafzeh Cave near Nazareth, about 92,000 years ago, people carried ochre-stained seashells inland from the coast and buried their dead, one child…
• about 82,000 years agoBeads at TaforaltPierced Nassarius shells, some coated with red ochre, at the Grotte des Pigeons at Taforalt in Morocco, about 82,000 years ago.
• before c. 77,500 BCThe fallThe text says the temptation was to be as gods, knowing good and evil. The fall is not about fruit but about the self made judge: a creature taking…
• before c. 77,500 BCThe verdict at the fall: head and heelIn the same sentence that judges the fall, God puts enmity between two lines of descent: the woman's seed shall bruise the serpent's head, and the…
• 79,500 years ago (c. 77,550…The board shaken: Los ChocoyosOne of the largest eruptions of the last two million years lays ash across two oceans onto a continent with no accepted human presence.
• after the fallAbel killed; Seth namedCain kills Abel, and Eve names her next son Seth, “another seed instead of Abel.” The pattern starts here: the line survives not because its carriers…
• about 75,000 years agoBeads at BlombosPierced Nassarius shells, worn strung together, at Blombos Cave in South Africa, about 75,000 years ago; the oldest known drawing comes from the same…
• about 75,000 years agoA populated worldAbout 75,000 years ago at least five kinds of human are alive at once, and modern humans live in the West Sumatran rainforest at Lida Ajer.
• after the fallCain's fear and Cain's cityCain fears that anyone who finds him will kill him, and he builds a city. Both need other people.
• the admixture itself, beside…Archaic ancestry measured in living genomesLiving people carry DNA from four archaic sources, and one bone from Denisova Cave belonged to a first-generation child of two different kinds of…
• placed by the author's…The sons of God take wivesGenesis says the sons of God took wives from among human women, names what came of it, and says there were giants in those days “and also after…
• 73,880 years ago (c. 71,930…The board shaken again: TobaThe largest eruption of the age, 73,900 years ago; people in India and South Africa carry on through its ash.
• about 73,000 years ago (c.…The first markThe oldest known drawing, a cross-hatch in ochre at Blombos Cave, about 73,000 years ago; pierced shell beads worn there a little earlier.
• at least 50,000 years ago,…People reach AustraliaPeople cross open sea to Australia at least fifty thousand years ago, and perhaps sixty-five thousand.
• about 60,000 years agoA shared pattern at DiepkloofAt Diepkloof Rock Shelter in South Africa, about 60,000 years ago, people engraved the same few geometric patterns on ostrich-eggshell water…
• c. 10,950 BCThe floodThe fountains of the great deep broken up and the windows of heaven opened: the reset.
• ~12,900 – 11,700 BP (c.…The Younger DryasAround 12,900 years ago a warming world plunged back into twelve centuries of cold: the Younger Dryas, measured in ice and sediment.
• deep antiquity, transmitted…Flood traditions and stepped monumentsFlood stories are found on every inhabited continent, and stepped monuments rise on four with no known contact between the hemispheres; Caral in Peru…
• after the floodThe rainbow oathAfter the flood God swears never again to destroy all life by water, and sets the rainbow as the sign.
• 11,700 years ago (c. 9,750 BC)The Holocene beginsThe cold snap ends about 11,700 years ago and the steadiest climate in the ice record begins: the one every harvest and every city since has grown in.
• after the floodNoah the husbandmanAfter the flood, on the mountains of Ararat, the first farmer and the first vineyard.
• c. 9600 BCGöbekli Tepe raised, then buriedHuge carved stone circles are raised at Göbekli Tepe before anyone farms, and later buried; the excavators now debate whether the fill was placed on…
• c. 9500 – 8000 BCFarming beginsOn the far side of the Younger Dryas the first farming villages appear in the Fertile Crescent; DNA traces domesticated einkorn wheat to the Karaca…
• c. 6000 – 5800 BCThe first wineThe earliest known wine, in pottery near Tbilisi in the South Caucasus, about 6000 BC: the region of the mountains of Ararat.
• c. 3500 BCBabelAt Babel the builders, one people with one language, set out to build a city and a tower and make themselves a name, and they say why: so they will…
• c. 3500 BCThe capability estimate at BabelGod's verdict on Babel is an assessment, not mockery: with one people and one language, nothing they imagine will be held back.
• c. 3500 BCThe scatteringThe builders are scattered over the earth. The scattering is protection: a people spread out cannot be wiped out, and every modern attempt to destroy…
• the division of the nations,…Deuteronomy 32:8: the two readingsIn Deuteronomy 32:8 the oldest copies, at Qumran and behind the Greek translation, say God divided the nations by the number of the “sons of God”…
• c. 1800–1600 BC onwardThe flood written into clayThe flood story is pressed into clay in Mesopotamia in three separate versions, about a thousand years before Genesis is compiled.
• the wilderness generation,…The Anakim named from the NephilimNumbers records the spies' report that the Anakim, the giants they saw in Canaan, came from the Nephilim, and the text names the related peoples.