To get an idea of when the event at the Tower of Babel took place, we have to refer to the genealogies in Genesis. From these, we can figure out that it happened after the Flood, but before the birth of Abraham. Following the genealogies, we can determine that the Tower of Babel event took place before year 2,008, which was about the time that Abraham was born. And going back from there, we trace Abraham’s genealogy back to Peleg, who was born in the year 1,757, about 100 years after the Flood.

Peleg makes a good historical marker to work from and to analyze what happened at Babel. So we are going to look at the events surrounding the days of Peleg, starting with a person named Nimrod.

Nimrod was the grandson of Noah’s son, Ham. Nimrod built Babel, or Babylon, among other cities. Nimrod was called a mighty hunter before the Lord. It appears that Nimrod was bent being a ruler who conquers, and God sees this. Nimrod’s name means rebel, and more properly, it means The Rebel. Outside of Scripture, he is credited with the introduction of a new religion that was contrary to God’s standards and person. All throughout history, there has been a division between those that want to follow the Lord, and those that don’t. It is very likely, given Nimrod’s rebellious nature, that the Tower was set up by Nimrod to cause division between the people of God and a new religion.

Back to Peleg: Peleg was a descendant of Shem, and, according to the genealogies,  could possibly have known Nimrod. Peleg was in the line of Seth, so likely he was given the knowledge of the true God through Shem. Peleg’s name means division. It is very possible that his name is a reflection of the division that took place at the Tower of Babel.

The result of the division that happened at the Tower was that men scattered throughout the earth, divided by language. It would not be surprising that they divided further based on shared skills or ideas. In particular, when looking at Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon people, it is likely we are looking at the results of some of these groupings that happened after the division at Babel.

This brings up the question about evolution as envisioned by Charles Darwin and the fossil skulls that have been found. This is why understanding what happened at the Tower of Babel is so critical.

The fossil skulls are seen as the various stages of evolution of man from an ape-like creature to modern man. And it is not just the skulls that are pointed to, but also the tools that have been found with these civilizations. They are said to point to the evolution of man. But if the Tower of Babel really took place, then these different tools and skulls are just relics of a great division that took place at Babel. The differences among the skulls and tools are just evidence of a struggle that was taking place in a hostile world. Man was struggling for survival, not for evolutionary progress. These mistaken ideas are really the root of racism. Darwin and others like him during his time thought that the pinnacle of evolution of man was the white European, and he believed that black people represented inferior races. These ideas influenced other evolutionists. For example, the famous dinosaur hunter, E. D. Cope believed in this idea and advocated for the return of the former slaves to Africa. Henry Fairfield Osborn of Nebraska Man fame advocated for the sterilization of what was thought to be inferior people.

Anthropology is the study of man, and Paleoanthropology is the study of ancient man. It is based in the study of ancient fossils in order to establish the evolutionary history of animals and plants, including man. In the early days of anthropology, it was believed that you could determine a person’s intelligence by measuring the size of their brain. If you had a larger brain, then you were more intelligent. Darwin and Thomas Huxley both followed this line of thinking.

The Christian and Hebrew position has always been that God created from one man and woman, the human race. One race. That race was divided at the Tower of Babel into various cultures and languages, which were the forerunners of what we have today.

Perhaps the differences that we are looking at are the differences between varieties of apes, and, on the other hand, different human beings, some of which could have been related to the incident at the Tower of Babel.

This explanation certainly would line up with the account of the Tower of Babel. The story in Scripture gives a credible framework that we can then fit the evidence into.

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