Earth Was 'Barren, Flat' 4.4 Billion Years Ago, Australian Researchers Say
What was Earth like 4.4 billion years ago? According to a new study, Earth was quite unlike what it is now for it used to be barren, flat, and almost completely submerged under water.
The study was conducted by Dr. Anthony Burnham of the Australian National University's Research School of Earth Sciences, according to the Daily Mail. Burnham discovered that only a few islands penetrated the global ocean, and the conditions on Earth were extremely "quiet and dull."
"The history of the Earth is like a book with its first chapter ripped out with no surviving rocks from the very early period, but we've used these trace elements of zircon to build a profile of the world at that time," he said.
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During the first 700 million years of Earth's existence, Burnham said there were no mountains at all, nor were there any "continental collisions."
Burnham and his team studied zircon mineral grains that were preserved in sandstone rocks in the Jack Hills of Western Australia. These were the oldest fragments of the Earth ever found, so they attempted to connect the link between zircon composition and magma type before building a picture of the missing rocks.
"Our findings also showed that there are strong similarities with zircon from the types of rocks that predominated for the following 1.5 billion years, suggesting that it took the Earth a long time to evolve into the planet that we know today," Burnham said.
On the other hand, Answers in Genesis founder Ken Ham earlier stated that the evolutionary belief that Earth existed for millions of years before mankind existed is not compatible with the Bible's teachings.
"The belief in millions of years does not come from Scripture, but from the fallible methods that secularists use to date the universe," he wrote on his blog.
Ham cited fossil thorns to make his case. Fossil thorns are found in rock layers, which scientists believe to be millions of years old. However, Ham said the Bible is clear when thorns came into existence — after Adam and Eve betrayed God.
The Bible passage Genesis 3:17–18 reads: "Then to Adam He said, 'Because . . . you have eaten from the tree of which I commanded you, saying, 'You shall not eat of it': Cursed is the ground for your sake. . . . Both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you.'"
