🌄Historicity¶
Estimated time to read: 3 minutes
Christianity and science don’t always get along nicely.
Cavemen¶
It was not until man forsook the divine guidance which the Lord was always willing to extend to him, that retrogression set in. The “cave-man” and the savage are products of transgression and sin; for, in the beginning man was intelligent, and directed by light and truth, even by the Savior, Jesus Christ, who is the Mediator between man and God….
MEN BECAME SAVAGES THROUGH RETROGRESSION. It was not until after man rebelled and rejected the word of God that he fell into mental degeneracy, and lost the power to converse in written language. Man was intelligent in the beginning, and understood many fundamental truths, but when he refused to receive divine guidance, the Spirit of the Lord withdrew, and then he was left alone and became a savage, for the light in him was turned to darkness.
— Doctrines of Salvation 1:148-149, Joseph Fielding Smith, Quorum of the Twelve
How do we explain “cave man” and “early man” and “stone age man”? They are simply a result of deterioration and retrogression. They fell away from a better life, that which was known to the first man, Adam.
— Adam: Who Is He?, Mark E. Petersen, Quorum of the Twelve
[Civilization] began with Adam, the first man, unusually well educated because the Lord was his teacher. (Moses 6.) It is admitted that there was retrogression among some of his family who apostatized and then left his well-ordered society. They were the backsliders who left the true faith and culture of Adam and the patriarchs and sank so low that they became carnal, sensual, and devilish.
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Thus they became the cavemen and other early degenerates who some scholars now mistakenly believe were the first men.
All of this differs but little from situations found among certain aborigines who live today in some parts of the world. Both the caveman-type and the advanced man of our present culture still live today, as examples of the contrast between human retrogression on one hand and cultural advancement on the other.
Since this is happening today, can anyone say that the condition did not also exist 5,000 or 6,000 years ago?
— Moses: Man of Miracles, Mark E. Petersen, Quorum of the Twelve
[Adam and Eve] were highly intelligent people, not at all like either the hominids or the cavemen some claim the first humans to have been. They were well educated, having been taught by the Lord himself. What an education! What an instructor!
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These dissenters lost the Spirit of God and as a result became carnal, sensual, and devilish (see Moses 5:13). With these evil attributes always comes retrogression. We should not be surprised, therefore, to hear of cavemen living in the dawn of time.
— Adam, the Archangel, Mark E. Petersen, General Conference October 1980
Speaking of the degrees of civilization and decency found within nations in successive ages, it is clear that there have been instances of great national devolution or degeneracy. The American Indians, in their tribal and degenerate state, were the descendants of the highly civilized Nephite civilization that prevailed on the American continent for nearly 200 years after the ministry of Christ in the Western Hemisphere. So-called cave men and the like were all degenerate descendants of the highly civilized men who peopled the earth beginning with Adam, the father of civilization.
— Mormon Doctrine, p.196, Bruce R. McConkie