Troublesome Topic: Learning to Survive

Let me ask you to think about the following questions for a minute before proceeding to read my thoughts.

Survival. That was the key. But how could they accomplish that when they didn’t even know all the dangers yet? Think about all the types of things they would need to learn to do. How difficult would it be to learn them without any previous knowledge or anyone’s advice? Think about life’s painful experiences and having to face them without knowing what to expect. Think about all the disappointments they would have endured. Think about how often they learned a new aspect of this thing called the consequences of sin.

“The red man made from dirt” started out by gathering fruits and nuts to eat. But right away he learned that it was not as easy as it had been in the “The protected enclosure of Delicate Delights”. So “The red man made from dirt” decided to try to grow his own plants, especially vegetables. He found that to be extremely difficult. In fact he thought they were going to starve before he figured it all out. He quickly learned about bugs, rabbits, deer, worms, storms, wind, and lack of rain. It took him much longer to learn about tiny things like aphids that are hard to see.

At first he chased away any bees he could find – and got stung a few times. The first time he got stung, “The one through whom God gives life” squeezed the bulb of poison as she pulled it out. The next time he did it himself and did the same thing. On the third time he learned to scrape it off with his fingernail. It was a few hundred years before he realized that bees were good for his garden.

At some point along the way he learned about a peril he never could have imagined – Hail! His introduction to it may have been to the large, destructive kind of hail. As I picture it, he ran first to look at his crops. Then he heard his animals crying in distress and he ran to them. Then he heard “The one through whom God gives life” calling his name and he ran to her. In the end, the only thing he could do was help her take cover under the nearest source of protection, such as a crude table.

After he figured out fire, which may have taken several weeks, “The red man made from dirt” did offer a sacrifice and he burned the whole thing up because he did not need another garment yet. After that he offered a sacrifice to God at least every 7^th day.

“The one through whom God gives life” insisted on trying to use fire to heat up food. “The red man made from dirt” could not understand why she wanted to do this. She tried many times and had many failures at first. “The red man made from dirt” wondered why she kept trying if all she ever did was burn the food. “I don’t want to eat burned food!”

One of her first successes was to cook hard seeds like lentils and beans until they were soft enough to eat. In order to make them not taste bland, “The one through whom God gives life” learned a little about spices and salt – salt is wonderful. This gave them a number of options beyond fresh fruit and vegetables all the time. After that she was always smelling every new plant she found. Over the span of several hundred years, she became a master at using spices for cooking.

At some point she had to learn about oil for cooking. And she did. This gave her the ability to fry things which opened up more possibilities. Of course, for each new type of cooking, they would have had to develop the vessel in which to cook the food. At first it was probably pottery, which could have been developed very early. Later they learned to use metals. Pottery will work for boiling but I don’t know if it works for frying things, so frying was probably not used until they had metal vessels adequate for frying.

“The one through whom God gives life” also experimented with grains and always asked “The red man made from dirt” to grind it for her. She finally learned how to make a simple flat bread, without yeast. She burned it a number of times first. When she did get it to cook properly, it was heavy and bland. So she experimented with things that would make it lighter and not so bland. In that process “The one through whom God gives life” learned a little about spices and salt – salt is wonderful.

“The one through whom God gives life” learned how to make butter quite by accident. They took some milk with them somewhere and it was a long enough trip that the milk was jostled and shaken for a sufficient amount of time to separate the butter from the milk. She found the butter later when Adam was not with her. She tasted it and it was ok. She mixed in some salt and it was wonderful! But she didn’t have anything to put it on, so she kept the discovery a secret until later.

Then the day came when she nailed bread with yeast! This time she cooked it just right without burning it. It was warm and light. It melted in her mouth. Then she remembered her discovery of butter, so she shook some milk long enough to make her own butter and mixed in the salt. When she tried the butter on the bread, she knew she had finally found one of the things she was looking for. So she made a bigger batch of bread and butter. When “the red man made from dirt” came in from the field, she was ready with warm bread and butter. He was amazed! He couldn’t get enough of it! He had to admit that all her efforts had been worthwhile. 

It is obvious from our perspective that they had to learn to be careful with milk products because they spoil without refrigeration. The good thing is that the spoilage is obvious because it changes to the smell and the taste of the milk. Thus they learned yet another lesson – that they needed to use the milk quickly or it would spoil. (People were not allowed by God to eat meat until after the world-wide flood, so “The Red Man made from Dirt” and “The one through whom God gives life” never had to deal with spoiled meat).

The discovery of cheese did not come till some time later. This process was counterintuitive because it was a case of purposefully allowing something to mold just a bit but not too much. We call it aging. When cheese was finally discovered, it was another wonderful addition to their growing number of food options. Once again it would not stay around for long without spoiling.

They also had to learn about what to do when they got sick or injured.

Which plants have medicinal value?

Which plants will make you sick?

After having a couple of close calls, they decided to use their domesticated animals to test any plant they were not familiar with yet. They lost a few animals in the process, but it taught them which plants were poison and which plants can be eaten. They learned there were a few differences between what a human can tolerate and what animals can tolerate, but it still helped them learn what to stay away from.

They learned about sunburns and heat stroke. They learned how to recognize the sensation of over heating before it got too bad. Over time they realized there was a connection between overheating and not getting enough water.

Even though they were not allowed to eat meat until after the flood, there were several purposes for raising domesticated animals: to provide for sacrifices, to provide skins for clothing, to provide milk, and for experimenting with plants to see which ones were poisonous.

We need to remember that before the world-wide flood, animals probably lived a long time just like humans did. This means that the animals that keep growing their entire lives were likely to be huge.  Kangaroos and male elephants never stop growing. Most fish (including sharks), amphibians such as frogs and lizards, and reptiles such as crocodiles, alligators and snakes, are capable of continued growth if their environment and diet allows for it. And one type of spider never stops growing. Are you wishing right now that you had lived in that time before the world-wide flood so you could see such stupendous animals?

Snakes are on the list of animals that do not stop growing their entire lives. Some snakes have lifespans of just a few years, and some can live two decades and some four decades. So if you multiply those lifespans several times, that would give a long time for a snake to grow very, very large. I envision that “The Red Man made from Dirt” occasionally saw very large snakes when he was outside, but he never told his wife about them. He did his best to keep her from seeing any serpent, especially the large ones. We can only guess if he was successful or not.

At some point someone discovered how to make cloth fabric out of fibers from a plant. When that cloth was made into a garment it had a totally different feel than did the animal skins they had been wearing up until that time. A huge door had been opened.

“The Red Man made from Dirt” wanted to build a more permanent home but had to learn through experimentations how to do that. His first attempts were easily destroyed by a gentle wind. He also had to develop tools and the ability to make them. For this he had to experiment with different materials. All this took a number of years.

Of course future generations would perfect all these skills far beyond what “The red man made from dirt” and “The one through whom God gives life” had accomplished.

The next lesson in this study is Starting a Family