Day 6 - When did it end?
Genesis 2
 1 Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array.
 2 By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. 3 And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.
In Day 5 - Determining a Date (Part 2), I make the case the KT impact removed the hindrance to a a more modern, flourishing, fish and bird population. This was 65 million years ago, when fish started to flourish. Mammals actually started to flourish again 54 million years ago, but these don’t count against Day 6 because they were going to be replaced 20 million years later by another mass extinction event. In the meantime however, their appearance would give way to birds and whales, about 53 million years ago.
In Day 6 - Dating Land Mammals, I discuss the Grande Coupure, where for some reason most of the land mammals died out, and brand new mammals appeared to evolve from the survivors. This occurred about 33.5 million years ago. Then, as I wrote about in Day 6 - Dating Man, God began removing hindrances to man being in God’s image. The first hindrances appears to been removed 5.5 million years ago, which include bipedalism. In my opinion, God was not done yet, because he continued removing more and more hindrances over time, as evidenced in the fossil record by the appearance of things such as:
- religion (< 100 kya)
- building activities (< 100 kya)
- music (100 kya)
- mining (110 kya)
- jewelry (110 kya)
- scalping (400 kya)
- tents (400 kya)
- weapons (400 kya)
- murder (400 kya)
- woodworking (750 kya)
- boat building (700 kya)
- fossil/mineral collecting (900 kya)
- tanning (1.0 mya)
- hunting (1.0 mya)
- fire (1.5 mya)
- art (1.6 mya)
- right-handedness (1.9 mya)
- language (2.0 mya)
- stone tools (2.6 mya).Â
I derived this list from Glenn Morton’s article, The Humanity of Fossil Man. He makes the case that this is evidence of how long full humanity has been around. For a while, I was undecided, and may yet prove right, but now I am settling on the theory that these discoveries are evidence of God removing hindrances to man being in God’s image… and according to this list it would seem that God was working until at least 400,000 years ago. The reason I don’t say 100,000 years ago is because at some point there should be a final set of evolutionary advancements which indicate that God was done working at some point before that, and I see this nice break between jewelry and scalping that suggests to me a jump that occurred between 100 kya and 400 kya.
Another reason is the fossil and maternal DNA evidence independently suggest that homo sapiens (our modern species) first appeared about 200 kya. While mankind clearly continued its social development since then, giving way to some clear advancements 100,000 years later, evolutionarily speaking the hindrances to being in God’s image had all been removed when God made that last change to create homo sapiens.
In fact, I believe that it was those first homo sapiens to which God pronounced his blessing in Genesis 1:28-31…
 28 God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”
 29 Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. 30 And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air and all the creatures that move on the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food.” And it was so.
And so, I believe that Day 6 ended 200,000 years ago.
 31 God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day.
Â