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Tower of Babel and various Civilizations

Question:

This question pertains to Parshat Noach.

If according to our tradition, human kind, for the first time in existence, began to spread from the Middle East area after the punishment of Babel, around 1,765 B.C.E, how can we explain the existence of diverse ancient civilizations, from Egypt to Scandinavia, to China, etc where histories of these cultures predate 1,765 B.C.E and even so, they are tens of thousands of miles apart geographically. And what about Australia?

Do any sources say that Hashem teleported people into various parts of the world (Star Trek style, if there are any fans out there) when He changed their languages?

Answer:

You are asking a good question, and there are different theories as to how the various animals got to the other continents. The Zohar (Bereishis pg. 21-1) says that essentially the world was created as only one continent, as is hinted in the words (“and the earth should be seen”) which would hint that at the time of creation there was only one mass of land. However after the dor haflagah, not only did people’s language get changed, but the actual earth split into seven continents, (according to this the words nifliga ha’aretz- the land was split, it also quite literal). Therefore animals that died before and during the Great Flood and were buried in their area, then that whole land mass moved, together with the live animals and the dead ones.

Please see the following link,  https://www.hidabroot.org/video/213391 which is a short video clip that discusses this issue, and also brings Archeologists that have suggested such an idea, and bring archeological proof to support this idea (although 2000 years after the idea was already written in the Zohar).

Best wishes

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