I just spent some valuable time skimming though the first couple books of the bible. It is amazing how limited in scope history is when told from the perspective of the Jews and Christians.

The Book of Genesis starts of with a fanciful story of how God created the universe and mankind. But apparently people behaved so badly that God quickly invokes a "flood" to destroy them all. I assume this "flood" is used as a tool to narrow the scope of the story being told, to focus the reader on the history of one particular group, a.k.a. the Jews. The story skips ahead quickly and before the end of the book of Genesis, the story has already focused on the Israelites in Egypt. The Book of Exodus continues the story of how the Israelites were oppressed and escaped, eventually defeating the Philistines and taking over the land of Canaan. Anyone with a religious upbringing is probably familiar with how it all unfolds.

I find it hard to believe that there aren't any parallel histories. The ice age was over. The glaciers were retreating. At the time the Chinese were well into their dynasties, there were probably clans all over Europe and Asia. The pacific rim was slowly being colonized and there were pyramids being built in Central and South America. What I find most amazing is the lack of documentation of African history south of Egypt! What happened there? Did the jungle prove impassable? Perhaps the Zulus were too tough for the Egyptians to conquer. Now that I believe. I mean, they even gave the colonial Europeans a run for their land.

Anyways, given some time to think about it, there is obviously more to the story than what's in the Bible.