How do "Biblical literalists" and other Young Earth Creationists
account for the fact that some cultures have been continuously
measuring the years for almost five millenia? Lining up dates
from ancient documents and inscriptions is not an easy thing to
do. You don't find ancient records that say, "Our nation was
established on June 12, 3462 BC", for the simple reason that our
modern calendar did not exist back then. So even when an ancient
source gives a date, it is in the calendar they used at the
time, and historians have to try to match that up to modern
calendars. Scholars debate these sort of things endlessly. So
the reality is not that ancient Egyptian or Hittite or Sumerian
or whatever chronologies contradict the Bible chronology.
Rather, it is that SOME INTERPRETATIONS of ancient Egyptian, etc
chronologies contradict SOME INTERPRETATIONS of the Bible
chronology. Put that way, it's hardly an astounding fact.
Reporters trying to describe current events often have
difficulty fitting together all the dif