I was going through St.Augustine's "City of God" book again, and came across an interesting section. So I had to share it. I'll try to translate the section into today's English. So here we go...
"When considering the facts, there is no doubt that Cain has indeed built a city. And a large one, considering how much longer their lives were. Unless, some skeptic does not believe in the credibility of the long ages of ancient people.
They also do not believe that ancient men were larger in size. Although, their most respected poet confirms this fact. He talks about a man who picked up a huge monumental rock while fighting. He ran with it, than threw it.
“Scarce twelve strong men of later mould
That weight could on their necks uphold.”
That phrase declares his belief that the earth produced mightier men before. And if this man lived in more recent times, how much larger the men before the global flood must have been?
With passage of time and natural disasters, bones of incredible size have been found or have rolled out from the ground. I, myself, with several other people, saw a molar tooth on the shores of Utica. The tooth was so huge, I would guess a hundred of our teeth could be made out of it. Of course, this tooth must have belonged to a giant. Although regular people were larger than people today, giants were significantly larger.
Younger Pliny, a well-educated man, states that the older the world gets, the smaller the bodies of men will become. He mentions that Homer, in his poems, moarns about this decline as well. And he doesn't state that just to laugh about it in a poetical form. He records it as if it was an historical fact.
As I already said, the bones which are discovered from time to time, prove the size of the bodies of the ancients. And they will continue to do so for future ages, because they decay slowly.
The length of life of ancient people, however, cannot be proven by any hard evidence. But we shouldn't stop believing the Scriptures because of this. It would be inexcusable to discredit the facts of the past, since the Scriptures were able to accurately predict events that happened after they were written.
That same Pliny tells us that there is still a nation where people live to be 200 years old. If we could believe that people in some distant land live longer than our experience allows, why can't we believe that people in the past lived longer?"
Well, I just thought it was very well said. Just like many other parts of the "City of God".