Again in the specific debate of Old Earth vs Young Earth, if we put aside theology (meaning theories be they Christian theroies or Atheist theories) for a moment and go with what we do know, we come up with a Young Earth only on the scale of thousands of years. Let's go back to the 3000 BC. Again this is not the first day of days, even according to the Bible. However it is the earliest date mankind can make an educated guess or Theory based off of hard evidence both historical written evidence (such as the Bible and other non-biblical histories) and archaeological evidence.
Using hard evidence, both archaeological and historical we come not only to a conclusion that Earth is only thousands of years old, but also that the Near East is the cradle of post-Flood civilization. Unlike Old Earthers who can only make models that conflict with eachother and theories of their Old Earth's past, we Young Earthers can give you models that have a basis in proof and do not contradict eachother and furthermore the evidence harmonizes together with the Bible's book of Genesis which is fairly enough the most scrutinized and doubted book of all the collection of books in the Bible. (don't worry Old Earthers, I once was an Old Earthers too and scrutinized Genesis just as much as anyone I know.)
Here's an observable demonstration that some person made a slide show of various historical maps starting at our baseline guess of 3000 BC following through to 2014 AD (note: keep in mind we're just starting simple so we start at 3000 BC, the Bible and history and archaeology imply a slightly older Earth than this, but this is merely the best educated starting point for which there is secular proof):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3QOjM53rSU
[video=youtube;Z3QOjM53rSU]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3QOjM53rSU[/video]
Now note there is still room for a little debate here since we can't give exact date for any of these empires, merely the best guesses are rounded to 3000 BC with a margin of error on the scale of a few centuries as opposed to Old Earth models where their "geologic ages" have margins of errors of millions to billions of years (yet for some reason Old Earthers don't find this to be completely absurd.)
Now anyone scholarly on history whether Christian, pagan, or atheist knows all ready that the Middle East region is indisputably the Cradle of Civilization. At the 3000 BC mark two empires exist the Sumerian Empire and the Egyptian Empire (though the Egyptian Empire at this point is not a true Empire being divided into the two kingdoms of Lower and Upper Egypt). With the Egypt uniting into one Empire and the Akkadian and Elamite Empires rising shortly thereafter in the fertile crescent and today's persia.
Now returning to the Bible we have to keep in mind that the Bible, post-Flood there is an age of early humanity that we will arbitrarily say lasted for a few centuries where the 3 tribes of Shem, Ham, and Japheth spread out over the globe founding cities and civilizations as we know it today. So keep in mind that when we start at 3000 BC the Post-Flood Earth is still a bit older than 3000 BC, merely the 3000 BC model is the most hard secular evidence for where written history as we know it begins. Starting at 3000 BC we see that few cities have been founded and empires have begun to emerge complimenting quite nicely the history recorded in post-Flood and post-Tower of Babel account of Genesis.
Exactly what time in Genesis all this is going down I cannot honestly say myself with any certain fact so we must turn to Theology and Theory. If we analyze the Bible as a historical document I personalyl would theorize that 3000 BC is either during the time of Abraham or is a few generations before the patriarch of Israel. My reasoning is due to the fact Abraham is said to have been born/lived in the city of Ur (considerred by scholars and historians to be among the oldest of all cities and one of the main cities of the Sumerian Empire.) This would naturally imply Ur was in existence in Abraham's time and sldo existed before him thus implying the existence of the Sumerian Empire being in existence during this time. Either way though, be this pre-Abraham or during his lifetime, the surrounding evidence of the Bible coupled with history and archaeology proves even Genesis, the most unbelievable of all biblical books is in fact a bit more literal and true than one might first imagine! Plus if we put aside Genesis for a moment, this slide show is a good demonstration of the geo-political environment after Genesis which is much more well confirmed in history and archaeology and therefore no one really has any good reason to doubt any of the books after Genesis which are much easier to confirm, such as book of Kings, Judges, Joshua, Samuel, etc.
