Well, if we read Genesis 11 on the account of the Tower of
Babel, verse 3: They said to each other, "Come, let's make bricks
and bake them thoroughly." they used brick instead of stone, and
tar for mortar, Then they said, "Come let us build ourselves a
city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make
a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the race of the
whole earth."
It is rather inconceivable to think that men woke up one morning
and had a technological jump in suddenly knowing how to bake bricks
and reached an immediate decision to build the tower of Babel. This
passage probably summarised an entire long-drawn process of
technological advancement in jumping from stone-age to clay making.
Once that is done, men still had to figure out the building process
and the mathematics this process involve.
Point is, Genesis was not written in the styles of, say, the
Epistles where literal meaning can be taken.
