This is an update to a previously written article. In this I update the article with additional details.
This article explores current scientific theories and findings on the origin of humanity through the lens of Scripture. Belief that the Bible is God's inerrant testimony to mankind, written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, provides the valuable insight necessary to understand the color woven through the tapestry of human history and pre-history. That's a poetic way of saying that the story gets complicated but the Bible holds the keys to sorting it out. We can look at scientific evidence through Scripture and we can know that Scripture is a high quality instrument for doing so. But the scientific evidence is just that: evidence, scant clues to a distant past. This is a caution against holding dogmatically to any emerging picture that forms.
My goal is to present as a clear a picture as I can with the evidence at hand, and then to keep abreast of the shifting scientific evidence and re-present a clearer picture in the future, if that becomes possible. This update is an attempt to re-present that clearer picture.
Ages Of Joy considers Genesis 1 to belongs to the genre of epic narrative. This view holds that Genesis 1 was written to present a theologically correct view of God and creation while serving as a timeless polemic against false narratives: both godless creation stories and polytheistic stories. The Author's intent appears to be to present the actual history of the creation and preparation of the Earth as a series of "births", each generation being represented as one Day. Looking through the lens of Scripture, the Ages Of Joy perspective seeks the six days of creation in the geologic history of the Earth, identifying them by the content described in Genesis 1.
Our topic at hand addresses the sixth day of creation, which is the day during which God created male and female in His image. We go on from there to explore Genesis 2, the story of Adam and Eve and then follow the thread further through the time of Noah. Buckle up!
The Alleged Homeland of Modern Humans
An article with a controversial headline proclaims the finding of "the homeland of modern humans". In summary the article claims that the birthplace of modern humans has been located in southern Africa, that the female lineage of modern humans is two-hundred thousand years old, and that climate change drove humans out of their birthplace beginning one-hundred thirty-thousand years ago.
In contrast, the Bible teaches us to expect that the first humans, Adam and Eve, lived in the middle east, and much more recently than 200,000 years ago. Furthermore, we look to "sin" as the force that drove humans away form the Garden of Eden, not climate change.
Ages Of Joy considers Genesis 1 to belongs to the genre of epic narrative. This view holds that Genesis 1 was written to present a theologically correct view of God and creation while serving as a timeless polemic against false narratives: both godless creation stories and polytheistic stories. The Author's intent appears to be to present the actual history of the creation and preparation of the Earth as a series of "births", each generation being represented as one Day. Looking through the lens of Scripture, the Ages Of Joy perspective seeks the six days of creation in the geologic history of the Earth, identifying them by the content described in Genesis 1.
Our topic at hand addresses the sixth day of creation, which is the day during which God created male and female in His image. We go on from there to explore Genesis 2, the story of Adam and Eve and then follow the thread further through the time of Noah. Buckle up!
The Alleged Homeland of Modern Humans
An article with a controversial headline proclaims the finding of "the homeland of modern humans". In summary the article claims that the birthplace of modern humans has been located in southern Africa, that the female lineage of modern humans is two-hundred thousand years old, and that climate change drove humans out of their birthplace beginning one-hundred thirty-thousand years ago.
In contrast, the Bible teaches us to expect that the first humans, Adam and Eve, lived in the middle east, and much more recently than 200,000 years ago. Furthermore, we look to "sin" as the force that drove humans away form the Garden of Eden, not climate change.
So, let's examine the evidence that the researchers bring to the table, and how their findings square with the Bible.
The study was led by Professor Vanessa Hayes from the Garvan Institute of Medical Research and University of Sydney who is also named as an Extraordinary Professor at the University of Pretoria. Her team collected blood samples from local communities in Namibia and South Africa to isolate 198 new, rare mitogenomes which are passed down mother to daughter, from one generation to the next.
A River Basin
Based on the above evidence, combined with linguistic, cultural, and geographic information, the authors conclude that the ancestor of all women lived in the Great Zambini River Basin region 200,000 years ago. That's in the midst of the southern part of Africa. The lineage is referred to as the L0 lineage, the oldest branch of the human female genetic tree. All other human lineages not sharing this L0 woman as a common ancestor have died out, leaving no survivors to this day. So was this woman Eve? And was the Garden of Eden in Zambini?
I am going to argue, "No", as the answer to both questions. Still, there is something interesting about this location as the birthplace of humanity. It is a river basin described as "a vast wetland, which is known to be one of the most productive ecosystems for sustaining life".
That description bears some resemblance to the Garden of Eden in the Bible in Genesis chapter 2:
The Bible describes a lush, well-watered river-basin environment created for human flourishing. It makes sense that God would place Adam and Eve in such an environment, and this scientific study aligns with the Biblical idea about the kind of environment in which the first humans would thrive.
But that takes us back to the problem that the location and timing do not seem to agree with the Biblical story. I will suggest two ways forward at this point.
The first path is fairly simple. One may conclude that this scientific evidence supports the gist of the Biblical creation story and be satisfied that what the Bible teaches is correct about human origins. Perhaps at the time that writing was invented, which occurred in the Middle East, the story, passed along from generation to generation, was written down referring to places known to the author that fit the description from the traditional narrative. So, when the story of Adam and Even was finally able to be written, the Tigris-Euphrates River Basin was the closest parallel to the Zambini River Basin, whose exact location had been lost track of over time. If you are satisfied with this, you can save yourself a lot of time and effort that will be expended in taking the longer path I lay out next.
A Deeper Story
The second path to explaining the origin of humanity is quite a bit more involved, but it's the path I will take you on. It involves some twists and turns and some ideas that may be very new and very uncomfortable to grapple with for the first time.
The discovery that modern humans also share genetic material, in other words ancestors, with Neanderthal and Denisovans came as a shocking discovery. However controversial this theory was at its inception, it has since been demonstrated by repeated analysis of ancient DNA from humans, Neanderthal, and Denisovans. Neanderthals and Denisovans are often categorized as Homo Sapiens, in part because they can successfully interbreed with human beings. But they appear distantly related to human beings and more closely related to each other. It has been shown that most genetic samples from non-African groups tested so far contain remnants of Neanderthal or Denisovan DNA. In other words, seemingly all non-Africans share some small traces of DNA that go back much farther than 200,000 years ago. Evidence for this linkage is still putative. As of November 2017, genome-wide DNA sequences for just 5 Neanderthals had been isolated.
So what about Africans? While genetic time capsules in human female mitochondrial DNA contain a wealth of tantalizing information, they don't tell the whole story. Fossils from Africa dating to about 195,000 years ago, namely the Omo remains, indicate an overall modern human morphology with some primitive features. Analysis of other African fossils, the Herto Man, dated to 160,000 years ago, ascribes that fossil to the Homo Sapiens Idaltu sub-species, which is still considered an anatomic ancestor to true anatomically modern humans.
The homeland article describes two migrations out of South Africa. The first occurred 130,000 years ago and followed to the northeast green, vegetated corridors that opened up as the climate changed. This was the first successful migration away from this ancestral homeland of homo sapiens bearing the L0 marker. But these early northeastern migrants struggled to thrive as the climate dried out again. A second wave of migrants headed southwest to the tip of South Africa about 110,000 years ago. There they are thought to have thrived by exploiting the marine environment that provided abundant foraging opportunity.
Changing climate conditions split the populations into isolated groups that developed under different environmental conditions. By 130,000 years ago, the population had diverged from their L0 roots to an L1 group in West Africa, L2 in East Africa, and L3 in the region of North Africa and possibly the Levant. L0 remnants remained in Southern Africa.
Climate models of Africa and the Middle East identify two main time windows when the Arabian Peninsula, instead of being a barren desert, was a lush grassland. One such window opened between about 120,000 to 90,000 years ago.
An early migration out of Africa by humans has been identified by the discovery of a fossil human finger bone, found with stone tools, and dated to 88,000 years ago. Early migrants were lingering in Arabia when the window closed.
Despite all this, according to the Recent African Origins of Modern Humans scientific model, the early migrations out of Africa had all died out or retreated to Africa by 80,000 years ago.
Changing climate conditions opened up another opportunity for humans to spread out of Africa about 70,000 years ago.
The Drive for a Recent Adam
Would The Real Modern Human Please Step Forward?
While human-looking creatures may have been wandering the Earth since 200,000 years ago, evidence from skulls demonstrates that the modern human brain shape did not appear until 100,000 to 35,000 years ago. Human skulls younger that 35,000 years in age have a fully modern endocranial shape with two features of particular importance. A change from an elongated endocranial shape to a globular one is accompanied by bulging parietal and cerebellar areas. The increased size of these regions are important to what we consider to be modern human behavior. The parietal lobe, in addition to many other functions, is associated with planning, imagery, self-awareness, working and long-term memory, numerical processing, and tool use. The cerebellum is associated with language, social cognition, and affective processing, in addition to other behaviors.
The study was led by Professor Vanessa Hayes from the Garvan Institute of Medical Research and University of Sydney who is also named as an Extraordinary Professor at the University of Pretoria. Her team collected blood samples from local communities in Namibia and South Africa to isolate 198 new, rare mitogenomes which are passed down mother to daughter, from one generation to the next.
A River Basin
Based on the above evidence, combined with linguistic, cultural, and geographic information, the authors conclude that the ancestor of all women lived in the Great Zambini River Basin region 200,000 years ago. That's in the midst of the southern part of Africa. The lineage is referred to as the L0 lineage, the oldest branch of the human female genetic tree. All other human lineages not sharing this L0 woman as a common ancestor have died out, leaving no survivors to this day. So was this woman Eve? And was the Garden of Eden in Zambini?
I am going to argue, "No", as the answer to both questions. Still, there is something interesting about this location as the birthplace of humanity. It is a river basin described as "a vast wetland, which is known to be one of the most productive ecosystems for sustaining life".
That description bears some resemblance to the Garden of Eden in the Bible in Genesis chapter 2:
6 and a mist (or spring) was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground
9 And out of the ground the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food.
10 A river flowed out of Eden to water the garden, and there it divided and became four rivers.
The Bible describes a lush, well-watered river-basin environment created for human flourishing. It makes sense that God would place Adam and Eve in such an environment, and this scientific study aligns with the Biblical idea about the kind of environment in which the first humans would thrive.
But that takes us back to the problem that the location and timing do not seem to agree with the Biblical story. I will suggest two ways forward at this point.
The first path is fairly simple. One may conclude that this scientific evidence supports the gist of the Biblical creation story and be satisfied that what the Bible teaches is correct about human origins. Perhaps at the time that writing was invented, which occurred in the Middle East, the story, passed along from generation to generation, was written down referring to places known to the author that fit the description from the traditional narrative. So, when the story of Adam and Even was finally able to be written, the Tigris-Euphrates River Basin was the closest parallel to the Zambini River Basin, whose exact location had been lost track of over time. If you are satisfied with this, you can save yourself a lot of time and effort that will be expended in taking the longer path I lay out next.
A Deeper Story
The second path to explaining the origin of humanity is quite a bit more involved, but it's the path I will take you on. It involves some twists and turns and some ideas that may be very new and very uncomfortable to grapple with for the first time.
The discovery that modern humans also share genetic material, in other words ancestors, with Neanderthal and Denisovans came as a shocking discovery. However controversial this theory was at its inception, it has since been demonstrated by repeated analysis of ancient DNA from humans, Neanderthal, and Denisovans. Neanderthals and Denisovans are often categorized as Homo Sapiens, in part because they can successfully interbreed with human beings. But they appear distantly related to human beings and more closely related to each other. It has been shown that most genetic samples from non-African groups tested so far contain remnants of Neanderthal or Denisovan DNA. In other words, seemingly all non-Africans share some small traces of DNA that go back much farther than 200,000 years ago. Evidence for this linkage is still putative. As of November 2017, genome-wide DNA sequences for just 5 Neanderthals had been isolated.
So what about Africans? While genetic time capsules in human female mitochondrial DNA contain a wealth of tantalizing information, they don't tell the whole story. Fossils from Africa dating to about 195,000 years ago, namely the Omo remains, indicate an overall modern human morphology with some primitive features. Analysis of other African fossils, the Herto Man, dated to 160,000 years ago, ascribes that fossil to the Homo Sapiens Idaltu sub-species, which is still considered an anatomic ancestor to true anatomically modern humans.
The homeland article describes two migrations out of South Africa. The first occurred 130,000 years ago and followed to the northeast green, vegetated corridors that opened up as the climate changed. This was the first successful migration away from this ancestral homeland of homo sapiens bearing the L0 marker. But these early northeastern migrants struggled to thrive as the climate dried out again. A second wave of migrants headed southwest to the tip of South Africa about 110,000 years ago. There they are thought to have thrived by exploiting the marine environment that provided abundant foraging opportunity.
Changing climate conditions split the populations into isolated groups that developed under different environmental conditions. By 130,000 years ago, the population had diverged from their L0 roots to an L1 group in West Africa, L2 in East Africa, and L3 in the region of North Africa and possibly the Levant. L0 remnants remained in Southern Africa.
Climate models of Africa and the Middle East identify two main time windows when the Arabian Peninsula, instead of being a barren desert, was a lush grassland. One such window opened between about 120,000 to 90,000 years ago.
An early migration out of Africa by humans has been identified by the discovery of a fossil human finger bone, found with stone tools, and dated to 88,000 years ago. Early migrants were lingering in Arabia when the window closed.
Despite all this, according to the Recent African Origins of Modern Humans scientific model, the early migrations out of Africa had all died out or retreated to Africa by 80,000 years ago.
Changing climate conditions opened up another opportunity for humans to spread out of Africa about 70,000 years ago.
The Drive for a Recent Adam
There are several driving factors that beg for a more recent date than 200,000 years.
- The Story of Adam and Eve and their immediate descendants Cain and Able are set against a background with several cultural clues:
- Grappling with moral themes of trust, commands, obedience, betrayal, subtle lies, shame, punishment, reconciliation, temptation, and related themes.
- Adam gave names to all the animals and dialoged with God on complex topics
- Adam and Eve sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths
- God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them
- God said, you shall eat the plants of the field, you shall eat bread
- God send Adam out from the garden of Eden to work the ground
- Abel was a keeper of sheep
- Cain was a worker of the ground
- Cain built a city
- For the Story of Adam and Eve to be passed down, the concepts in the story must have remained alive in the intervening time period. If the concept of keep a flock of sheep died out, how could that be maintained in a story for 100,000 years?
- The apparent socio-cultural big bang of human history seems to have started well after 200,000 years ago and made a much more recent big impact
- We expect humans to spread throughout the world dramatically after either the creation of Adam and Eve, or after the flood of Noah. The rapid global migration does not happen at 200,000 years ago.
Lets look at each of these in turn:
Language
A 2011 analysis by Quentin Atkinson indicated that the oldest language should have the largest number of phonemes ad identified that as originating between 80,000 and 160,000 years ago. This very wide time range, based on a somewhat speculative approach, does not reach back to 200,000 years.
Clothing
A 2011 analysis of clothing lice indicates that humans began wearing clothing anywhere from 83,000 to 170,000 years ago. Popular articles usually quote the earlier date of 170,000 years, but the error range is really quite large. Even so, this date does not get us back to 200,000 years.
The oldest known needle for sewing is dated to 61,000 years ago.
The implications is that a story involving humans putting on clothing from shame of being exposed might make sense to people living 61 to 83 thousand years ago, or possibly longer. Such a story could be handed down from parents to children. But 200,000 years ago, indications are that clothing was not utilized.
Agriculture
Some of the earliest evidence for farming comes from the Zagros region of Iran (which is in the Eastern part of the Fertile Crescent). Based on genetic evidence, these farmers branched off from other groups 46,000 to 77,000 years ago. The Zagros region provides some of the earliest evidence for plant cultivation and goat management. Although that evidence comes from 10,000 to 12,000 years ago, the people group is much older. They may have been farming for much longer that the existing evidence can demonstrate.
Since two population groups that diverged from each other between 46,000 and 77,000 years ago both have the capacity to engage in farming, it is reasonable to conclude that their shared ancestor had the capacity to farm.
Research conducted in 2015 pushed back the date of the earliest evidence of farming from 12,000 years ago to 23,000 years ago at the Ohalo II people's camp.
Cities
The oldest known open-air camps featuring dwelling huts date to 23,000 years ago at the Ohalo II camp where the first evidence of agriculture was also gathered.
Story Telling
Aboriginal story telling seems to have conveyed parts of their culture, including references to geologic features of the landscape that allow dating of these stories back to 37,000 years ago.
Symbolic Thinking
Inherent to the story of Adam and Eve is the human capacity for sophisticated symbolic thinking. An article published March 3, 2020 titled "The evolution of early symbolic behavior in Homo sapiens" challenges the notion that engraved ochre and ostrich eggshell fragments served as true denotational symbolic signs. These artifacts, dating from 100,000 to 70,000 years ago and found in the South African Blombos Cave and Diepkloof Rock Shelter, have previously been used to suggest an early origin of symbolic thought. Rather, these fascinating items were more likely decorations. Over 30,000 years, these markings became more salient to the human eye, increasingly expressive of human intent and identity, and easier to produce from memory, but without crossing over into the realm of symbolic language.
An earlier study (12 September 2018), An abstract drawing from the 73,000-year-old levels at Blombos Cave, South Africa, contends that a cross-hatch pattern rendered with ochre on stone represents the earliest known abstract and figurative drawing.
Assessment of the Data
This data suggests that the capacity to farm and husband animals has been in the human race from at least 46,000 years ago and possibly as much as 77,000. In that time frame, humans were wearing clothing at least by 83,000 years ago clothing and by 61,000 years ago were sewing them. At least 37,000 years ago they were telling stories . On the other hand, the oldest known symbolic expressions are 73,000 years old at best.
Undoubtedly future discoveries will shed more light on human origins. But at this point, one might surmise that Adam and Eve lived around 60,000 to 75,000 years ago.
While human-looking creatures may have been wandering the Earth since 200,000 years ago, evidence from skulls demonstrates that the modern human brain shape did not appear until 100,000 to 35,000 years ago. Human skulls younger that 35,000 years in age have a fully modern endocranial shape with two features of particular importance. A change from an elongated endocranial shape to a globular one is accompanied by bulging parietal and cerebellar areas. The increased size of these regions are important to what we consider to be modern human behavior. The parietal lobe, in addition to many other functions, is associated with planning, imagery, self-awareness, working and long-term memory, numerical processing, and tool use. The cerebellum is associated with language, social cognition, and affective processing, in addition to other behaviors.
The wide date range in this case is attributed to the sparsity of high quality fossils in this time period. Future discoveries may be needed to narrow down this time window. As corroborating evidence, the oldest human-made arrowheads date to 64,000 years ago. Arrowheads are considered "micro-lithic" technology, in other words, finely crafted stone tools. Arrowheads and the bows necessary to project them are difficult to make and speak to abilities unique to human beings as distinct from earlier creatures.
What this testifies to is that these earlier humans, while physically and mentally similar to modern humans, were still not fit and ready for what God would do next.
Acts 17:26 testifies to how God works in human history. "And [God] made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allowed periods and the boundaries of their dwelling places".
Pressure in Africa to find a route off the continent may have contributed to a confluence of migrants from various areas within Africa meeting in an area west of the Red Sea. Here, a best-of-breed human population may have arisen, the fittest of all Africa. Hybrids incorporating the best features and fit for finally establishing a permanent presence of humans outside of Africa may have arisen at this time.
As climate change occurred across Africa and the Middle East, there were limited time windows when humans could effectively migrate from one area to another. Stretches of dry, hot desert separated groups from each other for thousands of years at a time. While some sophisticated human behaviors existed in South Africa as early as 100,000 years ago, these humans were trapped. Then 60,000 to 70,000 years ago, the changing climate opened up a fertile lane from South to East Africa.
Researchers suggest that the mixing of Southern and Eastern Africans created an admixture that was ripe to expand to the whole world:
The Bible gives us the backstory on what God was doing:
Three times in Genesis 1:27, God is declared as the creator of human beings. The emphasis conveys that all this work is certainly His. The Bible also states that humans were blessed to fill the earth and subdue it. Until about 70,000 years ago, early humans were mostly trapped in Africa and those that did make it out, failed to thrive.
Finally, God had created men and women in His image. He was about to bless them.
But what about Adam and Eve?
Genesis 2 in the Bible relates the story of God forming Adam from the dust of the Earth, placing him in the Garden of Eden, creating Eve from Adam's flesh, and bringing her to Adam in the Garden. Since humans had already moved beyond the Great Zambini River Basin, are we looking for a new Garden of Eden? Yes, we are. And the Bible also tells us where to look.
Genesis 2:8-14 "...the LORD God planted a garden, in the east... A river flowed out of Eden to water the garden, and there it divided and became four rivers. ...the Pishon... the Gihon... the Tigris, which flows east of Assyria.... and the Euphrates."
The Tigris and Euphrates drain into what is now the Persian Gulf. But 70,000 years ago, during the ice age, the sea levels were lower and what is now a gulf was once a fertile river basin, the likely location of the ancient Garden of Eden. So how did people get from Africa, to the Garden of Eden in the East? Let's consider two more clues.
The first is clear enough: Genesis 2:15 says, "The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it."
The second clue takes a bit more work and its interpretation is subject to debate. But here it is:
Hosea 11:1b "out of Egypt I called my son."
This verse is used figuratively of the nation of Israel, when God led them by way of the Red Sea away from Egypt and out into the Sinai Desert. It is also fulfilled in Matthew 2:13-15 by Jesus returning from Egypt, where he and his family had fled, back to Israel.
Adam, the first man, is also called "the Son of God", just as Jesus was. Of Jesus Christ it is written, "The first man Adam became a living being; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit." 1 Corinthians 15:45.
This parallel gives us our second clue. God called Adam out of Egypt and put him in Eden. We can't prove this directly from the Bible - it is only suggested. But if we follow this thread, we can interpret the scientific record or humanity's origin through the lens of Scripture.
A 2015 study supports the idea that successful migration of humans out of Africa took a northerly route from Egypt into Sinai, probably 55,000 to 65,000 years ago, and almost certainly more recently than 75,000 years ago. It was this migration that filled Earth with humans.
Some evidence suggests that sea-faring humans populated the island of Luzon, Philippines by 67,000 years ago. It cannot yet be proven that these were modern humans, however.
Adam
Now we arrive at a more narrative, explanatory place in telling the human story. What follows contains some speculation, but attempts to fit the best established facts.
By about 70,000 years ago [a range from about 75,000 to 65,000 should be considered based on research available at this time], God had cultivated the human physical and mental form until it was almost ready to bear His image, not only physically, but now also spiritually. Consider a small band of human beings, fully formed as to the flesh, but lacking this one thing: an immortal spirit. There they lived, in or near Egypt. Perhaps in the Land of Goshen where the Israelites dwelt for 400 years while God shepherded them into a great nation from the 70 descendants of Jacob.
For comparison, the entire pre-1492 native population of the Americas is thought to have descended from just 70 individuals who crossed the land bridge between Asia and North America.
Let's call this group, Nearly Fully Modern Humans.
What this testifies to is that these earlier humans, while physically and mentally similar to modern humans, were still not fit and ready for what God would do next.
Acts 17:26 testifies to how God works in human history. "And [God] made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allowed periods and the boundaries of their dwelling places".
Pressure in Africa to find a route off the continent may have contributed to a confluence of migrants from various areas within Africa meeting in an area west of the Red Sea. Here, a best-of-breed human population may have arisen, the fittest of all Africa. Hybrids incorporating the best features and fit for finally establishing a permanent presence of humans outside of Africa may have arisen at this time.
As climate change occurred across Africa and the Middle East, there were limited time windows when humans could effectively migrate from one area to another. Stretches of dry, hot desert separated groups from each other for thousands of years at a time. While some sophisticated human behaviors existed in South Africa as early as 100,000 years ago, these humans were trapped. Then 60,000 to 70,000 years ago, the changing climate opened up a fertile lane from South to East Africa.
Researchers suggest that the mixing of Southern and Eastern Africans created an admixture that was ripe to expand to the whole world:
Those East African people were biologically little different from the South Africans -- they were all modern Homo sapiens, their brains were just as advanced and they were undoubtedly cognitively ready to receive the benefits of the new ideas and upgrade. But the way it happened might not have been so very different from a modern isolated stone-age culture encountering and embracing western civilization today.
In any case, it looks as if something happened when the groups from the South encountered the East, with the upshot being the greatest diaspora of Homo sapiens ever known -- both throughout Africa and out of Africa to settle much of Eurasia and as far as Australia within the space of only a few thousand years. New light on origin of modern humans, March 20, 2019
The assertion in this quote that "they were all modern Homo sapiens, their brains were just as advanced" is an assumption. It really begs the question. "Something happened" the article states. Yes, something did happen and what exactly that is, is the question itself.
Genesis 1:26-28 English Standard Version (ESV)
Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
Three times in Genesis 1:27, God is declared as the creator of human beings. The emphasis conveys that all this work is certainly His. The Bible also states that humans were blessed to fill the earth and subdue it. Until about 70,000 years ago, early humans were mostly trapped in Africa and those that did make it out, failed to thrive.
Finally, God had created men and women in His image. He was about to bless them.
But what about Adam and Eve?
Genesis 2 in the Bible relates the story of God forming Adam from the dust of the Earth, placing him in the Garden of Eden, creating Eve from Adam's flesh, and bringing her to Adam in the Garden. Since humans had already moved beyond the Great Zambini River Basin, are we looking for a new Garden of Eden? Yes, we are. And the Bible also tells us where to look.
Genesis 2:8-14 "...the LORD God planted a garden, in the east... A river flowed out of Eden to water the garden, and there it divided and became four rivers. ...the Pishon... the Gihon... the Tigris, which flows east of Assyria.... and the Euphrates."
The Tigris and Euphrates drain into what is now the Persian Gulf. But 70,000 years ago, during the ice age, the sea levels were lower and what is now a gulf was once a fertile river basin, the likely location of the ancient Garden of Eden. So how did people get from Africa, to the Garden of Eden in the East? Let's consider two more clues.
The first is clear enough: Genesis 2:15 says, "The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it."
The second clue takes a bit more work and its interpretation is subject to debate. But here it is:
Hosea 11:1b "out of Egypt I called my son."
This verse is used figuratively of the nation of Israel, when God led them by way of the Red Sea away from Egypt and out into the Sinai Desert. It is also fulfilled in Matthew 2:13-15 by Jesus returning from Egypt, where he and his family had fled, back to Israel.
Adam, the first man, is also called "the Son of God", just as Jesus was. Of Jesus Christ it is written, "The first man Adam became a living being; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit." 1 Corinthians 15:45.
This parallel gives us our second clue. God called Adam out of Egypt and put him in Eden. We can't prove this directly from the Bible - it is only suggested. But if we follow this thread, we can interpret the scientific record or humanity's origin through the lens of Scripture.
A 2015 study supports the idea that successful migration of humans out of Africa took a northerly route from Egypt into Sinai, probably 55,000 to 65,000 years ago, and almost certainly more recently than 75,000 years ago. It was this migration that filled Earth with humans.
Some evidence suggests that sea-faring humans populated the island of Luzon, Philippines by 67,000 years ago. It cannot yet be proven that these were modern humans, however.
Adam
Now we arrive at a more narrative, explanatory place in telling the human story. What follows contains some speculation, but attempts to fit the best established facts.
By about 70,000 years ago [a range from about 75,000 to 65,000 should be considered based on research available at this time], God had cultivated the human physical and mental form until it was almost ready to bear His image, not only physically, but now also spiritually. Consider a small band of human beings, fully formed as to the flesh, but lacking this one thing: an immortal spirit. There they lived, in or near Egypt. Perhaps in the Land of Goshen where the Israelites dwelt for 400 years while God shepherded them into a great nation from the 70 descendants of Jacob.
For comparison, the entire pre-1492 native population of the Americas is thought to have descended from just 70 individuals who crossed the land bridge between Asia and North America.
Let's call this group, Nearly Fully Modern Humans.
Now suppose that among this group, God sees a young woman. She will bear a son who will be the son of God. Not God Incarnate, but Image Bearer of God, Adam, the First Man.
Consider the parallel:
In Christ, spirit took on flesh;
In Adam, flesh took on spirit.
God's Spirit overshadowed this young woman. She became pregnant and bore a son, whom God named Adam. Unlike the Angels in Heaven, Adam is made of the dust of Earth, like an animal, like the creatures before him. But unlike all other creatures, into Adam God breathed an immortal soul, and Adam became a living being. Not living in the sense of physical life, but living in a much greater sense - that of spiritual life.
What I am suggesting is this, that God worked at least four miracles:
God's Spirit overshadowed this young woman. She became pregnant and bore a son, whom God named Adam. Unlike the Angels in Heaven, Adam is made of the dust of Earth, like an animal, like the creatures before him. But unlike all other creatures, into Adam God breathed an immortal soul, and Adam became a living being. Not living in the sense of physical life, but living in a much greater sense - that of spiritual life.
What I am suggesting is this, that God worked at least four miracles:
- a virgin birth, in which a Nearly Fully Modern Human woman, overshadowed by the Holy Spirit - the Lord and Giver of Life, conceives and gives birth to Adam, the Son of God
- a genetic change is introduced and Adam's genome is changed to support a larger parietal lobe and cerebellum, giving him an "upgrade" that can be put to good use by a spiritual capacity
- God gives Adam a keen spiritual capacity of heightened self-awareness, moral reasoning, and other attributes that bestow on him the ability to bear the Image of God in a new and profound way
- a second virgin birth, in which genetic material harvested from Adam is used to form Eve's embryo, again within the womb of a NFMH woman. Taken from Adam, she directly inherits spiritual life, and she herself becomes "mother of all the living". She is able to pass this on to her offspring.
Why did God create Nearly Fully Modern Humans? Some considerations:
- To bear Adam and Eve, the first fully modern humans
- To serve as "breeding stock" for the sons and daughters of Adam and Eve; Cain would fear retribution from the Near Fully Modern Humans that lived near him, and he would take one for a wife; this would not be a cross-species sinful coupling because they had human form
- God withheld from NFM Humans that last genetic blessing, because He did not want them to flourish and compete with Adam and Eve's descendants.
Perhaps, like Jesus, while yet a small child, God called Adam's family out of Egypt, across the fertile wilderness to the Persian Oasis. Jesus, at age 12, went to the Temple of God, where His family did not find Him for three days. Perhaps it was similar for Adam. Perhaps at about age 12, God appeared to Adam and led him on a walk-about. A walk-about is the traditional rite of the Australian Aboriginal people, which marks a transition to adulthood sometime between the ages of 10 and 16. Since Aboriginal culture extends back almost 65,000 years, this tradition may have begun with God and Adam.
God led Adam to the garden He had prepared - the Garden of Eden. There, Adam lived alone for a time, visited only by God Himself. God taught Adam how to tend the Garden.
Adam left the hunter-gatherer lifestyle behind. He became an arboreal cultivator, that is he survived by tending trees. A 2011 study indicates humans started wearing clothing between 83,000 and 170,000 years ago. But not Adam. He abandoned the practice and the lice that came with it. Good riddance.
In time, Adam matured and was ready for a mate. Instead of God finding a mate among his hunter-gatherer family, God had something else in mind. After all, Adam was special. He was spiritually alive, unlike anyone else. Adam also had been endowed with extraordinarily long life.
Eve
So God caused Adam to fall into a deep sleep. God took flesh, perhaps a stem cell from the bone of Adam's rib. From this genetic material, which would have contained both X and Y chromosomes, God fashioned the XX DNA of a woman. Perhaps a surrogate mother was again employed, to carry Eve to conception. In time, she grew to an adult woman. God brought her to Adam in the Garden. She was flesh of his flesh, bone of his bone. But more importantly, she was spiritually alive like he was. She became the "mother of all the living", just as testified to by Scripture.
Adam and Eve were the first spiritual human beings. They were endowed with long life. If they remained obedient to God, they would never have to be spiritually separated from Him. They would never die.
But Adam and Eve disobeyed God. In shame, they resumed the practice of wearing clothing. Because they were cultivators, not hunters, they made their clothes from plants. They may have patterned them after the clothing worn by their estranged people group.
God found them and banished them from Eden. Not being hunters and gatherers, they and their children attempted to cultivate the ground and shepherd animals instead of hunting them.
God led Adam to the garden He had prepared - the Garden of Eden. There, Adam lived alone for a time, visited only by God Himself. God taught Adam how to tend the Garden.
Adam left the hunter-gatherer lifestyle behind. He became an arboreal cultivator, that is he survived by tending trees. A 2011 study indicates humans started wearing clothing between 83,000 and 170,000 years ago. But not Adam. He abandoned the practice and the lice that came with it. Good riddance.
In time, Adam matured and was ready for a mate. Instead of God finding a mate among his hunter-gatherer family, God had something else in mind. After all, Adam was special. He was spiritually alive, unlike anyone else. Adam also had been endowed with extraordinarily long life.
Eve
So God caused Adam to fall into a deep sleep. God took flesh, perhaps a stem cell from the bone of Adam's rib. From this genetic material, which would have contained both X and Y chromosomes, God fashioned the XX DNA of a woman. Perhaps a surrogate mother was again employed, to carry Eve to conception. In time, she grew to an adult woman. God brought her to Adam in the Garden. She was flesh of his flesh, bone of his bone. But more importantly, she was spiritually alive like he was. She became the "mother of all the living", just as testified to by Scripture.
Adam and Eve were the first spiritual human beings. They were endowed with long life. If they remained obedient to God, they would never have to be spiritually separated from Him. They would never die.
But Adam and Eve disobeyed God. In shame, they resumed the practice of wearing clothing. Because they were cultivators, not hunters, they made their clothes from plants. They may have patterned them after the clothing worn by their estranged people group.
God found them and banished them from Eden. Not being hunters and gatherers, they and their children attempted to cultivate the ground and shepherd animals instead of hunting them.
This capability, cultivating and shepherding, is shared by people groups that have been separated for between 46,000 and 77,000 years. This provides some indication of how long ago Adam live.
Cain
In time Adam and Eve gave birth to Cain and Abel, their first two sons. In jealousy, Cain murdered Abel. Cain was banished.
Abel the shepherd is no more and Cain the farmer is banished from his farm. Early efforts in agriculture take a brutal hit. While evidence exists that limited agriculture efforts continue, the true agricultural revolution will have to wait until after Noah's Flood.
Recent finds indicate that agriculture was being practiced 23,000 years ago. Some would say agriculture was just getting started, but in the context of our narrative, it is still being continued, having been passed down.
Cain was also afraid.
Taken at face value, there clearly are other people alive on the Earth of whom Cain is afraid. In fact, they live in a land called Nod, which literally means the land of wandering. There are other people wandering around east of Eden. These people would be from the estranged family of Adam and their descendants; heavily armed hunter-gatherers, mighty hunters of whom to be afraid. It makes some sense to identify these with the "sons and daughters of men" while the descendants of Adam, the son of God, and of Eve, would be identified as the "sons and daughters of God". See the cryptic content of Genesis 6:4:
Cain's wife presumably was not of the line of Adam and Eve. She was perhaps what the Bible would call "a daughter of man". Perhaps she did not have an extraordinary life span. I suspect that only the pure-bred line of Adam and Eve through Seth possessed long life spans. Cain's descendants would see diminishing life spans just as would happen to Noah's line after the Flood.
Cain
In time Adam and Eve gave birth to Cain and Abel, their first two sons. In jealousy, Cain murdered Abel. Cain was banished.
Abel the shepherd is no more and Cain the farmer is banished from his farm. Early efforts in agriculture take a brutal hit. While evidence exists that limited agriculture efforts continue, the true agricultural revolution will have to wait until after Noah's Flood.
Recent finds indicate that agriculture was being practiced 23,000 years ago. Some would say agriculture was just getting started, but in the context of our narrative, it is still being continued, having been passed down.
Cain was also afraid.
13 Cain said to the Lord, “My punishment is greater than I can bear.[e] 14 Behold, you have driven me today away from the ground, and from your face I shall be hidden. I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me.” 15 Then the Lord said to him, “Not so! If anyone kills Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold.” And the Lord put a mark on Cain, lest any who found him should attack him. 16 Then Cain went away from the presence of the Lord and settled in the land of Nod,[f] east of Eden.
Taken at face value, there clearly are other people alive on the Earth of whom Cain is afraid. In fact, they live in a land called Nod, which literally means the land of wandering. There are other people wandering around east of Eden. These people would be from the estranged family of Adam and their descendants; heavily armed hunter-gatherers, mighty hunters of whom to be afraid. It makes some sense to identify these with the "sons and daughters of men" while the descendants of Adam, the son of God, and of Eve, would be identified as the "sons and daughters of God". See the cryptic content of Genesis 6:4:
4 The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown.In time Cain took a wife.
Cain's wife presumably was not of the line of Adam and Eve. She was perhaps what the Bible would call "a daughter of man". Perhaps she did not have an extraordinary life span. I suspect that only the pure-bred line of Adam and Eve through Seth possessed long life spans. Cain's descendants would see diminishing life spans just as would happen to Noah's line after the Flood.
Cain and his wife gave birth to a son, Enoch. Enoch had Eve for a grandmother. Eve was the mother of all the living and Enoch, as a descendant of Eve, would have been a spiritual human being like Adam, Eve, and Cain. But unlike the genealogy leading to Noah, the genealogy of the descendants of Cain make no claims of long lives.
The Mother of All the Living
At the beginning of this article, the mitochondrial types (mtDNA) of female humans, L0, L1, L2, and L3 were discussed. An article published in 2018 makes the case that the L3 female lineage originated outside of Africa about 71,000 years ago and then led to a migration of fully modern humans back into Africa 70,000 years ago. With these L3 females, human males with a Y-DNA type of E also migrated back into Africa. The results of the study indicate a "joint and global replacement of the [indigenous] male and female African lineages by the new Eurasian incomers". This global replacement in Africa and the expansion of humans to the rest of the world effectively resets the true location of human origins. Spiritually modern humans did not evolve in Africa and then migrate out. Rather, God put Adam and Eve in a Garden in the Middle East and from there the world was populated.
The human male Y-DNA type begins with A, followed by BT, CT, CF, an elusive DE, and then D and E. From there it further diverged. The L3 mtDNA diverged into M and N types outside of Africa, and then further diverged.
In the scenario under consideration, Adam would have inherited his mother's mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), either L3 or a slightly pre-L3 version. Eve, made from Adam, would have the same mtDNA. Of course, we cannot rule out modifications by God. After all, God did imbue Adam and Eve with long life spans and possibly upgraded brain structure, so in a sense, we should expect modifications of some kind. God may have created the CT Y-DNA type first in Adam. CT is currently referred to as the "Eurasian Adam" or "Out of Africa Adam" by some in the genetic archaeology community. Unfortunately, many of those who do so probably fail to realize how close to correct they may actually be.
Expanding to the East, those in the land of wandering continued East. The oldest permanent people group outside of Africa and the Middle East are the Australian Aborigines. These people settled Australia up to 55,000 years ago (or possibly earlier), taking the male Y-DNA type C* with them. The women among them carry M and N, but not L3. It is reasonable to believe that these settlers bore God's image with them to Australia, as descendants of Adam and Eve.
In time, spiritual humanity spread among the daughters and sons of man, perhaps rapidly. Humans began to disperse into the world. The direct line of Adam and Eve, who went on to have other sons and daughters, retained a more correct knowledge of God and long life. These are called the sons of God. The descendants of Cain, admixed with the ancient race, will have a distant hint of their ancestral lineages, potentially up to 200,000 years old.
The descendants of Adam and Eve migrated back into Africa, to Australia, to Eurasia and throughout the whole world.
In a short time, everyone on Earth will have acquired a shared ancestry with Adam and Eve and a spiritual nature. All who do not, including Neanderthals and Denisovans died out. Human beings took over the world. By about 65,000 years ago, humanity was establishing a more global reach.
The Mother of All the Living
At the beginning of this article, the mitochondrial types (mtDNA) of female humans, L0, L1, L2, and L3 were discussed. An article published in 2018 makes the case that the L3 female lineage originated outside of Africa about 71,000 years ago and then led to a migration of fully modern humans back into Africa 70,000 years ago. With these L3 females, human males with a Y-DNA type of E also migrated back into Africa. The results of the study indicate a "joint and global replacement of the [indigenous] male and female African lineages by the new Eurasian incomers". This global replacement in Africa and the expansion of humans to the rest of the world effectively resets the true location of human origins. Spiritually modern humans did not evolve in Africa and then migrate out. Rather, God put Adam and Eve in a Garden in the Middle East and from there the world was populated.
The human male Y-DNA type begins with A, followed by BT, CT, CF, an elusive DE, and then D and E. From there it further diverged. The L3 mtDNA diverged into M and N types outside of Africa, and then further diverged.
In the scenario under consideration, Adam would have inherited his mother's mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), either L3 or a slightly pre-L3 version. Eve, made from Adam, would have the same mtDNA. Of course, we cannot rule out modifications by God. After all, God did imbue Adam and Eve with long life spans and possibly upgraded brain structure, so in a sense, we should expect modifications of some kind. God may have created the CT Y-DNA type first in Adam. CT is currently referred to as the "Eurasian Adam" or "Out of Africa Adam" by some in the genetic archaeology community. Unfortunately, many of those who do so probably fail to realize how close to correct they may actually be.
Expanding to the East, those in the land of wandering continued East. The oldest permanent people group outside of Africa and the Middle East are the Australian Aborigines. These people settled Australia up to 55,000 years ago (or possibly earlier), taking the male Y-DNA type C* with them. The women among them carry M and N, but not L3. It is reasonable to believe that these settlers bore God's image with them to Australia, as descendants of Adam and Eve.
In time, spiritual humanity spread among the daughters and sons of man, perhaps rapidly. Humans began to disperse into the world. The direct line of Adam and Eve, who went on to have other sons and daughters, retained a more correct knowledge of God and long life. These are called the sons of God. The descendants of Cain, admixed with the ancient race, will have a distant hint of their ancestral lineages, potentially up to 200,000 years old.
The descendants of Adam and Eve migrated back into Africa, to Australia, to Eurasia and throughout the whole world.
In a short time, everyone on Earth will have acquired a shared ancestry with Adam and Eve and a spiritual nature. All who do not, including Neanderthals and Denisovans died out. Human beings took over the world. By about 65,000 years ago, humanity was establishing a more global reach.
The San People
One objection to the above narrative is the Khoisan people of Africa. These Africans bear genetic lineage that can be traced back about 150,000 years or more. However, the Khoisan people are admixed with descendants of the proposed Adamic CT Y-haplogroup, especially Y-haplogroup E. (D and E are descendants from CT)
In other words, Khoisan Nearly Fully Modern Humans living 150,000 years still have descendants alive today. But they are not "pure-bred ancient Khoisan". This is important to remember. It seems that all humans have inherited at least 2-3% of either Neanderthal or Denisovan ancestry. In other words, there are Neanderthals and Denisovans who could say that they have descendants alive today. They could say that they did not totally go extinct (if they would even have thought such a thing). Neanderthal and Denisovans may have diverged from human lineage up to 500,000 years ago or more. In the case of the Nearly Fully Modern Humans, we are talking about the immediate predecessors to Adam and Eve. All Khoisan have 52% or more genetic heritage from the descendants of Adam as shown by their Y-Chromosome.
On the maternal side, the Khoisan carry up to 73% L0 (pre-L3) heritage. The !Kung group of San people carry 100% L0 (pre-L3) heritage. In other words, !Kung men have never married outside their clan and so their daughters are always of L0 descent - note though, that it cannot be said that all !Kung women have been genetically tested.
What we would say to this is that our "true humanness" is from Adam, not from Eve. All humans alive on the earth today, and for quite some time into the past (tens of thousands of years), share Adam as an ancestor. Eve herself was derived from Adam, underscoring this point. Yet as the "mother of the living" she passes on spiritual humanity. This makes sense. In a similar sense, the genetic change that lead humans to have an enhanced parietal lobe and cerebellum are not sex-linked but rather autosomal DNA. This capacity is likely highly selected for and highly conserved in humans. We are all alike in this fashion.
The First City
Cain built a city in the land of wandering (Nod) and named it after his son, Enoch. This may be significant in that ultimately, God's plan involves building a city for His people. But Cain cannot accomplish God's vision for humanity, having rebelled against God. Still, humanity's drive to build cities and congregate people is referenced again in Genesis 11:4 which records this: Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.” Cain's motivation may have been similar. Possibly, Cain's city was little more than a semi-permanent encampment, but we don't really know. In any case, humanity dispersed.
It has been pointed out that due to rising sea levels between the time of Adam and Eve and modern times, the world-wide sea level has raised by 400 feet, deluging and area of land equal in size to South America. Much of the most sophisticated accomplishments of those living between the time of Adam and the time of Noah may be buried under 400 feet of water. This could include evidence of farming, animal husbandry, cities, boats, art, music, and numerous other accomplishments.
The Genealogy of Noah
The interpretation of the ancestral line from Adam to Noah is one of the most controversial issues in creation theology. Since we have so far posited that Adam lived somewhere around 70,000 years ago, the next question is, when did Noah live?
In another post, Toward An Historical Timeline for Genesis 2 through 11, I make a case for the Flood occurring somewhere near 10,000 BC. That means Noah's genealogy back to Adam spanned 60,000 years. That's a lot of ground to cover.
There are many interesting aspects to the genealogies in Genesis, but some elements stand out. One is the great length of the lives of the people mentioned. The other is that the age of the father at the son's birth and the age of the father's death are recorded. We have already mentioned acceptance of the long life span of the individual in Adam and Eve's direct line of descent. None-the-less, the total of these ages will not yield 60,000 years. If we assume that only the most important ancestors are recorded, it is still interesting to think about why the genealogies are recorded the way they are.
We can reasonably assume that the genealogy was passed down, generation to generation, orally. Now, it's not difficult to memorize even a very long genealogy, but we can't make assumptions about what the genealogies mean without some context.
The ancestors of the San People of South Africa are thought to date back about 70,000 years. In other words, they might have been some of the first to admix with Adam and Eve's descendants and they retain a genetic signal of the mtDNA L0 maternal lineage and the A & B Y-DNA paternal lineage that pre-date Adam and Eve. Therefore, how they propagated their genealogies might be of some relevance in understanding how we should look at the genealogies in the book of Genesis, chapters 5 and 11.
Some San groups practice naming conventions by which people are named after their grandparents or uncles and aunts, who are classificatory grandparents in some systems. Names jump downwards through generations, from grandparents to grandchildren. Among Ju/'hoansi and Naro, all those who share the same name are believed to be descended from the original namesake ancestor. p. 130 Anthropology of the Bushment, by Alan Barnard, 2007.Since "all those who share the same name are believed to be descended from the original namesake ancestor", this could hamper trying to "add up ages" to get a grand total of time elapsed. Now, we don't know that the Biblical genealogies followed San conventions, of course. But the point is, we really don't know what the conventions were at all. Given that the genealogies in Genesis 5 and 11 both include ten generations, one convention could have been to just keep the ten most important.
This article on wikipedia includes an interesting graphic comparing the Genealogies of Cain and Seth, in the section by that name. It provides some food for thought as to what to make of these genealogies as a whole.
We can assume that these genealogies represent truth about humanity's past because Moses, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, included them in the Bible. But it cannot be assumed that they were dictated directly to Moses by God Himself as a kind of absolute record. Like other genealogies in the Bible, they are likely the work of human scribes and historians whose contributions were included in the Bible according to God's sovereign will for our benefit and His glory.
Summary
I have written quite a few ideas in the article that may be very new to you as the reader, and may be even alarming or offensive. In fact, many of the ideas presented here would have had scant evidence even several years ago. This article may raise as many questions as it tries to answer. I welcome your feedback and offer my views in good faith that as a fellow Christian I desire to see God glorified for all He has done.
While it appears that God may have been honing the human creature into His image over hundreds of thousands of years, He also revealed to us in the Bible the true story of bringing spiritual life into this natural world. Through Adam, God blessed humanity with more than just physical resemblance to the human form. God blessed humanity with spiritual life and a moral obligation to worship God as our Creator. I hope you will join me in doing so.
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