Adam and Eve

The Holy Bible records that, in the beginning, God created one common earthly father and one common mother nearly 6,000 years ago.GOD SAID in Genesis chapter 5, verses 1-2:

1 This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him;

2 Male and female created he them; and blessed them, and called their name Adam, in the day when they were created."

(As a side note, let me mention that these verses establish the principle of the woman taking the name of her husband. Today they would be called Mr. & Mrs. Adam. So God created one father of mankind, Adam, and one mother of mankind, whom he named Eve.)

MAN SAID: according to one famous evolutionist by the name of Richard Leakey, "There is no single center where modern man was born." In other words, mankind simply began emerging from the evolutionary process from random places on the earth around one million years ago. Unfortunately for the unbelievers, new evidence shows that this is not the case for mankind on the earth today.

THE RECORD: In the December 4, 1995 issue of "U.S. New & World Report," work performed by Michael Hammer of the University of Arizona was reviewed. The following is a quotation by Hammer:

...humans have very, very shallow genetic roots which go back very recently to one ancestor...that indicates that there was an origin in a specific location on the globe and then it spread out from there...researchers suggest that virtually all modern men -- 99.9% of them, says one scientist-are closely related genetically and share genes...Concerning one common mother of all mankind, Berkeley biochemists, Wilson, Cann and Stoneking, have weighed in in favor of Eve. An original 1987 study involved mtDNA taken from 136 women of various racial profiles and from selected parts of the world. The analysis led back to a single ancestral mtDNA molecule from a woman living in Sub-Saharan Africa about 200,000 years ago (which is still a long shot from the 6,000 original years, but we'll address that later). An additional, more rigorous 1991 study appears to confirm and secure the theory. A bitter flap has emerged between old-line anthropologists who claim no common origin of man and an evolution of at least a million years, and their newer anthropological counterparts. In an article in Newsweek, dated January 11, 1998:This time, however, the argument involves a new breed of anthropologists who work in air-conditioned American laboratories instead of desiccated African rift valleys. Trained in molecular biology, they looked at an international assortment of genes and picked up a trail of DNA that led them to a single woman from whom we are all descended.The Reader's Digest in their "News from the World of Science" section reprints the following, taken from Time Magazine, titled, "Mother Eve."If family trees were traced indefinitely backward, they would converge on a small group of ancients who were ancestors of us all. Now biochemists from the University of California at Berkeley think a single female living 200,000 years ago was an ancestor of everyone on Earth today. Inevitably they began calling her "Eve."

Prior studies have shown that, over the generations, mtDNA changes at a steady, known rate of mutation in humans and other primates. To measure this change, the biochemists examined mtDNA from 147 individuals representing five broad geographic regions. Analyzing the differences in the mtDNA samples, the scientists constructed a 'family tree' showing a common ancestral mtDNA. Then they extrapolated backward to calculate when that mtDNA existed -- when Eve lived.

Examining the relationships and geographic origins among the 147 people, the biochemists also determined Eve's home: sub-Saharan Africa.Let me add here that the biochemists are not saying that there weren't other women on the earth at the time of Eve's beginning (and, of course, we know biblically that there were no other women), but they are saying that mankind and their offspring died off and Eve alone became the mother of all the living. In an article published by the French Press Agency, Feb. 23, 1998, titled "Scientist Traces All DNA Roots to Africa," the following was reported from Vatican City:The first man and woman lived up to 200,000 years ago in an earthly paradise somewhere in southern or northeastern Africa, according to the Jesuit Father Angelo Serra, professor of genetics at Rome's Catholic university.

Serra made the claim during a speech on the origins of man delivered to the general assembly of the pontifical academy on life, which began on Monday in the Vatican. The priest said his view was widely held as a result of research carried out in 1996 by academics in California and Arizona.Serra argued that this research supported the monogenist theory of only one "Adam" and one "Eve."

He said the research had allowed the genetic origin of a single Eve to be discovered through DNA analysis of mitochondrions which are passed through the female line. Research carried out at last year allowed the genetic origin of a single Adam to be identified through analysis of Ychromosome DNA, he said.

"Eden, or earthly paradise, where man, with the biological structure of modern man, appeared for the first time some 100,000 or 200,000 years ago, would have been in the region of south or northeastern Africa," Serra said."From these regions, modern man would have developed towards Asia and Europe, where the ancestors of those alive today would have emerged between 30,000 and 50,000 years ago," he added.On October 6, 1999, "Southern African Eve" was published by Daily Insight, a publication of The American Association for the Advancement of Science, the following was taken from that article.Twelve years ago scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, concluded from DNA studies that "Eve," an ancestor common to all modern humans, was an African. Now scientists in South Africa have tracked "Eve" to the Khosian peoples, who are the oldest indigenous group in southern Africa.The findings, presented at a recent human evolution meeting at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York, complement data from the male side: Y chromosome studies had previously pegged the Khosian among a handful of groups with Y chromosomes most closely resembling those of a common ancestor who lived in Africa 145,000 years ago (Science, 31 October 1997, p. 804). Mike Hammer of the University of Arizona, Tucson, who took part in the Y chromosome study, says the latest mtDNA work provides "important confirmation" of the team's work.

Remember what the evolutionary standard bearer Richard Leaky declared in 1977: "There is no single center where modern man was born." But now geneticists are inclined to believe otherwise. In a report from Newsweek, January 11, 1988, Stephen Jay Gould, a Harvard paleontologist and essayist, is quoted as saying: "It makes us realize that all human beings, despite differences in external appearance, are really members of a single entity that's had a very recent origin in one place. There is a kind of biological brotherhood that's much more profound than we ever realized."

GOD SAID, it all began with one earthly father and mother: Adam and Eve.

MAN SAID: no single origin.

Now you have THE RECORD.

 

References:

King James Bible

Newsweek January 11, 1998, "The Search for Adam and Eve."

U.S. News & World Report December 4, 1995.

Reader's Digest, "News From the World of Science."

French Press Agency, Feb. 23, 1998, "Scientist traces all DNA Roots to Africa."

Daily Insight, October 6, 1999, "Southern African Eve."

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