Adam and Eve Origins

[ChanaR]

Apparently if you get a DNA test, to trace your national heritage, african appears somewhere for everyone. This is linked with the idea that all lines originate from Africa when all the continents were all joined and one.

This kind of relates to the question of why is Adam and Eve depicted as white? They could have been African, they were not white at the very least. Same with Jesus, he was not born in a white country yet every image I see he is depicted as a white man with golden brown hair.

If Adam and Eve really did exist, where would they have resided?

Artists depict Adam and Eve as white because every idiot culture is ethnocentric.

The truth is that the first humans were Africans. We are all immigrants from Africa (except the Africans who still live there and never immigrated).

Some time around 200,000 years ago, the physically modern human had finally evolved, according to the fossil record. Were they morally sentient? I don't know. But I would not classify the first real "Adam" type human being to have existed until there was enough moral sentience to cause a conflict of conscience, IOW the fall. By conflict of conscience I mean a conflict between his animal instincts (sinful nature) and his empathy or sense of justice (we see rudimentary forms of these things in other primates).

It is this "fall," this development of conscience, which causes the great gulf between humanity and the rest of nature, because unlike elk or cats or chimps, we question our instincts. The "fall" put us into a state of disharmony which has plagued us. You might say we lost paradise.

 

[ChanaR]

Errr . . . .not so fast.

"According to the generally accepted story of human evolution, the human lineage split from that of apes some 7 million years ago in Africa. Hominins (early humans) are believed to have stayed put in Africa until about 2 million years ago, when they migrated first to Asia and then to Europe.

Now, a team of scientists from the University of Tubingen in Germany and the University of Toronto in Canada are seeking to revise that story. In two complementary studies published in the journal PLOS One, they argue that the earliest human ancestor emerged in Europe, not Africa, around 7.2 million years ago, or 200,000 years earlier than was previously thought.

The researchers base their bold hypothesis largely on the analysis of two fossils: a mandible (lower jaw) found in Greece in 1944 and an upper premolar tooth found in Bulgaria in 2009. The fossils belonged to an ape-like creature known as Graecopithecus freybergi (“El Graeco,” for short), which roamed the Mediterranean region between 7.18 and 7.25 million years ago.

Though the fossilized jawbone from Greece has been around a while, most scientists had dismissed it as a source of good information due to its poor condition. “It’s not the best specimen in the world,” David Begun of the University of Toronto, who co-authored the new research, told HISTORY. “It has a lot of damage to the surface of the jawbone itself and a lot of damage to the teeth, so they’re really hard to see, they’re difficult to measure, and it’s hard to say what they look like.” But when Begun’s colleague, Madelaine Böhme, had the idea of using computer tomography, or CT-scanning, to look inside the mandible, things got more interesting.

“We saw that the roots of the teeth embedded in the mandible were perfectly preserved…and they gave us a lot of new information that we never had about this specimen,” Begun said. “The canine root is quite short and slender, and indicates that the canine was small. That’s really important, because in apes—and male apes in particular—the canine is quite large.” This holds true for most male primates, Begun explained, but not all. “This root shows that the canine was already reduced, which is a characteristic that you only see in humans and our fossil relatives.”

In addition, analysis of the two fossils showed that some of the roots of the bicuspid teeth of Graecopithecus—what we call the premolars—had simplified, or fused to form fewer roots. “That is again something that you only see in humans and our fossil relatives. It is extremely rare to find it in living apes, and you don’t see it in any fossil apes from the same time period,” Begun noted.

If Graecopithecus is in fact a hominin, it would slightly predate the earliest known human ancestor found in Africa, Sahelanthropus tchadensis. Discovered at a site in Chad, Sahelanthropus is believed to be between 6 and 7 million years old. Begun emphasized that the new hypothesis doesn’t affect the later story of modern humans and their emergence from Africa. “That story is completely intact,” he told HISTORY. “This is about what happened millions and millions of years before that, when the human lineage in its entirety arose.”
source

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Ah, how much easier to believe in ol' A&E.

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This is news to me. I'll wait until it is the consensus of scientists, and not just one study. But I do thank you for the news report. It is tucked away pending further evidence. BTW, there are problems with the article. Modern humans didn't come into existence until about 200,000 year ago. Your article is talking about hominids, not modern humans, as I was. Could be that both are correct.

 

[Skwim]

This is news to me. I'll wait until it is the consensus of scientists, and not just one study. But I do thank you for the news report. It is tucked away pending further evidence. BTW, there are problems with the article. Modern humans didn't come into existence until about 200,000 year ago. Your article is talking about hominids, not modern humans, as I was. Could be that both are correct.

You mean that after the earliest human ancestor emerged in Europe 7.2 million years ago, at some point their decedents could have moved into Africa where they remained until they developed in Homo sapiens 200,000 years ago?

.

 

[ChanaR]

You mean that after the earliest human ancestor emerged in Europe 7.2 million years ago, at some point their decedents could have moved into Africa where they remained until they developed in Homo sapiens 200,000 years ago?

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The earliest human ancestor would be a single cell organism some 3.8 billion years ago, or as we joke about it, pond scum.

7.2 million years ago was when we diverged from other apes. The first group were the Australopithecines, but although these walked upright, they were not genus Homo. After them came the various species that are classified as genus Homo such as Homo Habilus, Homo Ergaster, Homo Erectus, Homo Sapiens Neanderthalis...

None of those are modern man. Modern man is Homo Sapiens Sapiens, and has only existed for about 200,000 years.

There have been many migrations of hominid species out of Africa. Homo Ergaster may have been the first hominid to migrate to Eurasia. Homo Erectus migrated all over the planet. The Neanderthals had a firm foothold in Europe and elsewhere.

It is POSSIBLE that a later species of hominid evolved in Europe from an earlier species that migrated out of Africa. For example, it is possible that when Homo Ergaster migrated to Europe, that it continued to evolve and became a new species of Homo. But I'd have to see further evidence, as I told you.

Modern man, Homo Sapiens Sapiens, evolved in Africa about 200,000 years ago. The oldest fossils of modern man that we have outside of Africa are about 180,000 years old in Israel (Misliya Cave) -- about 80,000 years earlier than previously thought.j

It is interesting to note that when modern man first came into existence, he was not the only hominid around, but competed with other species of hominids that had not yet gone extinct.