Does science and history support Adam and eve?

Hello everyone. I am going to make a case for the historicity of Adam and Eve. Again, this is only my opinion. As a Christian myself, I have always found theology and similar studies quite intriguing. I know that the farther back you go, the evidence gets less and less and very little has survived since antiquity. For this reason I tend to use Cultural anthropology and cultural archeology for my research.

Researching the bible is never an easy task. I will start with the most recent piece of evidence and go backwards in time as far as I can. It's a story we all know to some degree or other. The first two human beings God created, Adam and Eve (c. 6,000 years ago). Adam, created first, from the dust of the ground. Eve, formed out of one of Adam’s ribs. The blissful Garden of Eden. The two trees—taking of the wrong tree—the Fall. Expulsion from Eden. Cain, Abel and the subsequent repetitive course of human history and the human condition. Simple legend, so say most (even many Bible “believers”). Or is it? The amount of hard science behind it may come as a shock.

Mitochondrial Eve

All human beings contain mitochondrial dna(mtdna). However, it is only passed on through the female egg. So while a son and daughter receive mitochondria from the mother, only the daughter will pass it on to her descendants. This provides a useful tool for geneticists to determine female lineage. Importantly, it has confirmed that all living females have descended, in direct lineage, from just one woman.

This isn’t pseudo-science—this is an established, well-known, scientifically accepted conclusion. This woman is known as mitochondrial Eve. This field of genetic study developed in the 1970s. It was realized that matrilineal lineage could easily be traced back through history by analyzing and comparing the mtdna of different women. Mitochondrial dna changes rapidly and acts as a sort of molecular “clock.” Scientists use the differences—mutations—in a woman’s mtdna to calculate how long ago their most recent common ancestor must have lived.

In some new research we see evidence of a dramatically reduced age of humans. The general scientifically accepted answer is that some “catastrophe” caused the human population to “bottleneck”. The most recent estimate of the mutation rate in human mitochondria is about 0.5 per generation. Thus, even for the most mutated sequences, it would only require 200 generations (less than 6,000 years) to accumulate 100 mutations. This calculation is based upon the most straightforward application of the molecular clock concept. So I think we can safely assume that this is smoking gun number 1!

Y-Chromosome Adam

Patrilineal ancestry can be traced with the Y chromosome, which of course is passed down from father to son. This one, though, appears to be a lot more difficult to trace genealogically, as opposed to mtdna. But, incredibly, geneticists concur that all humans alive came from just one paternal ancestor. What is much debated is when this “Adam” was on the scene. There are a couple of key factors that can make dating difficult. One of which is “mating success”.

There is a high diversity of reproductive success among men, with some having vast numbers of offspring (i.e., Genghis Khan), and some having none. (Women, on the other hand, tend to have more uniform reproductive rates.) Added to this, if only daughters are born, a man’s Y-chromosomal lineage dies off. This has led to a belief that our nearest common Y-chromosome Adam lived long aftermitochondrial Eve. (Keep in mind, however, the above paragraphs of a mitochondrial Eve within the past 6,000 years.) Some claim that Y-chromosome Adam “almost certainly never met Eve.” And, from a biblical perspective, they are absolutely right—because Y-chromosome Adam would have been, in fact, Noah!

The Bible shows this clearly to have been the case. All humans descended from Adam and Eve. But only Noah, his wife, and his three sons and their wives survived the Great Flood (a “bottleneck” of sorts that, according to biblical chronology, happened around 4,500 years ago). It is from Noah’s family that all humanity derives. The closest common Y-chromosomal ancestor, then, would be Noah, who passed on his “Ys” to his three sons. But the mitochondrial Eve would have long predated this—the unique mitochondrial dna being carried on not from Noah’s wife, but from the sons’ wives, passed on to their future daughters.

Besides all of that, to the Bible believer, it would only make sense for God to create Adam and Eve with a high amount of genetic diversity to begin with—that this couple would be overly heterozygous right from the start. Thus, further condensing the amount of time necessary for mutations to take place. So this would be smoking gun number 2!

Experts have been able to determine that the human body is made up of 25 elements, every one essential for human life. Every one of these elements is found in the Earth’s soil. According to biblical chronology, the statement that man came from the dust of the ground was “penned” at the hand of Moses c. 3,400 years ago. Yet it wasn’t until 1982, when it was confirmed that every element in man is found in the soil, prompting one scientist to famously remark: “[T]he biblical scenario for the creation of life turns out to be not far off the mark.”

And, specifically, the creation of the woman? Genesis 2:21-23 (King James Version):

And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; And the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.

And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.

The first woman was made from the rib of the first man. To the unbeliever, this is preposterous. To the believer, God is capable of anything. What does science say about it?

Scientists have discovered that if the perichondrium (the membrane covering the rib) is left in place, then the bone will actually regrow inside of it. Much of the knowledge on this subject has only emerged over the last few years.

The rib is the only known bone to do this. Bone from the ribcage is used by doctors to reconstruct damaged bone tissue in other parts of the body. One could say that with the use of rib bone in reconstructive surgery, doctors are unwittingly replicating (in a minute way) Genesis 2—using a rib to “create” (or rather, “complete”) a human being!

The Bible continually affirms the perfection of God’s creation. Did God thus intend for Adam to continue in life odd-ribbed? Perhaps. But perhaps He deliberately created and used the specific bone that would regenerate itself, thus leaving no imperfections behind.

One more key point on the science behind the rib: Bone marrow is one of the key sources for stem cells. These are cells that can convert into all types of cells in the human body, thus enabling the creation of a complete human being, i.e. Eve. And the ribcage is a notably prolific producer of these cells.

The ‘Rib Lady’ and the Greek Goddess:

The ancient Sumerians (an early culture that only ended around 4,000 years ago) believed in an original “garden of gods,” and that the land in it was watered from the ground (similar to Genesis 2:5-6).

They wrote of an early being named Enki, who succumbed to an illness in many of his organs, including specifically his rib (curiously, this illness came from eating “forbidden flowers”). For each afflicted part of the body, a female being was born. In order to heal the rib, a female named Ninti was born. “Ninti” means Lady Rib.

The name Ninti is especially notable, more so than the other seven goddesses born for Enki’s seven other afflicted body parts. The name of this goddess did not just denote a body part. Ninti has a dual meaning—not just Lady Rib, but Mother of the Living. The Sumerian word for rib, “ti,” is synonymous with life.As such, Ninti was specially known as the “goddess of life.” Ninti is also called the “One Who Makes Live.”

The parallels with Eve are clear—and ancient. The extant story featuring Ninti goes back around 3,800 years—and the original form may well date even earlier than that. What, then, caused the word for rib to become synonymous with the word for life? And how did it come to be used as the name for the “mother of all living”? To the Greeks, the goddess Gaia is considered the mother of all life. This name is believed to be a pre-Greek word of uncertain origin, meaning “Earth” or “life.” Gaia, of course, also comes across as an Eve type.

Eve’s name in Hebrew is Chawah, also directly related to the Hebrew name Chaia, both words symbolizing “life.” In fact, the words Gaia and Chaiaproperly pronounced are very similar. Her ensuing family closely resembles that in the Bible: Gaia’s child Cronus, whom she bore with the first “father” god Ouranus, was the patron of the harvest and is symbolized by the sickle and grain.Adam and Eve’s son Cain was likewise known as a “tiller of the ground”—a crop farmer (Genesis 4:2-3). Later descendants of Cronus/Cain include a family that parallels the one mentioned in Genesis 4. Smoking gun number 3!

Adam in Assyria, Adam in Egypt

We’ve looked at a couple of ancient “Eve” parallel accounts (there are many more). What about Adam? Surely the name of the earliest biblical human would be used in early secular history.

The name Adam is attested to on the Assyrian King List. This list is known from tablets dating back to the 11th century b.c.e., but even these copies are known to have come from an earlier original source compiled c. 1800 b.c.e.

The name is listed, in slightly different Assyrian form, as Adamu, second ruler of Assyria. While nothing is known of his reign.

Historian and Egyptologist David Rohl has put forward that this figure could even be the biblical Adam himself. This is because the name of the “first” king, Tudiya, is placed on the list directly before Adamu, i.e. “Tudiya Adamu.” If the word “Tudiya” is taken as a verb rather than a personal name, we have the phrase “Beloved of god, Adam.” Rohl believes that the two words describe one and the same individual. Evidence for this can be found on a later Babylonian copy of the king list—here, the two names appear to be joined together in heavily corrupted form: Tubtiyamutu.

Another “Adam” parallel can be found in Egypt, among its pantheon of gods. This specific god was worshiped very early on in Egypt’s history (c. 2500 b.c.e., if not earlier). According to the Heliopolis creation myth, he was known as the “firstgod and living being.”

His name? Atum. (Note that linguistically, “t” and “d” sounds are known to be readily interchangeable, especially cross-culturally.) This “first being” Atum emerged from a chaotic state of darkness and a primordial watery abyss. This brings to mind biblical description of the world before the creation of man: “And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters” (Genesis 1:2; kjv). As opposed to God creating Adam, however, the Egyptians (in typical fashion) have Atum creating himself!

The temptation seal:

Adam and Eve have been artistically portrayed perhaps more often than any other human beings—at least, any other couple—in history. Examples of this couple abound, going back some 2,000 years. But these depictions are incredibly young when compared with a possible contender for the earliest“portrait” (actually, it’s technically a landscape)—this one, a c. 4300-year-old artifact. It’s a greenstone seal, dating to around 2250 b.c.e.Since its discovery (at least, over the past 150 years), it has been related to the “fall of man” in the Garden of Eden—for good reason. The seal depicts a fruit tree, along with a female figure seated to the left of the tree and a male to the right. Both figures are reaching for a piece of fruit. A snake is angled toward the woman, its head close to hers.

The imagery so closely parallels the story in Genesis 3—the serpent tempting the woman, and both the woman and the man taking of the fruit of the tree. This scene has been reproduced in various forms throughout history. Of course, in “modern” artwork, Adam and Eve are depicted “in the raw.” The early eastern Mesopotamians, however, seem to have been a bit more “prudish” in terms of clothing. Could this early depiction—so “close” to the biblical time frame of Adam and Eve—have been a memory of a real, “recent” event? Smoking gun number 4!

And on Serpents?

There was an ancient snake recently discovered called tetrapadophis. It was a snake that once had legs. to make mention of the Genesis 3 serpent, the animal form that Satan took on in order to deceive Eve. Contrary to the classic depictions, snakes in the Garden of Eden had legs.Remember what God told the serpent after Adam and Eve ate of the tree? “[U]pon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life” (Genesis 3:14). Scientists have discovered that snakes indeed once had legs —fossils show this—and even today, boas and pythons exhibit vestigial “leg spurs” and still have the embedded gene for regrowing the limbs. Smoking gun number 5!

Other miscellaneous artifacts:

In Egypt there is a painting at the tomb of inherkau which shows of Re-Atum killing the apophis at the ished tree. In Egypt, apophis was the serpent of chaos. The painting dated from 1315–1314 BC. This tomb was actually the Tomb of Ramesses I, in the Valley of the Kings. It's not much but it does depict god curing the serpent of Eden.

We also have The story of Adapa, which is preserved in cuneiform tablets found in the 19th century in Ashurbanipal's library at Nineveh. The story was also found in the archives of Egyptian King Amenophis IV at Amarna.

Göbelki Tepe

The early Neolithic site of Göbekli Tepe has it all: far reaching implications about prehistoric hunter-gatherer social group structures, the beginning of our very own modern sedentary lifestyle, and (some of the) oldest yet known monumental architecture ever built. Yes, there are depictions of snakes at Göbekli Tepe. A lot, actually. Quite a lot. It almost is a snake pit rather than the single seducer trying to sell forbidden fruits. And what about all those other animal reliefs? There are spiders and scorpions, foxes and vultures, cranes, ducks, and boars. And more. In numbers certainly equalling those of snake reliefs.

Another small find produced by the Göbekli Tepe excavations, a so-called plaquette, is also often referred to as a clue in the ‘Garden of Eden’. The small stone tablet is showing three carved symbols among which some recognise a snake and a tree. Smoking gun number 6!

Final thoughts? The location of Eden

The story of bahrain, an island off the shore of dilmun, which is on the coastline of the Persian gulf, also gives us more information on a historical Adam and eve.

In Sumerian mythology, the mythical Dilmun was known as the bright and pure land, a paradise where sickness and death did not exist. The land of Dilmun was filled with divinely ordained and abundant water sources, brought forth from the subterranean realm by Utu/Shamash—the sun god—at the behest of Enki. These waters transformed a formerly dry land into a literal garden of the gods, where the mother goddess Ninhursag tended sacred plants. Various deities were believed to have made Dilmun their home, including Enki himself.

Some archaeologists (including Peter Bruce Cornwall and David Rohl) have identified the mythic Dilmun with the Island of Bahrain, located south of Eridu in the Persian Gulf. Positioned between Mesopotamia, India, and the East African Coast, Bahrain became the host of influential middlemen trafficking copper ore, diordite, gold, tin, ivory, and semi-precious stones into Sumer, Babylon and Assyria until the mid-second millennium B.C.

Hmm, sounds like Eden, don't you think? Ezekiel 28:13 "You were in Eden, the garden of God; every precious stone was your covering, sardius, topaz, and diamond, beryl, onyx, and jasper, sapphire, emerald, and carbuncle; and crafted in gold were your settings and your engravings. On the day that you were created they were prepared".

As the Sumerian Poseidon, Enki was the “lord of the absu (abyss)” in ancient cosmology, and was thought to have sent his sages, the apkallu from out of the watery abyss to partner with the pre-flood kings of Babylonia. What makes the concept of Dilmun so unique among the many mythic locales in ancient literature, is that many researchers consider it to have been an actual place.

The majority of the Bahrain tumuli were constructed between 2300 and 1800 BC, and range between 1-3 meters in height and 3-11 meters in diameter, although there are several much larger examples. Some of the tumuli are surrounded by traces of perfectly circular walls of highly stacked, carefully placed limestone blocks, which are typically twice the diameter of the inner mound itself. A 1959 aerial survey revealed that 46 out of 75,023 tumuli observed featured the ring walls, and they also appear surrounding some of the Dilmun tumuli on the adjacent Saudi Arabian coast.

These outer rings are thought to indicate the mounds of particularly high status individuals of one or more ruling lineages. Chronologically, ring walls initially appear surrounding some Early Type mounds, and appear later among larger Royal mounds, including 18 of the tumuli near the village of Aali, ranging from 20 to 52 meters in diameter with outer rings between 50 and 94 meters.

Many of the larger tumuli (called “Royal” mounds in the literature) feature two storied tombs, complete with a small passage or vertical shaft entryway. Earlier tumuli were usually small with crudely built stone chambers, and the gradual appearance of the more elaborate mounds is considered indicative of a gradual increase in social complexity, including the rise of an elite class. The “Royal” Mounds of Bahrain were often built near the heads of natural springs in areas selected specifically for mound field, perhaps representing a connection to the gods of the absu.

The elite dead of Bahrain were interred with bronze weapons, hairpins, and prestigious Ivory artifacts, as well as elaborate drinking goblets in tombs open at the west, perhaps to view the setting sun. On the Gulf Coast of Saudi Arabia, extensive mound fields of the same types as those from Bahrain are known, one of the largest concentrations of which is at Dhahran, consisting of around 50,000 tumuli dating to around 2500 BC.

Being slightly older than their Bahrain counterparts, the Dhahran tumuli are considered representative of a time before the capital of the Dilmun civilization was moved to the island. Potteries of the Uruk, Jembet Nasr, and Barbar periods have been found at Dhahran, suggesting frequent interaction with Mesopotamia. The elites of the Dilmun civilization may have been considered true royalty by the Mesopotamian world, as evidenced by a letter found at Girsu describing gifts received by a queen of Lagash from a contemporary queen of Dilmun.

There is evidence of cross-cultural influence at Dilmun. Several Bahrain mounds feature terracing similar to that from early Egyptian Mastaba tombs, while the Dhahran tumuli have yielded seals demonstrating Egyptian influence, such as one depicting a lion and two winged cobras wearing the crowns of Upper and Lower Egypt. Another seal features a falcon seated on a cartouche, a design used in Egypt to proclaim the deceased king as the reincarnated Horus. Could the sacred island of many waters have been considered prime funerary real estate in the ancient world?

Symbolism similar to that of Bahrain was prolific throughout the ancient east. For example, the sites of Byblos and Jericho both began as small villages built around enshrined or “sacred” wells. The possibility exists that the Island of Bahrain was in fact a very ancient predecessor of later concepts of an Island of the Dead, the archetypal forbearer of the Island of Avalon.

So what makes all of this interesting? Well it directly tells us the exact location of the biblical garden of Eden. A place that's now underwater in the Persian gulf. Smoking gun number 7!

So there y'all have it. I rest my case!