Were Adam and Eve homo sapiens?

This makes as much sense as asking whether James Bond was really Homo sapiens.Humans were not created directly by God from dust - that is a work of fiction. I assume, however, the author of that passage (and Ian Fleming) intended to make their characters Homo sapiens. As jar has pointed out, we are not descended from just a single couple. I do assume that Adam and Eve were intended to be Homo sapiens by the author, but we can't comment on what they were in reality any more than we can comment on the primary school that James Bond went to, as both Adam and James are fictional.Personally, and this could just be because I had a debate on this issue yesterday, I would have rather talked about which species was involved in the fall, if indeed there was one. Maybe if this topic doesn't get anywhere, we could change topics and ask the admins to move this thread.

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Hi IamJoseph. Welcome to the EvC Forum. Hope you enjoy your time here, and keep coming back. Because, like Mr Bond, Adam and Eve existed only in a work of fiction, rather than reality. Or mythical. Let me get this straight. You believe that no evidence exists to indicate that the Bible didn't record the first dialogue between two men?I would have said that if evolutionary theory is correct, which much evidence seems to indicate (see the rest of this forum), then there wasn't really any clear line demarcating the first dialogue. As communication evolved over many generations, from simple vocalisations to sophisticated languages, there would be no 'first dialogue' in the first place. Regardless, evidences suggest that the prehistoric Homo sapiens, a species which has existed for about 200,000+ years, had a sophisticated of a laryngeal apparatus very similar to what we currently have. Thus, I would find it difficult to believe they were used for the first time only 6000 years ago.Once again, I hope you enjoy yourself here.

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I think you are looking at it the wrong way. Seeing as you like to bring up language, consider this analogy: How did modern English evolve? With whom could the first speaker of modern English speak, unless another exacting, synchronising speaker appeared independently? Consider it for a moment.Now, apply this to gender. Though, like communication, sex requires two matching beings, a male would not evolve immediately and suddenly. Given that hermaphroditism probably preceded separate sexes, it is not hard to imagine the species bifurcating into one type that is slightly specialised towards donating genetic material, and another that is slightly specialised towards receiving it. As this may, in some situations, be an advantage, slowly genders will evolve. You are right that if a male suddenly appeared, it wouldn't be able to mate, just as if an English speaker appeared in ancient Britannia, he or she wouldn't be able to talk. But evolution, of language and of organisms, doesn't (usually) work that suddenly.Anyway, we are digressing. Perhaps a new topic is in order. I seriously doubt that. What then is Hesiod's 'Theogeny' or the Vluspá?

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You're welcome. Of course I can't show you that level of proof. Evidence of the past doesn't grow on trees. Just as a forensic scientist often cannot say exactly what occurred at a crime scene, archaeologists and anthropologists can't say exactly who was around. But, they can say with a very high level of certainty that there were far more than two humans around 6000 years ago - the evidence tells that much, at least.Thus, there is good reason to doubt that Genesis, or at least Adam and Eve, are not really the original human beings. Of course it isn't disprovable. It isn't provable either. It is on the same footing with a microscopic teapot orbiting the sun between the Earth and Mars. To discuss the dates of the first humans and the 'transitory dots' will require another thread. I'm sure some exist that touch on this.However, do you have evidence for your assertion that languages are becoming less complex? And not just the past 50 years or so, but for say...400 years? I would think that modern English is far richer, and able to describe many more things, than the English of that era, and before. Some grammar and words have been lost, and there has been a trend to shorten words, but also to add new ones. Care to back this up? An example perhaps? Yes I can reject it to the extent of near certainty. The fields of physics have yielded reliable dating of hominid fossils, many of which are (nearly) certainly older than 6000 years. The more recent of these, that is those at around 120,000 years, such as Skhul V, have a flexed basicranium (though not quite as flexed as later skulls, such as about 50,000 years ago). However, earlier hominids, and indeed most apes, have a straight one. This flexed basicranium has been shown to indicate a longer neck, due to accommodating of the human larynx and supralaryngeal vocal tract. Thus, I am very sure that the earlier men were speaking to one another.Edited by Doddy, : update

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Permission to laugh? The reason Genesis is the debated over those other two is because those other religions (ancient Greek and Norse) have very few followers. If America was settled by the Vikings, you would have to present the Vluspá in Kansas schools!

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You are shifting the burden of proof. A lack of opposing evidence doesn't make your claim correct - an excess of supporting evidence does.Consider the following analogy. You are leaving your home, and your partner suddenly stops and turns around, thinking the gas was left on. You can't disprove that the gas was on (i.e. prrof the gas was off), but does that automatically mean the gas was on? Lack of counter-proof is not proof- it is a lack. Bertrand Russell wrote of it, and we have the date of publication and we know he was a speech-endowed being. Besides, claiming something does not make it so, and something may be so without anyone ever claiming it. Consider another analogy (courtesy of Sir Arthur Eddington). Suppose a scientist is studying fish, and uses a net with a two inch diameter to catch fish. After many catches, and analyzing the caught fish, he publishes a paper declaring that there are no fish in the sea smaller than two inches.Are you doing the same, declaring that nothing existed before 6000 years ago, because your net (historical writings) didn't catch it? There are likely to be many threads on this forum dealing with such claims as this. Suffice it to say that the majority of organisms leave no trace of their existence after their death, and many of those traces that are left lie undiscovered somewhere on this vast planet. It is actually surprising that we have as much proof as we do. But anyway, this is going off topic.

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Simply because some of the Bible has been verified does not make it entirely verified. Indeed, many of the cities and countries mentioned in James Bond novels have been verified, but that hardly makes James a real person. Sorry. Let me rephrase then."Are you doing the same, declaring that no speaking humans existed before 6000 years ago, because your net (historical writings) didn't catch it?" I won't reply to this, but I urge you to mention this in threads specifically about fossils and/or evolution.

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If you insert a fictional character into a true setting, and your work remains and others don't, then you will be an account with parts that can be vindicated by future historians. But by no means do this imply that all the parts not verified are true. Not all. In Papua New Guinea, speech existed for millenia without writing, and only with colonisation was writing introduced.

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I would have said a visibly white sclera is also unique to humans. Why not? And what does "transcendent in the acquisition" mean?

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A what? Is a computer a seed? It has factors (what I see on my screen) derived from the internal workings of the PC. Both? If you answer "because of a pineapple seed", you must then answer "why is a pineapple seed a pineapple seed, rather than an apple seed?", without referring back to a pineapple and setting up a circle of logic, like so:Why pineapple? Pineapple seed.
Why pineapple seed? Pineapple.Edited by Doddy, : circle example

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What's in a name? That which we call a pineapple by any other name would get stuck in your teeth.Edited by Doddy, : sorry, couldn't resist it. Willy ftw!

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Well, the natives of New Guinea did not put a man on the moon, nor build pyramids, nor even write anything. However, they are indeed speech-endowed human beings. The same thing can be said of many sub-saharan African tribes and the Australian Aborigines.So, perhaps the presence of such things as pyramids and lunar landers is not a good indicator of whether the populance had speech or not. Why? The link between speech and writing is not always present. Perhaps the environment is much harsher than in Europe, Asia and the Middle East, and thus the people spend so much time trying to work out how to get the next meal and how to keep their children alive that they don't have time to think about astrophysics or even an alphabet. So, perhaps it was the case that before a few thousand (10,000 plus) years ago, all people worldwide were doing the same thing. Then, in those areas where some major advances were made, namely agriculture and domestication, and the climate was suitable for this to occur easily, then only did people start recording their history.Speech, on the other hand, is biological, so should be expected across all human cultures, regardless of their environment. Hmm, perhaps we should consider an example. Consider a species of bacteria (weighing 665 femtograms = 6.65 10^-16), which double every hour. We put this bacteria in a petrie dish, and incubate. After a year, we should expect 1 x 10²⁶³⁷ bacteria, which would weigh 7 x 10²⁶²¹. By comparison, the Earth is estimated to weigh 5.973610²⁴kg.Thus, could I say that bacteria must not have existed before one year ago, as we don't see enough? No, I can't, because the majority of bacteria die before they undergo fission. They run out of room, food, air, get killed by chemicals or sunlight etc.The same thing happens with humans - infant mortality and disease was commonplace even up until a hundred years ago, how much worse would it have been without safe water and easy food sources? It is only with the advent of a stable food source (agriculture), a body of knowledge to prevent disease and infant mortality (writing) and so on, that we humans have been able to reproduce so rapidly. Why, for a modern example, look at the drastic rise in population since the Industrial Ages (where agriculture and industry took a massive leap forward, so too did the population growth), and even more recently, the growth of Third World nations since the introduction of modern medicines and agricultural practices. In fact, the majority of the 6.5 billion population we see today is a result of the last 200 years, rather than the last 6000.Thus, as population growth in fact depends on writing (and related advances), why then are you so surprised to see it only start to grow consistently after writing was invented? Doesn't that reasoning seem a bit circular to you?Edited by Doddy, : numbersEdited by Doddy, : elaborateEdited by Doddy, : typo

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That's right. Writing is not the only way to tell if speech was around. You are contradicting yourself. Why would there be the 'switch' (the brains capacity to pick up language) if it wasn't biological?Consider the following: Feathers are biological, but we do not have them. Why? Exoskeletons are biological, but we do not have them. Why? Speech is biological, and other animals do not have it for precisely the same reasons as you should have given to the other two characters - not every creature evolves towards a certain goal. Nor can you say they didn't. We need other evidences for this. Your population argument is moot. It is true that diseases have been around for many years. But antibiotics haven't. It is true that famine is ever-present, but farms haven't been. It is true that child mortality has been ever-present, but hospitals and midwives haven't been. Unless you factor in health care, agriculture, domestication of animals and so on, your calculations will be incorrect. You cannot assume that the rate of death from all causes will remain static when humans have endeavoured to decrease them. Analogy:Lightbulbs don't depend on me turning on the switch, but on electricity passing through a filament.Flicking a switch is what causes the electricity to drastically increase from a tiny, tiny amount to that needed for the light bulb. Analogously, writing causes reproductive success (the probability of raising a child to adulthood, when he or she can reproduce) to increase from a small percentage of children born to almost all children.

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I think for Mr A to answer that question, he would first have to understand what "internally derived factor" actually means. Otherwise, you have asked an essentially meaningless question of him.Let me see if I can understand. Essentially, you are referring to a seed being part of the parent organism. This distinguishes the seed from external factors, such as soil acidity, sunlight and so on, that determine the appearance and characteristics of the seedling. Thus, you are then describing what I, as a scientist, would call either a zygote or an embryo. Perhaps you could look up those terms and see if they express what you are trying to.

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I find it hard to believe that a pyramid could be built without writing, let alone mathematics and geometry. History is impossible to transmit to us without writing. So these two are also indicators of speech + writing, rather than just speech. Wars, kings and nations are much better indicators as they could probably occur without much writing, but without history, these may not leave much trace.What about fossil anatomy, as the above posters and myself have alluded to? Yep. Speech is biological, like I said. On the contrary. Diseases would account for a large fraction of the population. One need only look at the family history of a pre-Industrial Age figure, say Marie Antoinette, to learn of this (and this is given some idea of health and care of children, and the fairly good diet of the royal family).Marie Antoinette bore four children. Marie-Thérse-Charlotte, Louis-Joseph, Louis-Charles, Sophie-Béatrix. Louis-Joseph and Louis-Charles both died in childhood of tuberculosis, Sophie-Beatrix died a few days after childbirth.If this can happen to the royal family, what must life have been like for the commoners, who also had to deal with famine in addition to poor hygiene? And this is in the age of agriculture. Imagine how bad it would have been in 10,000BC!Even in the Middle Ages, living to 40 would have been considered a long life. I'm sure many, many died before they made it to 20. When reproductive success was electricity, the switch was technology (writing, for example). If speech is the electricity, what would you say the 'switch' would be?

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