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The URL for this article is:
www.rastaspeaks.com/tyehimba/2006/071106.html
Refuting the Myth of Adam and Eve
by Ras Tyehimba
November 07, 2006
There is a lot of important information that though cannot be reasonably disputed, is not incorporated fully into the mainstream body of information that comes from mainstream media and the formal education system. One area of subjugated information has to do with the earliest beginnings of humanity. The misinformation and confusion around these earliest beginnings can be attributed to the pervasiveness of Judeo-Christianity. If one is to follow the Bible the age of the earth and humanity are approximately 6000-9000 years old. Understanding historical realities is made even more difficult when attempts are made to reduce the billions of years of earth's life forms into a mere 7000 year span as articulated by the Bible.
Though many have been taught to think of the Adam and Eve story of creation as historical fact, it is a Judeo-Christian myth that was meant to convey aspects of that particular belief system. Nor is the Adam and Eve story original, it seems to have been pieced together from earlier creation myths. The Adam and Eve myth raises an important issue: that the global popularity of the present Judeo-Christian values, beliefs and myths, as articulated by the bible and various Christian religions, are not because they are superior or better or even more accurate than other belief systems, but that they were accompanied by the superior weaponry and insatiable greed of the conquering Europeans. With the advent of the print press the Christian Bible was one of the first books to be mass produced.
There are many other creation myths from peoples all over the world. There is a Chinese creation myth that speaks of the universe being a giant black egg in which all was chaos. In this egg was Pan Gu who was the ancestor of all human beings. A creation myth of the Aborigine people of Australia speaks of in the beginning where the earth was a bare plain. All was dark. There was no life, no death. The sun, the moon, and the stars slept beneath the earth. All the eternal ancestors slept there too, until at last they woke themselves out of their own eternity and broke through to the surface.
The assertion that the earth is less that ten thousand years old flies in the face of tons of historical and scientific evidence that unravel the thousands and thousands of years of human evolution. It limits individuals' ability to understand the development of humanity and dismisses the million of years of lessons of the human specie. With this notion, persons are unable to put into context the 30, 000 year old iron ore mine found in Uganda , or the 1.8 million year old hominid, Lucy, who was found in Ethiopia in 1974. What of the oldest mathematical object, the Ishango bone that dates back 25, 000 years ago? The available evidence shows that the human specie is millions of years old, while the age of the earth is estimated to be billions of years old. History, archeology, and science has revealed that the earth is billions of years old with the oldest pre-human fossils dated around 5 million years old. Modern human beings (homo sapiens) appeared in Africa, about 140, 000-200,000 years ago, and from this point of origin in central Africa branched out to other parts of the world.
The Biblical/Christian notion of human origins involves the myth of Adam and Eve, but the earliest hominids (pre-humans) have been around millions of years before the creation myth of Adam and Eve first arose. More sensible Christian scholars considering the facts at hand, acknowledge that the Adam and Eve story is but a myth, being totally incompatible with history, archeology, and science which includes genetics and the various dating techniques available. In the Bible there are two contradictory creation stories, one in which God creates man first and beasts after, and then where God creates the animal kingdom first and then creates man. This is the first of many contradictions in the Judeo-Christian Bible.
As more science and technology becomes available, more and more is being understood about the origins and journey of humanity throughout the ages. One such example is the use of mitochondrial DNA, which shows that all human beings alive today descended from one African woman who lived in Africa about 150, 000 years ago. Mitochondrial DNA is present in all humans but it passes only from mother to children, not from father to children. Huddersfield University geneticist Martin Richards and his colleagues took genetic samples from people across the world and traced it back to this one woman. This woman is the [most recent] common ancestor of all humans alive on Earth today with respect to matrilineal descent. This woman had all the capabilities that we have today. The documentary 'The Real Eve' which premiered on the Discovery channel several years ago explores how the descendants of 'Eve' spread out in waves from Africa.
As some of the earliest people spread out from Africa in waves, over thousands and thousands of years their bodies changed to adapt to the different climate and vegetation of their new environment. In Africa, with the abundance of sunlight, dark skin which is rich in melanin content was necessary in blocking the ultra-violet rays of the sun.
As people dispersed from Africa and some settled permanently in colder areas, with far less sunlight, their dark pigments were no longer an advantage but a disadvantage as they were not able to absorb adequate sunlight. Sunlight is one of the major sources of vitamin D; a lack of which leads to osteoporosis, muscle weakness and rickets. Lighter skin evolved to allow for more vitamin D to be absorbed into the skin. The other physical human characteristics that distinguish people from each other, such as hair text texture and nose shape also originally came about as adaptive mechanisms that allowed human beings to function effectively in their particular environments. It is this fundamental evolutionary mechanism that contributed to the physical differences between peoples who had to survive in the different environments of Africa, Europe, Asia and other parts of the world. This happened over a period of thousands and thousands of years. Particular diets and interbreeding between different peoples also resulted in the wide variations of physical features. Understanding how the processes of human evolution involves not just looking at how people have evolved biologically over time, but also how present behavioral tendencies and attitudes have come about.
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