Adam and Eve: Scientists suggest iconic pair may have actually existed
The idea of Adam and Eve, the biblical figures said to be created from dust and live in the Garden of Eden, has long been considered a far-fetched notion. However, new studies suggest that the concept of humans descending from a single pair of ancestors may not be as unlikely as previously thought.
Research by a team at the University of Sassari, Italy, estimates that Adam lived around 180,000 to 200,000 years ago, similar to the initial estimated age of Eve. This new discovery challenges the widely held assumption that the male Y chromosomes and female mitochondrial DNA that are passed down to today’s humans came from individuals who lived tens of thousands of years apart.
Professor Eric Cline, a classical and biblical archaeologist from George Washington University, suggests that the theory matches the evidence provided in the biblical account. He notes that the Garden of Eden is described as being “in the east” and mentions the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in connection with the Garden of Eden, which matches the location in Mesopotamia (present-day eastern Syria, northwestern Turkey, and most of Iraq).
A different study published in the journal Nature posits that the Kalahari Desert in Africa is the “ancestral homeland of all humans alive today.” Geneticists studied the history of one of the oldest DNA lineages on Earth, known as L0, which is passed down through females. The study’s author, Vanessa Hayes of the University of Sydney, stated, “We’ve known for a long time that humans originated in Africa and roughly 200,000 years ago. But what we hadn’t known until this study was where, exactly this homeland was.”
While the studies provide conflicting theories, they share a common thread – the possibility that a single pair of humans may have been the origin of all humans alive today.
