The beginning of mankind

A scientific vision or an image from the Garden of Eden

It would seem that such an important moment for humanity, which was its beginning, should be scientifically well researched and widely known. In the meantime, we have very different views on this matter.  In contrast, everyone knows enough about their childhood.  We keep the parents' stories, photos and videos from those years.  Quite often childhood is the best described period of our lives. What, then, can we say about the beginnings of the life of the first ancestors of all humanity, symbolically called Adam and Eve?

We know that science, describing the origins of humanity, shapes the image of the evolutionary transformation of great apes into the homo sapiens species. There are different dates of the appearance of the first ancestor of humanity, starting from several hundred thousand years, and ending with much closer to us period. There are also different methods of determining what the first ancestor should be and who can be considered the right individual deserving of this name. The easiest way to "blur" its beginning with the help of various hypotheses and theories, and then everyone will find something that will satisfy him. This is because science does not yet have a common criterion in this matter.  It's a bit weird that you cannot unanimously determine who a human really is. Meanwhile, looks are furred figures, a bit similar to a human being, which in hundreds of thousands of years have turned into a contemporary human race. Archaeological findings concerning individual individuals, such as Neanderthal or other hominids, are supposed to prove the evolutionary transformation of animal form into the form of modern man. These beings gradually formed homes, then larger buildings, and finally built whole cities.  When objects like the pyramids appeared, it became clear that we were dealing with a human being similar to us.

Is this what really happened? Perhaps. There are various hypotheses, but no one has yet received full acceptance.

Religions, especially Christianity, create a completely different vision of the origins of humanity.

Christian vision is based on the biblical story of the first two people, Adam and Eve.  According to it, God made a man from clay, or else from the dust of the earth, and then revived him with His "breath". Then, when he was sleeping, he took out a rib from him, so as to create a woman based on it. It turns out that such an image is sufficient for the vast majority of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Besides, similar stories existed in the oldest testimonies of ancient cultures, as well as in particular religions in various corners of the world.

The most surprising thing is the uncritical acceptance of the ancient history taking place in the Garden of Eden and talking about a couple of his young inhabitants strolling among the trees prepared especially for them environment. Medieval paintings show them already as adults, completely naked and non-living in any households. It is worth asking how long, without doing anything, you can walk around without clothes on a piece of land covered with trees? Unfortunately, I know that such an idea, in the absence of adequate knowledge and imagination, does not present any doubts in most adult people. I suggest, however, to think a bit analytically to correctly understand this most important period in the history of mankind.

I suppose that making clay out of a man is a great metaphor, meaning the formation of a human body that would be ready to accept the already mentioned "breath" from the Creator, or the beginning of the man’s spiritual person.

Indeed, the Creator could be based on an organism shaped, for example, in the womb of a female ape or even a female humanoid. At birth, such a newborn male would have to receive a spiritual person from Heavenly Father, which would be the proper creation of "Adam" and which would result in a completely different from animal personality development. It was in this way that the son of God could appear in this world. Then another female could give birth to the newborn female. This would happen at a time when the male infant was already developing properly and his body was fully human. At the moment, he fell into a healthy sleep and was not a witness to the birth of his partner. Probably the story with Adam's rib meant that she, it means Eve, should take a seat at his side in the future and that no one else but her had the right to do so. Of course, this female newborn also received a spiritual person at birth to become a daughter of God. So the man (Adam) was a little older than the woman (Eve). Both of them, to become true children of Heavenly Father, should be brought up by angels from an early age. It probably did not bother their simultaneous feeding with milk of animal females. We now know the cases of raising of human breastfed babies by females of these animals. Further boarding of people could be based on natural gifts of nature.

Even if the biblical Garden of Eden were in a quite warm place on Earth, weather changes would force the appearance of some kind of clothing for developing children. It's hard to imagine walking naked for twenty years in different weather conditions. The first people's clothing must have been made of animal skins, and the creators of such clothing could only be angels. Today, it seems unlikely to us, but the "physical" activities of angels have been repeatedly shown in the Bible. The nakedness of a couple of young people, namely Adam and Eve, shown on medieval paintings and paintings, was supposed to suggest their purity and innocence rather than define their everyday outfit. Then these medieval visions "dressed" our first ancestors, because they had fallen down and had to cover places that contributed to an act contrary to the Will of God.

It is known that our first ancestors not only did not have parents like us, but they also had to go through their educational path in a different way. For God could not leave His children at the level of knowledge arising from animal instinct. Certainly, they acquired the knowledge that was appropriate for those times, which only angels could give them during their maturation. Probably the professors were the wise and best-knowledgeable archangels headed by the wisest of them, the Archangel symbolized by the biblical Serpent. At that time, the universe was already shaped, there were both galaxies, solar system, and the whole nature that surrounds us today. A dozen or so Adam could ask different questions, such as whether the Sun orbits Earth or is the opposite. He could also ask what the distance of the Earth from the Sun and the Moon is. I suppose he should receive a correct answer from his educators, although the life of Adam and Eve took place long before the discoveries of Copernicus and Galileo. I believe that our first ancestors could receive adequate education preparing them to deal with "submissive land," as the Creator wished them.

How, then, reconcile the scientific and religious version?

I suppose that if it does not "look behind the curtain" of the Big Bang or "penetrate" into the personality of a human being, there is no chance to fully understand the most important puzzles tormenting humanity, the origin of the universe, the source of life and eternity in man.

In addition, you can calculate in an approximate way when the first couple of people were living on Earth, which should be considered as our ancestors. It is enough to describe the algebraic function (for example a parable) of the course of the growth of the number of people living from the earliest times to the present. The average of Gilgamesh's reason, the versatility of ancient philosophers and the cunning of high school students can be taken as their level of intelligence. Placed on the time coordinate, the starting point of this curve, being closest to zero, will allow to find with some approximation the period of appearance of the first fully formed people.  It will be associated with the existence of an intelligent human couple able to discuss with the biblical serpent about the ban on eating the fruit in the Garden of Eden. A similar mathematical approach of scientists made it possible to determine the moment of the Big Bang. However, in my elaboration of these calculations I do not apply to the discretionary assessment of whether a "Neanderthal" has become a contemporary man.  Rather, I am establishing the beginning of the appearance of the first man and the first woman, who can be called "Adam" and "Eve", and whom I treat as modern people. Although I understand what evolution is all about, I think that in the case of the creation of the universe, the appearance of life in nature and the occurrence of eternity in a man should have an effect similar to the Big Bang. In my opinion, these three phenomena mentioned above have the character of rapid realization in the act of creation. It is easy to speak today about the rapid rise of the universe on the path of the Big Bang, but it is much harder to indicate the moment of recovery of matter, which began the development of living cells of plants and animals. However, I came to the conclusion that the appearance of hereditary life in nature must have its source in the spiritual energy coming from the Creator. This means that at some point he "poured" His matter into His "breath". I have already written about the introduction of a spiritual person to a nascent physical person in the form of a creative act. Thus, under the biblical figures of Adam and Eve, the first unique human beings are concealed, which have received a "breath" from Heavenly Father.

I would like the above reasoning to open a common path for scholars and religious researchers.  In the case of learning the cause of the Big Bang and the origin of life, it is not worth to stand helplessly in front of the "wall" separating the world of space-time from the world beyond time and space. The human spirituality indicates that in the situation of studying fundamental phenomena concerning creation, it is good to take into account not only scientific arguments but also those derived from the sphere to which science does not yet have empirical access.