Adam and Eve, and Cultural Confidence
The Blip Report for Sunday, July 16th 2023
Adam and Eve, and Cultural Confidence, by William Lyon Shoestrap
Recently, I read this story that the assumption about the out-of-Africa theory may be wrong – “The First Humans Out of Africa Weren't Quite Who We Thought”.
It talks about this study, out of McGill University in Montreal and the University of California-Davis, but it’s based on genomic studies and computer algorithm research, instead of any actual physical archeological digging into the past. So, instead of offering any new ideas, it just talks about different computer projections, about how maybe two lineages somehow merged into one, and then maybe they migrated to Europe. And really, it’s still based on a single-origin-theory of the emergence of man.
But what if we based our theory on another hypothesis?
If we didn’t worship at the temple of Darwin and Malthus, we wouldn’t believe in a false myth - that human evolution was a long, slow process that was governed by chance mutations and randomness - i.e. that pure luck and the goddess ‘Fortuna’ got us here.
And what if we stopped being a Malthusian pagan, and looked at human evolution as something more than Delphic fate.
If there was an evolution of ‘woman’ and ‘man’, then ‘human beings’ must have evolved from something that was not a ‘human being’ – something that was ‘other-than-human’.
But, within that ‘other-than-human’, there still must have existed that ‘potential-human’ that would evolve into ‘woman’ and ‘man’. And if that ‘potential-human’ indeed existed in just one of those ‘other-than-humans’, then all of those ‘other-than-humans’ must also have possessed that ‘potential-human’ within them. And this ‘potential’ may have always been there.
And so, the evolution of ‘woman’ and ‘man’ may not have been at only one place, and at only one time.
Wherever was that place where a ‘human being’ first appeared? – or was it places? Why could it not have been at more than one place? And, perhaps, at different times?
Was there an Adam and Eve? I dreamed,
A simple question – or so it seemed.
A syllogism we might deduce,
Or find some facts we could induce,
Or check our genes and DNA
(the unclear ones we’ll hide away),
‘Til stats and probability
Would show us how – that this must be.
But, where did Adam first appear?
Or when did Eve? – it’s still not clear.
Since ‘being’ then must first have come
Of something that it was not from.
If ‘being’ from ‘not-being’ came,
Then other ‘beings’ could do the same.
Was there not one, but two, or three???
We’re each from ‘Adams–and–Eves–to–be’.
What makes ‘AN’ Adam and Eve become ‘THE’ Adam and Eve, is not so much ‘when’ and ‘where’ they came from, but so much more about ‘who’ came after them.
A couple years ago, on March 31st 2021, I read a story about an announcement of an archeological discovery that was made at an ancient rock shelter at Ga-Mohana Hill in the Kalahari Basin in the Republic of South Africa – one of the cradles of civilization – “Discovery of nearly two dozen crystals in South Africa sheds light on early cultural activity”.
The finds of stone tools, animal bones and other signs of human occupation – were dated to 105,000 years ago, and also, they included the discovery of twenty-two small white calcite crystals. But the big question was, why were these crystals found at this site?
They weren’t used for tools or for any practical purpose, for example, to help get a meal or to hold water. But Dr. Jayne Wilkins (a Canadian, working in Australia) suggested, or guessed, that these crystals were likely kept for the same reason that people are attracted to crystals today, for their visual beauty – that 100,000 years ago, one of our ancestors kept these crystals - because they looked beautiful !!! And I so love that idea.
And I’d like to thank that doctor for finding those crystals, but I also wish I could thank that person who left them, so long ago, for us to find, because it should remind us of how our love of beauty can change us from being like ‘hunters and gatherers’ of practical things, into becoming like ‘explorers and discoverers’ of beautiful things.
Because we’re each from ‘Adams–and–Eves–to–be’.