Biblical Family Tree | 02 - From Adam to David

History:

In the Bible there are two accounts of Adam and Eve's creation. According to the Priestly history of the 5th or 6th century BCE (Genesis 1:1–2:4), God on the sixth day of Creation created all the living creatures and, "in his own image," man both "male and female."

Genesis 2 implies that God created Adam and Eve sometime during an ice age, most likely the last ice age. The reason why is that Genesis 2 describes four known rivers, the Euphrates, Tigris, Pishon, and Gihon, coming together in the Garden of Eden. 

The location of the Garden of Eden in the southeast part of what is now the Persian Gulf at an elevation more than 200 feet below the present sea level implies that it must have had a year-round warm climate in spite of the colder conditions farther north and at higher elevations. Adam and Eve would not need clothing to stay warm.

The Book of Genesis puts Adam and Eve together in the Garden of Eden, but geneticists’ version of the duo, the ancestors to whom the Y chromosomes and mitochondrial DNA of today’s humans can be traced, were thought to have lived tens of thousands of years apart.

Now, two major studies of modern humans’ Y chromosomes suggest that ‘Y-chromosome Adam’ and ‘mitochondrial Eve’ may have lived around the same time after all.

Researchers first thought Eve probably lived in Africa around 200,000 years ago, but later created a more reliable molecular clock and found that Eve lived between 99,000 and 148,000 years ago and Adam lived between 120,000 and 156,000 years ago.

We know that the oldest human fossils have been found in the Rift Valley in Africa and the oldest mitochondrial DNA in our human genetic code can be traced back to a small group of African women.

Scientists have conclusively shown that our ancestors, the mothers of the entire human race, were Africans and Adam and Eve could be living together between 120,000 years ago and 148,000 years ago.