During the time of Genesis were there other civilizations available

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In Genesis 4:17 Caine’s wife was mentioned my doubt is whether other people besides Adam &Eve also living at that time
 
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The most literal interpretation would propose that Cain married his sister, an otherwise unmentioned daughter of Adam and Eve, and that Adam and Eve themselves had many more children over their long lifespan. This was before the law was given to men, before genetic defects crept into the line. It doesn’t mean it’s okay to do now.

There are other reconciliations for less literal intepretations, though I don’t want to go into them now.

What Catholics are required to accept as dogma is that there was a real first man and a real first woman who sinned, and original sin has been inherited from them from parent to child, and that all true men and women who have walked this Earth are descended from them.
 
I’ve hypothesized that our diminished lifespan may be a consequence of the inbreeding that took place. 🤔
 
Adam and Eve were created with perfect DNA…they didn’t have any genetic flaws. So Cain and Abel and their brothers could have married their sisters or nieces and they would not have the same problems with genetic mutations and disorders that we have now.

The Bible explicitly states that Adam and Eve had many sons and daughters, so there were plenty of sisters for them to choose a wife.

It was later that God forbid people to marry their close relatives because of the certainty of genetic disorders, as well as desiring to bring the people to a better knowledge of His plan for marriage and families.
 
I would add that a common ancestor is something supported by science. The age of the Most Recent Common Ancestor (MRCA) of all living humans is unknown. It is necessarily younger than the age of either the matrilinear or the patrilinear MRCA, both of which have an estimated age of between roughly 100,000 and 200,000 years ago.
 
The Adam and Eve generation spanned for about one thousand years so by that time they had populated much of the earth, the beginning of modern humans who knew how to worship God. They would have become quite diverse and therefore able to intermarry freely.
 
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At some point/s in human history, we mixed our DNA with that of the Neanderthals (lots of that) and the Denisovans. There were a lot of other hominids and hominins around, and we may have had interbreeding with them too. The level of intelligence of such folks is unknown. Did they already count as descendants of Adam and Eve, or not? (I would say yes, because the Neanderthals buried their dead with religious ceremonies, and there is evidence that one of the early hominin groups did also.)

Basically, we don’t know if this stuff was happening before Adam and Eve, or after Adam and Eve. We don’t know if it was blameless behavior, or sinful behavior. We just don’t know enough about the history of prehistory, and we probably never will.

OTOH, if you want to read Bible fanfic and oral traditions, there are Jewish texts that will tell you all kinds of stories about Cain and Abel’s sisters.
 
Anyway… there were a fair number of Neanderthals and Neanderthal-human crosses living in Israel, because we’ve found their bones. And they survived until fairly late into prehistory, and may have inspired some of the stuff in the Bible about the Anakim “giants.” (Especially since they were a red-haired bunch.)

I can say that because I’m part Irish; and as my physical anthropology prof (also Irish) proudly pointed out, the Irish have a lot of Neanderthal DNA!
 
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