Was he an actual person? I think it’s possible that Adam was the chief of a primal group of people. Being raised from the dust (Gen 2:7) is a Biblical coronation motif (1 Kgs 16:2). How Adam was commanded to take care of Eden is also a common kingship motif in the ancient near east. e.g. Hammurabi is recorded to have been glorifying God through gardening.
If you pick out someone to win the prize as the first human, you’ll also have to say his parents are not human, which isn’t logical or particularly moral. Evolution works gradually on a population, the first humans were a group, not a couple.
Remember there’s at least one Christian who doesn’t buy into this need to set humans above and apart from the rest of Creation. Humans might think they’re specially picked out, they would do wouldn’t they, but if golden eagles and the Grand Canyon aren’t also in God’s image, whose image would they be in? Pegasus? Godzilla?
As the current human population is seven billion, over ten times your puny 560 million, by your logic no one ever dies or we’d be knee deep in human skeletons.2 800 000 years between human ancestor and first modern type human, …
chimps lifespan 50 years divided into 2,800,000 years =56 000 generations multiplied by 10 000 [stable pop] =
560 000 000 transition skeletons at the very least over 2,800,000 years.
560 million transition skeletons at least. And we have how manyuch:?
It is quite logical. The first individual whom we could call Homo sapiens had parents who belonged to some Homo species or other.
Polar bears are singular among living organisms, as there are none like them. So are crocodiles, dawn redwoods, and Pacific salmon.
No - there is no "first individual whom we could call Homo sapiens who did not have parents who were also Homo sapiens. I presume you are as human as your parents were.
We are. You cannot build a house or a road without calling in the archeologists. The place is full of skeletons.As the current human population is seven billion, over ten times your puny 560 million, by your logic no one ever dies or we’d be knee deep in human skeletons.
I’m not the first Homo sapiens. Besides, being “human” and being “Homo sapiens” are two different things. One is a philosophical and theological term; the other is scientific and empirical.
Anything but logical. Did this first human have children all by herself, or did she meet up with another first human? Did their children meet up with other first humans or commit incest? Which of all these was really the real first human?
If you walked up to your nominated first human and told him his parents were sub-human, you might get a smart tap on the nose don’t you think?
So then, I take it that you do not believe that there was any original First Couple who initiated the propagation of the human race? Interesting. I wonder how the species arrived spontaneously in a large group (so to speak).
No. Five million years ago there were no Homo sapiens on the planet. There were also no chimpanzees as we know them. Those two species of great ape have evolved continuously over the past five million years, after having diverged from a common ancestor.
By “human”, I’m referring to a species of the genus Homo, not necessarily Homo sapiens. Having said that, the first human could have been a male or female. Since s/he was the first, and his/her parents were not “human”, but nonetheless closely related, s/he mated with a non-human. Alternatively, perhaps the first humans were twins (fraternal, male and female) who mated.
The children of the first human and his/her non-human-but-closely-related mate could have been either human or non-human, depending upon the genetics.
You can choose to define “human” any way you want, and thus determine when the “first” human appeared.
I don’t think the first human necessarily knew how to talk. And he/she might feel rather proud that her/his parents were the parents of the first true human.
OK, so you agree that at point x, there were no Homo sapiens, and a point y, there were Homo sapiens.
False – there was no first human. Look at a color spectrum. You can tell the difference between blue and green, right? But you cannot say at what point you have definitive green.
Bad analogy. The spectrum might shade into different colors, but each specimen of the genus Homo is a distinct organism, can be classified into one species or another.
No, just one (or possibly a pair of identical twins). That individual would still have been able to breed at the reduced rate until more individuals with the mutation appeared, most of whom would have been his/her descendants.
I agree.
How many skeletons survived being eaten by hyenas? How many skeletons survived acidic forest soils that dissolve bone? How many are still buried that we haven’t found yet?2 800 000 years between human ancestor and first modern type human, …
chimps lifespan 50 years divided into 2,800,000 years =56 000 generations multiplied by 10 000 [stable pop] =
560 000 000 transition skeletons at the very least over 2,800,000 years.
560 million transition skeletons at least. And we have how many