"Early Genesis" and "The Genealogical Adam and Eve"

One last thing I want to mention because this goes beyond reconciling the text with where science is now and moves into finding predictive power in the text: The Christ-centered model also suggests that Adam and the Garden was meant to help “jump start” human civilization. That is, man had not progressed on his commission in 1:28. Adam as a figure of Christ in the natural was to improve the life of humanity in the natural just as Christ has done in the eternal. The animals in the garden were a limited sub-set of the animals created in chapter one- animals fit for an agrarian and pastoral lifestyle in that they were domesticated versions of certain wild stock. Man should have already gotten them to there by then, but he had not. So Adam and the animals made to be his “helpers” sort of gave this process a jump-start.

Sounds implausible. But when I compare the time and place the model called for Adam to the time and place that true agriculture emerged, AND the domestication of basically all major food animals today emerged, it was that same time and place.

Yes, it sounds very implausible, and it just isn’t true that domestication of all major food animals and crops happened in a single time and place. It happened in many parts of the world over many thousands of years.

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John I link to a Smithsonian study there showing sheep, goats, cattle and pigs all show up in the domestication epicenter. Dogs managed to be domesticated earlier, no doubt because they could hunt with us, but even that strain was pretty much replaced by a strain from this time and place. And its the same place that various forms of grain and many fruits are domesticated. Not corn or rice maybe because they were not from that region and were domesticated much later, but various forms of wheat and barley and a great number of fruit trees. If you have some evidence that this was not the domestication “ground zero” for humanity, I invite you to share it here.

You are correct that the process did not end there. Thousands of years later in various parts of the world other crops were domesticated and other animals domesticated. But that is where humanity first shook the limitations of being a hunter-gatherer and instead shaped the land and the living things on it.

I see that the study puts cows considerably older than the rest, and that “epicenter” extends across most of Asia, and it doesn’t include a number of other domesticated species.

Two forms of wheat, one of barley, and a few fruit trees, as opposed to the great many grains and fruits (and other plants) domesticate in other times and places.

The evidence shows that there was no “ground zero”, just a lot of independent origins.

Again, this “where” you speak of is most of the largest continent, and you will have to show that it was first, and you will have to show that other domestications were not independent. I doubt any of those can be done.

Are you looking at the same thing I am? I put the map from the study below. It doesn’t “extend across most of Asia” and in particular the intersection of all four major meat mammals humanity use today is very restricted geographically. It doesn’t come close to extending across “most of Asia”.

I also don’t understand your claim that the study puts the domestication of cattle considerably older than the rest. Rather, the evidence at the time of that map was that cows were domesticated about 1,000 years later than the other three, but the researcher has noted that evidence came in subsequent to that which push the origins of domestic cattle back- perhaps into a similar time frame and place as the other three.

Cattle domestication caught on quickly and it is true that another “node” of domestication was started near India with the Brahma variety (note- I know that breed came later, but that is the term I am using for the strain which led to them), but that was more like 8K ago while (or even more recently). What I am talking about was 10-11K ago. It was copying a good idea, but this is where the good idea came from. 2,000 years is a long time in human history.

I would hasten to add that when I say one of these animals was domesticated in this zone in most cases it means that more than one variety of each had their origin there. So it isn’t just the “big four” but even most of the sub-groups of the big four, with the exception of Brahma cattle in India a couple of thousand years later.

No, that is just all that came to mind immediately. I researched it once and the situation is very similar to that of our most popular mammals. A HUGE proportion of kinds of our most important fruit and grain crops that we use today came from the same time and place. Granted, later men in various times and places copied the innovations started here, but that is just what I am saying happened. The fact that the rest of mankind started getting their act together and going from hunter-gatherers to exercising true dominion over the earth is what I am saying was the point. The animals that the LORD God made for Adam as “helpers” wasn’t just the LORD pulling a joke on Adam. They did help man start to do what they should have been doing since Genesis 1:28, whenever that was.

But not horses, camels (twice), geese, llamas, chickens, zebus, bees, ducks, water buffalo, chinchillas, pigeons, turkeys, edible dormice, rabbits, mink, donkeys, guinea pigs, alpacas, ferrets, banteng, cats, ostriches or yaks.

Nor does the evidence show that even those four were domesticated at the same time - there’s a 2,000 year spread.

Anyway, how did that evidence escape the ravages of the flood?

Citation needed.

Which fruit trees? Most are grown elsewhere.

Wheat and barley are not a “HUGE” proportion of our grain crops. We also have rice, corn, millet, oats, sorghum, quinoa, buckwheat, rye, spelt and others.

Yes, but I misunderstood. Still, this isn’t a small area. It extends over nearly a thousand miles east to west. And while these are the oldest domesticated animals except for dogs, there are independent domestications of alpaca, chickens and turkeys, guinea pigs, and two species of duck. In plants, what about rice, corn, beans, potatoes, manioc, squash, and possibly sago, all of them domesticated around the same time as wheat and barley? It didn’t take a mythical instigator to come up with domestication all over the world, and it’s not even clear that the events in and around the fertile crescent were the first. Rice first appeared as much as 13,500 years ago.

Now that’s just embarrassing. He tries out all those animals as helpers before eventually settling on Eve. Food was certainly not the sort of “help” intended there.

You have to wonder at God’s competence in this version of the story. Why, if humans needed a jump start in order to do what he wanted, didn’t he give them that start at the beginning?

Please check me out on this, they were not. Those other plants were domesticated much later as near as we can tell. I think you may be underestimating how hard it is to switch to an agrarian lifestyle. Wolves or other bands of humans could just take from you what you worked hard for months or years to build. If you got it wrong, you could starve. There is a reason they call it the “Neolithic revolution.” And where the Tigress and Euphrates meet seems to be the epicenter.

It is the equivalent of a daddy-joke. The LORD God was pulling a little joke on Adam. Adam knew what he wanted, but all he kept getting were these beasts (not all beats, but those of the field, not the earth. Different word). Nevertheless, they did help him. His near descendants were herdsmen. The commission from 1:28 to have dominion over the beasts of the earth was on track at last.

It is extremely consistent with God’s manner throughout scripture. He lets us go our own way for a while to see that we need Him. We can’t do God’s will without God’s help. We were never meant to. Romans even says this is the point of the law. The Pharisees thought of it as an instruction manual where if they did it, they could be righteous without God, just on their own works, but none of us are justified by our works. The point of the law was to multiply transgression to help us see that it isn’t about how good we can be but how good He is.

C’mon Roy. Naturally animals not native to the region were not first domesticated in the region. Should I even have to say that? Those other animals were also domesticated much LATER than the big four, so that it was an echo of what went on with Adam’s clan, like it was supposed to be. I explained that in my reply to JH.

The two exceptions on your list, that can’t fly off anyway, are cats and horses. I like to say “We don’t really know the time and place that cats domesticated humans”, But it is pretty well known that they came from the Middle East maybe as far back as 11,000 years ago. It isn’t as narrowed-down as the study on the domestication of the big-four edible mammals but the area I proposed is within they area they say it happened.

The case with horses is more controversial. The Botai people seemed to be the first true “horse culture” around 7,500 years ago but those horses were replaced by others. There was a recent study which was touted as “resolving” the issue of where the domestic horse originated (NE Anatolia or the Steppe) in favor of the Steppe. But I don’t think they even collected the right evidence to properly answer that question. I’ve put my thoughts down on that below, and if someone with some chops in the field wish to look at it and chime in I would be interested in hearing it. Either way, this was long after the domestication of other animals. I speculate that until the Steppe folks got the idea of riding the horse, it was only used as a pack animal and better at escaping enclosures thus it wasn’t much used until the idea of riding was developed.

The geography isn’t as specific as I like, but 11,000 years ago there were five distinct pops of domestic dog. Since that time until 4K ago there was a great loss of diversity as others, including the original European population, were replaced by pop from ANE.
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/370/6516/557

That isn’t what I see. I see a 1,000 year spread and I mentioned that later the same researcher said that they found evidence for earlier cattle domestication, pushing the spread to 500 years. That is shockingly close together, probably within the margin of error for this kind of thing.

Because scripture doesn’t really teach the extent of the flood was global, it teaches that the consequences of the flood would have been global if it had wiped out the line of Messiah, for then God’s plan expressed in 3:15 would never come to pass. But the clan of Adam didn’t just keep those treasures to themselves. They didn’t even keep their daughters to themselves. Presumably as other groups tried their hand at domestication, they took some gene flow from this group to spread those desirable traits. I mean look at pigs, the original domesticated pig genes have been pretty much replaced by wild pig genes, without losing domestication!

Again I wonder how you can say this. It is like we are living in different worlds. Are you counting beer production when you discount the importance of barley? Spelt is just a kind of ancient wheat, same time and place. Rye too, though it might be from a bit later. The rest came later, as the domestication process was repeated with other plants. And that was good, That was the way it was supposed to be once the ball got rolling. 12K ago all humans were hunter-gatherers. Now, almost none of us are. And that change started about where the Tigris and Euphrates come together. Two of the four rivers of Eden. Within the earlier part of the time frame I had previously calculated for Adam.

I used Wikipedia as a reference. What’s yours? And I really don’t think wolves are going to steal your potatoes.

I thought you said it wasn’t a joke. And of course the text says nothing about a joke.

Then that seems not so much incompetent as immature of him. Why does he need to be appreciated and praised? It’s all about him, not what’s good for us.

Are you claiming that agriculture was brought to the Americas from the Middle East? Where’s your evidence for that? And what dates do you have for the domestication of corn, squash, potatoes, and manioc? Rice, too.

Unfortunately for your thesis, several of those animals are native to the region, including camels, donkeys, geese, pigeons, bees.

If there was some event where Adam was helped with domesticating animals, it’s odd that donkeys, camels, pigeons and geese weren’t among them. So odd that your thesis needs to account for it. You need to explain why your thesis is a better match to the dates for domestication of those animals than the mainstream one.

Camels and donkeys can’t fly. Nor is whether animals can fly relevant - unless you think God made pigeons as helpers for Adam but didn’t show him how to catch them…

Your source says 12,000 years ago, not 11,000 years ago. I’d ask why you’re misrepresenting it, but the reason is obvious. You’re changing the dates to fit with your ideas.

Yes, it was long after the domestication of cattle, sheep, pigs and goats. Your thesis suggests it should have happened at the same time. So your thesis is wrong.

Again, that’s not what your source says.

All ancient and modern European dogs have greater affinity to eastern dog ancestry than ancient Near Eastern dogs have …

We hypothesized that the genomic ancestry cline we observe across ancient European dogs could be, at least in part, due to admixture between dogs associated with Mesolithic hunter–gatherers and incoming Neolithic farmers.

European dogs weren’t replaced by ANE dogs, they interbred with them to produce a mixed lineage.

That’s because you’re looking for data to shore up your ideas, and ignoring anything that conflicts with them. Your own source mentions evidence of early sheep domestication 12,000 years ago - 2,000 years before cattle, and 1,500 years before pigs.

It’s only shockingly close if you ignore the evidence that it isn’t.

If you’re going with the ‘not global’ tack, then you should say what the extent was, and explain why it didn’t include the area where you’re getting your evidence that Adam supposedly domesticated animals.

We are. I’m living in a world where those are all domesticated crops, and you’re living in a world where some of them don’t exist, where South Americans copied Middle Easterners when the domesticated yams, and where rye is a subset of wheat rather than a separate genus.

No-one is disputing that agriculture began in that time frame in that area. The dispute is whether it had anything to do with God/Adam.

Wolves are not interested in fields of wheat.

Will you explain why you cited an article that says

It may be that “nobody owns a cat,” but scientists now say the popular pet has lived with people for 12,000 years … Cats were first domesticated in the Near East, and some of the study authors speculate that the process began up to 12,000 years ago. While 12,000 years ago might seem a bold estimate…

and represented it as saying “But it is pretty well known that they came from the Middle East maybe as far back as 11,000 years ago”, which matches your thesis so much better than the actual number given? Because it looks like you are changing the evidence to match your ideas when it should be the other way around. If you can’t be relied upon to accurately represent your sources, you might as well give up and go home, because the only thing you’ll convince anyone of is that you shouldn’t be believed.

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Incidentally, have you ever read Jared Diamond’s book Guns, Germs, and Steel"?

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The “region” in question is central and eastern Anatolia. As I mentioned, I think the garden was somewhere near the source of the Tigris and Euphrates and they went east from there.

Here is the range of the dromedary camel. Here is the range of the Bactrian Camel. So it doesn’t seem to me that they were native to the area where I place the garden. Maybe you didn’t catch that I think it was near where they meet and not further south in Mesopotamia?

Same thing with the donkey really. Our domestic donkeys are all from the African Wild Donkey, obviously not native to the area of the Garden. Even the Asiatic version, which has never been domesticated, barely had a range on the SW edge of that area. And I really don’t care about the flying things. There mobility would make them poor candidates for early domestication even if they mattered. They are only minor players. Discovering a connection with them would only be the cherry on top.

For example, since you are a fan of wikipedia, the entry for Pidgeon says it was domesticated “as far back as 10,000” years ago from “Mesopotamia”. That is somewhat south of my proposed site for the garden but the species from which they sprang is native to the region and so I will take a ‘wait and see’ on them. It is close enough to where further research could put them on the list of domestic animals which got their start there as well.

The headline of my source says 12,000 years ago. My source says, “Cats were first domesticated in the Near East, and some of the study authors speculate that the process began up to 12,000 years ago.” These are not exact numbers. There are error bars on them like in all of science. “Up to 12,000” means that is the maximum. What they found physical evidence for was 8,000 or so. Therefore when I say 11,00 years I am within the time they have found physical evidence and the maximum distance back in time the experts feel it may have occurred. Does that justify your attempts to impugn even my motives Roy?

My thesis can live without including horses. Plenty of farming and animal husbandry societies got on without them just fine. Until someone got the idea to ride them, they were of less and harder to manage and contain that the big four, as well as being less desirable except as a pack animal. Therefore, as an aside I speculate that if they were domesticated > 10K ago like the rest, they were not widely adopted until much later. So then I predict that we will find earlier evidence for the domestication of the horse on the SOUTH side of the Caucuses. They just didn’t break out until people found a good use for them.

Regarding the dogs, I think what the study is saying is that modern and ancient dogs have more “eastern” dog in them than ANE dogs have. IOW, Eastern dogs contributed to modern dogs. Even if ANE dogs are the majority of genes in European dogs today, they still have significant contribution from eastern dogs. The ancient original European domestic dog is what was essentially replaced. At first there may have been mixing with the Ancient Near East dogs and European dogs, but after that third wave of dogs came, heavily Eastern dogs coming in with the Steppe Pastoralists, the ancient European dog was replaced. So modern dogs in Europe are now a mix of two original dog populations, ANE and Eastern. Consistent with what I was saying.

But the thing that really gets me is what you see in the diagram from the original Smithsonian Study. I keep saying this is within a 1,000 year period and you keep insisting that is wrong…

I am going to display the image for the third time. It doesn’t matter if at some point one of the researchers cited a study somewhere citing “some evidence” that sheep domestication may have been earlier. The map represents the conclusion they have drawn after studying all of the evidence.

Look, I could go on here but I have a very full life and it doesn’t seem like we can even look at the same simple diagram and agree with what it says. We can’t even read the same one page article on cats and you accept a simple statement I made which really does fit quite reasonably with the article’s overall claims. I can go talk to someone who is able and willing to hear what I am saying. Without ascribing blame, that isn’t you. It may not be John either but if I have time I’ll give it one more go with him. I only posted this video here because our host invited me to, but it’s become a time suck with no profit to either of us. Without animosity, I will not be responding to any further comments you might make on this thread.

Yes, v. interesting. (I skipped some of the appendices)

Just not true. Anatolia intersects at most only the very western-most edge of the region shown, which extends far into Iran and Iraq. Perhaps you have merely confused the terms, and “Anatolia” isn’t the word you were really looking for?

You mean someone who is willing to believe what you’re saying. Not the same thing at all. This is the way of all concordists: they end up having to distort both the bible and the science in order to fit them together, and get all huffy when anyone mentions the distortions. The evidence suggests that rather than starting in the Middle East and diffusing solely from there, both plant and animal domestication happened independently at many different times all over the world. Dogs were the first, long before any of the events you’re talking about, so you have to ignore or explain them away. Plants were domesticated in both China and the Americas around the same time or even before the Middle East, so you have to ignore those too. And so on.

I mean south central Anatolia and S Eastern Anatolia

Again, we can’t even agree with what the facts are. And you guys maintain 2,000 years is such an impossibly long time when speaking of domestication of animals yet count it as “the same time” when speaking of domestication of plants. I could link to 100 different articles on plant domestication that would say it started where I am talking about, when I am talking about. And if it happened so close in time in various parts of the world isn’t that more of a problem for you than me? How could diverse groups of humans in isolated parts of the world all start getting the same idea about a lifestyle change at the same time? Regardless, 2,000 years is plenty of time for ideas to spread.

Well that would be nice too, but to get there one has to be willing to agree on what the facts mean first one has to agree on what the evidence says the facts are, and I have not seen enough of that to justify my further participation here.

This is the last thing I feel any desire to reply on. I’d rather end defending the nature of God than my specific ideas about the Garden. WE are the immature ones, because we have not chosen to grow beyond self and into love that transcends us. He designed us to need Him and one another to facilitate this end. All of reality screams that we must die to self in order to truly live, yet most still refuse to learn the lesson which all of creation constantly thrusts before them. Therefore I should not be shocked that some will refuse to see the simplest of facts about the natural universe and will constantly mis-interpret things so as not to see the possibility that God is.

He wants us where He is, though we are but dust before Him. The writer George MacDonald said ““I am my own” is the first Principle of Hell”. Only when there is pure love though, does disregarding ourselves not lead to abuse. The only place it is safe to become who we truly are is in Him. Those who do not understand will assume the worst of His every word and act. How He appears to us is a function of our own spiritual condition. He said “to the pure I show Myself pure, to to the froward, I show myself contrary”. Mere facts cannot help you John. They can’t help any of us, outside of connection to him we can’t even see things rightly. But He will give you what you want. If you wish to be connected, He will respond and heal. If you do not, He will respect that too, and give us ourselves.

Turkey has recently redefined the word to refer to all of Asian Turkey. But I doubt you will find anyone else using it that way, certainly not in the context of ancient history.

Correct. What are your alternative dates for the domestication of rice, corn, potatoes, and squash? What is your evidence that plant domestication in the Middle East was earlier?

No, unless you think that there was some means of instant communication between Asia and South America 10,000 years ago.

It might have something to do with a change in climate. There’s no reason to suppose it had anything to do with one mythical character.

It isn’t if we’re talking about getting from Mesopotamia to South America. All the American domestications were entirely independent of the Old World.

Agreed. Those who have drunk the Koolaid seem impervious to both fact and scripture. There is no need to proselytize here, though.

Sure we can. You just won’t admit what the rest of that paper says.

We both know it says cats were domesticated in Egypt, maybe as far back as 12,000 years ago.

We also both know that you reported that 12,000 as 11,000 instead - which doesn’t fit in with the article’s overall claims, any more than referring to the 11 tribes of Israel or Jesus having lived in the time of Septimius Severus would fit in with the Bible.

Your attempt to claim that you’re not misrepresenting them because their 12,000 was a maximum because they said “Up to 12,000” fails because your phrasing (“maybe as far back as 11,000 years ago”) also suggests a maximum. Your comment on their being error bars fails because (i) you don’t know what the error bars are, and (ii) the error range on their number and your number won’t match.

You can’t be relied upon to accurately represent your sources, so you might as well give up and go home, because the only thing you’ll convince anyone of is that you shouldn’t be believed.

That’s a shame. I was looking forward to you trying to justify this comment:

in light of how close the dromedary range you referenced comes to where you think the garden of Eden was, as can be seen clearly when overlaying the two:
overlay.PNG
and in light of this comment:

where you are quite happy to include something that happened “somewhat south” of your proposed site because you can stretch the timescale closer to your preferred date.

You have God helping Adam domesticate animals, but not telling him that horses can be ridden or used as pack animals, not telling him about the camels that live a few miles downstream, and not telling him how to catch pigeons. Your scenario is ridiculous.

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