A rough timeline to get started …
5500BC - Adam/Eve created in Mesopotamia.
5400BC - Cain banished
5400BC - Beginning of first phase of Sumer (Ubaid) with establishment of Eridu, first human city
4000BC - Regional flood and end of Ubaid
3900BC - 5.1 kiloyear event/ Babel story
3800BC - Beginning of second phase of Sumer (Uruk) with estabishment of Uruk
Then somewhere along the way the establishment of Egypt and the Indus Valley in the next couple of centuries.
These events sum up the story of Genesis 2-11. This is the time frame I believe these stories to have happened along.
So, in my estimation, what we’re looking for here is the impact of these events on the populated human world around them. There should be a significant impact. More specifically, according to what’s described, there should be a significant shift in human behavior with the effect of free will (will call it until a better title can be agreed on) spreading genetically throughout the population. Characteristics of this change are consistent with what’s described in Genesis to have happened to Adam/Eve when they “fell”.
According to this model, two beings were created and placed in a garden. This garden was isolated from surrounding human populations as it had previously been a very arid and dry region. These beings lived lives 10 times longer than humans and were possibly larger.
At this point in history humans had begun to transition from migrating hunter-gatherers into settled cultures due to the advent of farming, primarily in northern Mesopotamia.
Around 5500BC, through the invention of irrigation techniques that allowed farming along the Tigris and Euphrates, the Sumerian culture began in southern Mesopotamia. For 200k years of anatomical modernity homo sapiens had remained egalitarian hunter gatherers. In all that time there’s very little evidence of humans behaving aggressively or violently toward one another though there appears to have been considerable interaction between groups through trading.
The Ubaid period as a whole, based upon the analysis of grave goods, was one of increasingly polarized social stratification and decreasing egalitarianism. A key behavioral change is first seen here. Though there were other largely populated organized farming cultures that predated Sumer by thousands of years to the north, never before had there been any signs of importance of some individuals over others until Sumer. Here, for the first time, do we see first male-dominance, and second a ruling and working class.
Another key to Sumerian culture was the boom of inventions. These include the fabrication of copper, the wheel, a numeral system, writing, sail boats, written law, a monarchical government.
According to the ages given in Genesis, Abraham was born about 2000 years after Adam’s creation, so Abraham lived around 3500 BC. Abraham’s father was from Ur, a Sumerian city. And as discussed, Abraham interacted with an Egyptian Pharaoh/king. So in this span of 2000 years, humanity goes from simple farming communities to the existence of at least 3 cultures (Sumer, Egypt, Indus Valley), all of which are male-dominant, all class stratified, all invented (independently) three distinct forms of writing based on three totally different languages. Nothing like this in tens of thousands of years of human history, now here, in the course of a couple of centuries, there’s this.
Another thing these three have in common, as writing is developed and they begin to record their word-of-mouth histories, is that they all write of immortal gods, male and female, who lived among them in their ancient pasts. This also is unlike anywhere else in human history throughout the world at that point. The predominant “belief system” throughout indigenous homo sapien cultures was more akin to animism.
Charting out the ages given, you can see that the longest living descendants of Adam all die around the time of Abraham’s life. In Genesis there’s quite a bit made about God being the only God, discounting the other gods that those in the lands in the surrounding areas follow. Like the gods of Abraham’s father’s home, in Sumer.
So, this is I think a good place to jump off. From this point forward the same change in human behavior in those three cultures can be seen spreading all throughout the world. In human history, there’s the first wave, the indigenous cultures that populate the planet, then there’s this other line of humans, much more aggressive, much more possessive, much more technologically advanced, who spread and conquer throughout the world, pushing the first line of humans to the brink of extinction.
In short, the story of early Genesis is the account of the beginning of the modern human world.
This, I believe to be, the impact of the events described in Genesis on human history. In my view, a sufficiently significant impact.
Thoughts?