Friday, January 10, 2014

ADAM AND EVE






It is pretty obvious to anyone reading my blog that, like Karl Marx, I consider religions as the Opium of the Masses.

Religion and intellect have knocked heads since the true founding of the Catholic Church at the Council of Nicea held around 350 AD.   From the earliest time through the Dark Ages The Church did everything in its power to discredit and destroy all forms of enlightenment from science to philosophy to mathematics.  

The massive body of knowledge that germinated in early Greece was considered heresy, and those intrepid enough to pursue enlightenment were put to death by The Church

Throughout the Dark Ages all accepted truths had to be based on the Bible as the only true knowledge.   And even today, great numbers of our population choose ignorance over knowledge, and insist on a literal interpretation of the Bible.






The Bible, a loose woven myth disguised as history, begins its story with Adam and Eve. 

Last night, as I lay awake in bed, as I often do, I considered the claim that through DNA we can trace the human race back to one woman somewhere is Africa – and African Eve.





 I don’t dispute that, but the more I considered this claim the more it seemed likely to me that there has to be more than one Eve.  

Now, I know that no one wants to read pages correlating math and history; and even though I spent the morning researching and correlating I won’t bore you with the minutiae. 

But, to give an overview I must start out with an explanation of exponential counting: you have two parents; four grandparents; eight great grandparents; sixteen great-great grandparents – the numbers double from each preceding generation.  

   

If you go back 20 generations (rounding off some numbers for ease of counting) you are directly kin to one million great-great… grandparents.   If you go back thirty generations you would be equally kin to one billion ancestors.

Now the trick is to track the population of the earth and determine the date when you are kin to everyone on earth. 

Using 20 years as the approximate length of a generation I determined that after 29 generations (the first generation is a zero) or 560 years - around the year 1460 -  our ancestors numbered 500 million: the same as the entire population of the earth in at that time.

If we pick any female in 1460 we have to consider her as an EVE for our generation.

Now, selecting that female from 1460 and counting her ancestors back into time we find that around the year 840 she is kin to 250 million ancestors: about the same number as the population of the earth in that year.   Therefore any female from the year of 840 can be considered and the second Eve.   

The population stabilizes to 200 million around the year zero; and the third Eve appears about 220 BC.      After this, approximately every 500 years we have a new Eve. 

Human population slowly decreases, until around 8,000 BC when we have an earth population of 5 million, dropping to 3 million about 10,000 BC.

If we continue backwards, somewhere between three and four million years ago the original Eve of our species walked across the savannas of Africa.  This is our African Eve.  



It is quite possible, if not probable, that someone will shoot holes all through this hypothesis; but that is the way science works.   

My wife gave me five books for Solstice and I probably could have better spent this time reading.


the Ol’Buzzard

A world clock worth checking out - there are many more.

O'B

9 comments:

  1. I once read that the biblical Adam and Eve were trapped by a jealous God in a fool's paradise until a wise and loving snake offered them a way out.

    I've been re-reading a fascinating book by Stephan Hoeller called 'Jung and the Lost Gospels'. The Essenes and Gnostics were far smarter than most people would guess. Thank goodness for the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi.

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  2. I look forward to you'r blogs...A lot of people do.
    O'B

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  3. Skipping all the math (whew) and getting to the bible fairy tale, my question is and always has been...did Adam have a penis BEFORE the snake and apple incident? And if so...why?

    But let's say Adam acquired the penis AFTER the snake revelation . That would mean that he and Eve were the same anatomically, IMO. So then, why was Eve even necessary? OK, there is the loneliness factor, but why make her a her, what the fuck is that about if there's no hanky-panky going on. Seriously.

    There is also the matter of God making Adam in His image. If Adam did have a penis, then that means...well, you know. Soooooooooo, why would god have a penis? Was/is there a Mrs. God? Perplexing.

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  4. Jadedj...you have made this all so much more...interesting, from a purely anatomical point of view...Myself, I consider religion a vestigial manifestation of our primitive bicameral minds. When religion really worked as a meme...humans built pyramids, we built gothic cathedrals. Then humans got bored with that shit and got interested in politics and the internets.

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  5. OB,
    Great post. I posted something similar but not nearly as good over on my new blog msgtron.blog.com about Genesis and evolution. The Bible -before the printing press was transcribed by scribes - Ok, you are going to tell me that some of what is in the Bible isn't the work of some creative writing - You know what liars we fishermen are.
    And, isn't there are story of another woman before Eve? Then there is the thing with Cain being sent from Eden for killing his brother Abel and lived with another tribe.
    Add in all of the texts that were deleted from the Bible. I am far from being a bibical scholar - And, I have read parts of the Quran and I believe that the Muslims are closer to living the words of the Old Testement than what
    the Christians are.
    And, I love Pope Francis - he scares the shit out of the so called "Christian Conservatives.

    More on evolution and Japanese whiskey on my new blog....


    Sarrge

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  6. Rat sent me, and I'm glad he did. Important, to me, thoughts and ideas that you have here.

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COMMENT: Ben Franklin said, "I imagine a man must have a good deal of vanity who believes, and a good deal of boldness who affirms, that all doctrines he holds are true, and all he rejects are false."