PHOTO: Botanic Gardens, Adelaide


This is a photo of palm trees in the botanic gardens in Adelaide in South Australia.

This picture (which shows my daughter standing in front of a palm tree) illustrates how humanity is so much smaller and younger than the earth on which we live.

The earth has been around for much longer than humanity – current archaeological wisdom says that modern humans (homo sapiens) have been around for 300 thousand years, while the earth is thought to be 4.5 billion years old. To put that into perspective, if we assume that humans, on average, live to no more than 80 years of age, then we would have over 56 million generations of humans since the earth is thought to have come into existence.
 
If we measure from 300 thousand years ago (when homo sapiens first came on the scene) we get 3,750 human generations to today.

The Bible claims it can trace the human race back to Adam – see the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, and the book of Genesis, which together claim they can trace back from Jesus to Adam for 77 generations.

So if the Bible is correct in tracing back to Adam, and Adam was indeed the first sophisticated human, we have about 100 generations from my daughter back to Adam. What are we to do with the remaining 3,650 generations that take us back to the start of homo sapiens? If Adam was the first sophisticated human, what was the predecessor species like? How did we jump from “educated apes” to “enlightened humans”?


Image: Palm Trees, Botanic Gardens, Adelaide, South Australia. Copyright - Michael Beaton
 

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