Adam And Eve Were Black

I have always had a fascination with history, especially from the Classical era covering Egypt, Rome and inparticular that of the Greeks. Their rise to power, their eventual collapse, their discoveries and achievements have always got me curious how such non-technologically advanced races could build such marvels as the Pyramids, the Parthenon and more.

This interest in classical history was in part due to my own [Greek] background where my parents insisted that we be taught not only the English language and Australian history, but also be fluent in Greek and Greek history. My parents would continually buy me books by various ancient Greek writers to feed the fascination I had of my past. Plato's The Republic and Herodotus' Iliad and Odyssey were my three favourite books. Stories on Alexander the Great, the 300 Spartans and Cleopatra were adventures that I knew off by heart and dreamt of how exciting it would be to have lived during those times. Mind you, one always looked at the excitement of the times and never took into account that despite all "those adventures", it would have been a hard life.

One common thing amongst all those ancient cultures was how humanity actually evolved. In some form or another, there was some cataclysm that occured, whether it was Atlantis, The Flood, or simply even Adam and Eve, from which humanity either emerged from or scattered to the corners of the world.

Like every race, the Greeks pictured the first humans as Greeks, the Egyptians as Egyptians and the Chinese as Chinese. To imagine them as any other race - now or then - would imply that the alternate race was somehow superior to one's own. Every culture always sees itself and its own lands as the centre of the world. For the Greeks it was Mount Olympus, for the Jews it was the Holy Lands and so forth.

Yet this ethnocentricity raised - and still raises - a lot of questions about the origin of humanity. Who do you believe? Do you believe your own religion and what its says about the first humans? Or do you believe the oldest culture and their beliefs? Or do we take a realistic and scientific approach and believe that most cultures are wrong, and that the first humans originated somewhere else on the planet?

The latest theory is that the first inhabitants originated in Africa, and because of a very long term drought, forced them to leave their "little paradise" and move into more fertile lands [see BBC News here] thus eventually spreading throughout the world. This theory in conjunction with the theory that we are actually an evolved version of the monkeys, would make Africa the logical place and support previous African-based theories of evolution.

Which brings me to the title of this article. If the latest drought theory is correct, then the first humans were obviously Africans and thus black. For them, the drought would have been seen as a punishment by the Gods for some "wrong doing" and therefore forced to leave their paradise home. As they left in search of more fertile lands, they would have carried with them the stories of their original homeland, and eventually as they settled down in Egypt, the Holy Lands, Europe etc, these stories would have evolved to become local myths.

Thus for the Christians, Adam and Eve's paradise would have been the lands in Africa prior to this initial diaspora. The Apple and the snake would have symbolised in reality the food [or lack thereof] and the wildlife who with humans, would have competed for the small amounts of food. Obviously the battle between the humans and a hungry wildlife would have been one where humanity would have been more the hunted than the hunter. A hungry lion would have found a hungry human easy prey.

With the diaspora of those early humans, the reality of why they left in the first place, would eventually evolve into myths and legends. In a superstituous society, this diaspora would be blamed on the Gods who would in turn take on the "image" of the local society. A flow on of this would have resulted in the local religious leader incorporating these tales into their religion as a means of teaching and controlling the locals.

Thus by the time we arrive to the Golden Era of the classical period, these long-forgotten ancestors of ours from Africa would have been transformed into local dieties and legends, and the actual cause of the initial diaspora would have been erased or transformed in the memories of the people.

So for us Christians [and am not singling out Christians alone in this article], Adam and Eve's paradise was not in the Holy Lands but rather somewhere in Africa. They weren't - as they are currently portrayed as Caucasian - but actually black Africans, and them leaving their paradise in reality had nothing to do with Eve eating the forbidden Apple, but rather a battle between humans and wildlife for the scarce food brought about by a severe long term drought.

Who is right? Who is wrong? That, unfortunately is the $64,000 question. But one thing for certain is that regardless of what the holy books state, the real Paradise was a long long way from where many of us have been led to believe.