The first man and woman

[ray245]

I have been looking up on some creation myth from non-Abrahamic culture and religions and I found out there are a lot of creation myth where humanity is created as a group of people.

Instead of having Adam and Eve alone, the god or gods created one whole group of people, in the size of a village or more. It is funny too see some religion having a better understanding of how humanity as an species came about as one big group of people, and not from two person.

So besides the Abrahamic religion, what other religion believe in the concept of the first man and woman, and what religion don't?

[generator_g1]

There are some Filipino creation myths

When the world first began there was no land, but only the sea and the sky, and between them was a kite (a bird something like a hawk). One day the bird which had nowhere to light grew tired of flying about, so she stirred up the sea until it threw its waters against the sky. The sky, in order to restrain the sea, showered upon it many islands until it could no longer rise, but ran back and forth. Then the sky ordered the kite to light on one of the islands to build her nest, and to leave the sea and the sky in peace.

Now at this time the land breeze and the sea breeze were married, and they had a child which was a bamboo. One day when this bamboo was floating about on the water, it struck the feet of the kite which was on the beach. The bird, angry that anything should strike it, pecked at the bamboo, and out of one section came a man and from the other a woman.

Then the earthquake called on all the birds and fish to see what should be done with these two, and it was decided that they should marry. Many children were born to the couple, and from them came all the different races of people.

After a while the parents grew very tired of having so many idle and useless children around, and they wished to be rid of them, but they knew of no place to send them to. Time went on and the children became so numerous that the parents enjoyed no peace. One day, in desperation, the father seized a stick and began beating them on all sides.

This so frightened the children that they fled in different directions, seeking hidden rooms in the house -- some concealed themselves in the walls, some ran outside, while others hid in the fireplace, and several fled to the sea.

Now it happened that those who went into the hidden rooms of the house later became the chiefs of the islands; and those who concealed themselves in the walls became slaves. Those who ran outside were free men; and those who hid in the fireplace became negroes; while those who fled to the sea were gone many years, and when their children came back they were the white people.

[Knife]

I have been looking up on some creation myth from non-Abrahamic culture and religions and I found out there are a lot of creation myth where humanity is created as a group of people.

Instead of having Adam and Eve alone, the god or gods created one whole group of people, in the size of a village or more. It is funny too see some religion having a better understanding of how humanity as an species came about as one big group of people, and not from two person.

So besides the Abrahamic religion, what other religion believe in the concept of the first man and woman, and what religion don't?

Well even in the Judeo/Christian myth they had to add in people who just magically appeared. Cane's wife, all the 'mud people' come to mind. Unless Adam and Eve had a lot of kids and they all married each other, you have to believe (lol) that god did indeed make more humans as time went on. Adam and Eve must have been the first battalions with a million more well into production.

[Kanastrous]

IIRC in Norse mythology the world after the final battle between the Gods of Asgard and their enemies starts over again with one man and one woman, the sole survivors of the conflict.

[DaveJB]

Well even in the Judeo/Christian myth they had to add in people who just magically appeared. Cane's wife, all the 'mud people' come to mind. Unless Adam and Eve had a lot of kids and they all married each other, you have to believe (lol) that god did indeed make more humans as time went on.

Not necessarily - remember that people lived for centuries in the time of Adam, and never got sick unless they pissed off God. Obviously the damage from all the inbreeding since then bought the average person's lifespan down to its current level, and introduced all sorts of genetic conditions. It all makes sense, see!

[Coyote]

Adam & Eve's children were mentioned taking "mates from other tribes"; oblique references to others were made in the Bible.

That's why it is interpreted as metaphor by the scholars I knew-- Adam and Eve were not necessarily the first actual people, they were, perhaps, stand-ins for tribes of people, or perhaps they were the first people "that mattered for the interests of the story". Or it is a reference to "the first people that recognized the primacy of the One True God".

In a biological standpoint, you could say that "Adam and Eve" are the names we've given to the first hairy little bipeds that chose upright walk as their default mode of posture-- "Adam and Eve" being the "first true humans". See "Mitochondrial Eve" for an example of this sort of reasoning.

[Junghalli]

In a biological standpoint, you could say that "Adam and Eve" are the names we've given to the first hairy little bipeds that chose upright walk as their default mode of posture-- "Adam and Eve" being the "first true humans". See "Mitochondrial Eve" for an example of this sort of reasoning.

Of course it's a horrible misconception to imagine the Mitochondrial Eve and Y Chromosomal Adam as the first woman and first man. They're merely the last common ancestors of all living humans, not the first humans (i.e. there were other humans around when they lived, they just don't have any descendants walking around today who inherited those particular genetic features). Heck, the Y Chromosomal Adam probably lived tens of thousands of years after the Mitochondrial Eve, so the notion is absurd just on its face.

For that matter, it's pretty unlikely that there was a first human in any real sense, as speciation is something that happens on the scale of groups, not individuals. Not to mention that bipedalism and sapience were probably things that evolved gradually, by degree, so trying to pin down the first individual that had them would have to be pretty arbitrary.

[Coyote]

Of course it's a horrible misconception to imagine the Mitochondrial Eve and Y Chromosomal Adam as the first woman and first man. They're merely the last common ancestors ...
For that matter, it's pretty unlikely that there was a first human in any real sense, as speciation is something that happens on the scale of groups....

Technically, yes, it is far, far more complex. But I'm talking about a biological process being simplified and boiled down so it can be explained metaphorically as "Adam & Eve".

[Kanastrous]

Perhaps it's a mistake, to simplify and boil down, that far. It's okay for people with some actual education on the topic, but sounds like sure-fire trouble once you place it in the brains of people who snoozed through biology.

[Coyote]

Yeah, but remember, we're talking about the early chapters of the Bible, the Old Testament/Torah. It's the ruminations of a Bronze Age tribe trying to explain existence.

I mean, think of the book of Genesis-- the creation of the Earth. If a Bronze Age tribe met God and asked him "how did you build the world?" and ol' God launched off into an explanation involving accretion discs, the Higgs boson, and gravity resulting from the accumulation of matter, it'd be a tribe of blank stares. If he says "Snapped my fingers, boom, there it was and it was good. Took, uhh, 7 days," then they "get it".

There's actual, scientific fact, and then there's "fact enough". If I live in Beeropolis, and someone asks me how to get to Rumville, and Rumville is precisely 997.65 miles away at a south-west direction at grid coordinates AB1234 5678, what I'm more likely to say is "go southwest about a thousand miles 'till you see the sign. Can't miss it". Both are "right"-- one is 100% scientifically accurate, one is "right enough for the purpose". Most people live in the world where "right enough" is sufficient.

The 100% correct answer will sail past most folks. It's too much information; it overwhelms them and they dismiss it because it makes things more complicated than it has to be. Pretty much every one of us dismisses some information because it is not immediately relevant to our lives. People just need a basic, Cliff's Notes version to satisfy general curiosity and that's that.

The tricky thing about religion is that people choose to confront Big Questions. They seek simple answers that make sense so they can feel a sense of meaning, or control, or just comprehension. So I take a lot of religion on a sort of case-by-case basis. Some say it's metaphor. Some say it's literal. It has to all be approached with some judgment.

[Kanastrous]

I mean, think of the book of Genesis-- the creation of the Earth. If a Bronze Age tribe met God and asked him "how did you build the world?" and ol' God launched off into an explanation involving accretion discs, the Higgs boson, and gravity resulting from the accumulation of matter, it'd be a tribe of blank stares. If he says "Snapped my fingers, boom, there it was and it was good. Took, uhh, 7 days," then they "get it".

I never really embraced that perspective. If one can create the myriad galaxies via an act of will, one certainly ought to be able to download enough superficial knowledge into the brainpans of your grovelling little half-monkey creatures to get them past the need for woo-woo creation fairy tales. If God is offering insanely dumbed-down explanations that basically make no consistent sense, it must be because that's His preferred MO, not because of any insurmountable limitations on the part of His creations.

There's actual, scientific fact, and then there's "fact enough". If I live in Beeropolis, and someone asks me how to get to Rumville, and Rumville is precisely 997.65 miles away at a south-west direction at grid coordinates AB1234 5678, what I'm more likely to say is "go southwest about a thousand miles 'till you see the sign. Can't miss it". Both are "right"-- one is 100% scientifically accurate, one is "right enough for the purpose". Most people live in the world where "right enough" is sufficient.

The problem being, that a lot of people's 'right enough' seems altogether too often, to turn out to be 'absolutely wrong.' A 5000-year-old Earth comes to mind.

The 100% correct answer will sail past most folks. It's too much information; it overwhelms them and they dismiss it because it makes things more complicated than it has to be. Pretty much every one of us dismisses some information because it is not immediately relevant to our lives. People just need a basic, Cliff's Notes version to satisfy general curiosity and that's that.

The particular Cliff Notes basic version at hand, seems to have been simplified to the point of actually being incorrect according to available evidence. Worse, it seems to go so far as to support the notion that Genesis is in some way accurate or correct. This 'metaphor' business doesn't appear to penetrate, with a lot of people looking for 'Adam and Eve' to be an actual explanation.

The tricky thing about religion is that people choose to confront Big Questions.

Religion has always impressed me as a mechanism for fleeing Big Questions, not confronting them. Maybe that's just me.

They seek simple answers that make sense so they can feel a sense of meaning, or control, or just comprehension.

They regret having ever grown past the age of two, and wish they could live there for their entire adult lives. Understandable, but still contemptible.

So I take a lot of religion on a sort of case-by-case basis. Some say it's metaphor. Some say it's literal. It has to all be approached with some judgment.

I guess that I am less interested in what people say, than what they can prove. Just saying shit is oh-so-easy. Much too easy, for anything coming by that route to be taken seriously.

[Coyote]

Well, I don't think I couched that very well, looking back.

I think for most people, the question "where do we come from"? in a macro-sense (ie, all humanity) is a Big Question; something they ask so they can feel some sense of understanding/comprehension/control of their own sense of self or destiny. However, let's face it, except for actual researchers, it is really an unnecessary question, since the answer either way won't actually change their lives.

My example about asking directions to a city was poorly chosen, because in the case of a known city off a highway, there's little question or doubt about where it is, even though you can make accurate or "close enough" statements about its location. OTOH, if that city is not on any map, and no one has visited it in living memory, and no one is really sure where it is but some people have come to believe it is south, while some think it is west, and others think it is east, etc, it might be more akin to what we're looking at WRT the "first man & woman" idea. A scientist will look for actual layers of pavement and old road signs, whereas others will just believe what they want because they'll never go to that city either way.

A lot of this comes down to how you view religion in its entirety. If any and all religion in any sense is viewed as 100% threatening, then sure, there's no religious interpretation on the Adam & Eve question that will be seen as tolerable. If you take religions on a case-by-case basis and sort through those that take it Very Seriously and insist that everyone bow to their interpretation, vs. those who say "it's a metaphor, explaining difficult scientific concepts to unlearned people in the past" and accept the scientific explanation to be the concept that was described, again, I think there's room to let things go.

This points back to the old argument about Biblical Literalism. Literalists see 7, 24-hour days and Adam and Eve and talking snakes and accept it without thinking. Others read the Bible and see crazy shit and wonder "What was meant by that?" We then hear that researchers have uncovered evidence of this or that and realize, "Oh, that's probably what was meant." Could an all-knowing God have just uploaded the information? Maybe. Again, it depends on what the role of God is supposed to be in different religious beliefs. A Deist entity certainly would not; he's pretty much an absentee landlord. OTOH, people making a "choice" may be the goal, and just making robo-humans defeats that purpose, so God withholds the upload. There are belief systems that are willing to hold it in abeyance, and either wait for humans to ponderously unravel the mysteries, or for God to reveal all in a dramatic fashion.

[Marcus Aurelius]

The particular Cliff Notes basic version at hand, seems to have been simplified to the point of actually being incorrect according to available evidence. Worse, it seems to go so far as to support the notion that Genesis is in some way accurate or correct. This 'metaphor' business doesn't appear to penetrate, with a lot of people looking for 'Adam and Eve' to be an actual explanation.

That depends how you look at it. The interpretation that Genesis is just a metaphor is actually quite common, although it might not look that way especially in some parts of the US. Still it is pretty much the official interpretation of the Roman Catholic church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, most Lutheran churches I know of, the Anglican church and I'm sure still many others. In fact literal interpretation of the Genesis and Young Earth Creationism is still very much a niche movement outside the US.

The tricky thing about religion is that people choose to confront Big Questions.

Religion has always impressed me as a mechanism for fleeing Big Questions, not confronting them. Maybe that's just me.

I don't agree completely. Religion is mechanism that provides easy to understand and "certain" answers to many big questions. Admittedly it does avoid some metaphysical questions simply by declaring that they are not our business but God's.

They seek simple answers that make sense so they can feel a sense of meaning, or control, or just comprehension.

They regret having ever grown past the age of two, and wish they could live there for their entire adult lives. Understandable, but still contemptible.

That's a bit harsh. Many people simply don't have the right mind set to ponder metaphysics and it's really not their fault. In some ways some kind of easily palatable simplification of the big questions is practically unavoidable. However, what should be avoided are overly dogmatic explanations that encourage fanaticism such as Young Earth Creationism. Unfortunately both Christianity and Islam have many elements that are very good breeding ground for religious fanatics.

[Modax]

Religion has always impressed me as a mechanism for fleeing Big Questions, not confronting them. Maybe that's just me.

As much as I dislike having to come to the defense of religion, imagine for a minute that you or I (or anyone else on this forum, for that matter) had been born at the time of the old testament. Would we have become atheists then? Not likely. Even the greatest thinkers, like Socrates, believed in immortal souls, and were at best deists (in so far as we would define a deist today)
Religions were invented not for the purpose of fleeing the Big Questions, but because they were simply the best explanations we could think of at the time. Why billions of people continue to buy into these relic explanations is, of course, another story.


Anyway, at the risk of sending the thread off on a tangent, can we estimate that the minimum human population size that would preserve enough genetic diversity to continue the species? I remember reading that the entire human population at the time of mitochondrial eve was around ten thousand; how much smaller could it have been?

[Junghalli]

Anyway, at the risk of sending the thread off on a tangent, can we estimate that the minimum human population size that would preserve enough genetic diversity to continue the species? I remember reading that the entire human population at the time of mitochondrial eve was around ten thousand; how much smaller could it have been?

I think the bare minimum viable population size is ~150 individuals.

[Coyote]

Would the male-female ratio have to be 50-50, or would there be a bias towards a larger female population?

[Elfdart]

There was a very good documentary on Discovery called The Search For Eden (you can watch parts of it here) and it pointed out that Adam was ten generations before Noah and that Genesis was about the origins of the Semitic peoples. In other words it was never meant to describe the origins of other groups. There's a tie-in between the location of Eden (at the point of origin of the Tigris, Euphrates, Gihon and Pishon rivers in what is now eastern Turkey) and the name of the First Man. Adam means "red clay" or "red earth" and the area is honeycombed with red ochre, which was used for religious ceremonies in the area for thousands of years.

All of this would mean that when Cain ran off started his own clan, he wasn't boinking his mom, sisters or nieces; nor did Jehovah whip up a new creation in the next county (as Clarence Darrow joked), but he simply joined up with another tribe.

[Elfdart]

Would the male-female ratio have to be 50-50, or would there be a bias towards a larger female population?

Genetic bottlenecks occur at < 200 animals. Some animals can survive such a calamity -cheetahs, for example. But it's like having two strikes against an animal.

[DaveJB]

Would the male-female ratio have to be 50-50, or would there be a bias towards a larger female population?

A higher female population ratio (say 65-35 in favour of them to start with) would be better for getting the population going immediately; however, you'd inevitably get people having to mate with their half-brothers and half-sisters in the following generation, which would more than cancel out any advantage gained by the faster population increase.

[Coalition]

Anyway, at the risk of sending the thread off on a tangent, can we estimate that the minimum human population size that would preserve enough genetic diversity to continue the species? I remember reading that the entire human population at the time of mitochondrial eve was around ten thousand; how much smaller could it have been?

I think the bare minimum viable population size is ~150 individuals.

Wiki article - for the 4MF/(M+F) effective population size
Non-wiki article

From there, you get into the numbers breeders use (the 50/500 rules, and possible extended to 5000).

I.e. From the Non-wiki article (Minimum Viable population, paragraph #2) you need a minimum of 50 people (25 pairs) to avoid inbreeding (and aquiring the ability to play a banjo) within 10 generations. This level is only good for 100 years.
You need a minimum of 500 (250 pairs) people to prevent long-term inbreeding (and loss of various genetic traits).
The guess is that 5000 people will allow for evolution mutation to allow for improvements in the gene pool.

As an example, assume 25 men and 25 women, partnered up, etc. 4 * (25) * (25) / (25+25)
4 * (25) * (25) / (25+25)
2,500 / 50
50
So the effective population size is 50 people.

Now let's say you want to 'allow for rapid population expansion', aka lots of women to men. Let's double the number of women, and halve the number of men:
4 * (13) * (50) / (13+50)
52 * (50) / (63)
2600 / 63
41.26
So your effective population size is smaller. This is likely due to the reduced genetic variation from fewer guys. Adding a 14th guy brings the effective population size up to 43.75, a 2.49 increase.

We can also work backwards, how many women will be needed if we keep this number of guys, and bring it back up to effectively 50 people:
50 = 4 * (13) * F / (13+F)
50 = 52F / (13+F)
50 (13+F) = 52F
650 + 50F = 52F
650 = 2F
325 = F

Each guy will have to get 25 women pregnant. Of course, even at this rate, you will still wind up with banjo players within 100 years.

You can do similar math to figure out the minimum needed of either sex to get a certain level (50 = minimum 13 of one gender; 500 = 126 minimum, 5000 = 1251 minimum).