This question came in over the Internet--"Just a question, did Adam and Eve have a daughter? If not how did the human race evolve? My wife and I were talking and the question came up . Did Cane and Able have sex with Eve? Please explain."

Being the cautious type, I contacted a retired professor of religion and shared the question with him. He was my major professor in college, so he began his reply with a chastisement of my laziness. He wrote: "Dear Marvin, After all these years, you could answer this one. Just read your Bible--Gen 5:4, "And all the days of Adam after he had begotten Seth were eight hundred years: and he begat sons and daughters." Adam "begat sons and daughters"--lots of them in 900 years! Only certain key children are mentioned. Cain may have been the first, but Abel and Seth were not. Cain's murder of Abel must have occurred years after his birth, he may even have been married at the time of the murder. We know he married because the Bible says he did. Brothers and sisters--in those early ages would have married. We have no biblical laws against incest until the time of Moses."
But--Did Adam and Eve Really Exist?
Following are two articles about the scientific evidence concerning the existence of an Eve and an Adam. The first one states, "Most scientists have little trouble believing that one African woman was the mother of us all." The second one concludes,"We are finding that humans have very, very shallow genetic roots which go back very recently to one ancestor." For those who have an interest in such things, there articles shine a little bit of light on the path to understanding our origins. However, in my opinion, basing one's faith on scientific findings is risky because they may end up on the bottom of tomorrow's bird cage as newer findings come out. After all, it takes faith to believe in the Evolutionary Theory and it takes faith to believe in a Creator God. Speaking as a Christian, I agree with the Apostle Paul who stated in 2 Corinthians 5:7, "(For we walk by faith, not by sight:)."
Did Eve Exist?
By Aaron Tockstein
(This article came from the Internet which did not list the publication source)
In 1987, a group of scientists working with Alan Wilson from the University of California at Berkeley claimed that by analyzing DNA from mitochondria, they had traced the maternal lineage of all humans back to a single woman who lived in Africa about 200,000 years ago. This study laid the groundwork for the "Eve Hypothesis". Skeptics immediately raised the question: could this really be true? Did Eve really exist?
The Wilson team used a computer program written to find the most "parsimonious" family tree. Parsimony analysis is a method originally designed for deducing the evolutionary relationships between species. Every tree's "length" is equal to the minimum number of evolutionary changes (mutations) required to explain the observed differences. The criterion for finding Eve says that the tree requiring the fewest changes is preferred. Using the DNA from the mitochondria from about 100 people, the Wilson group concluded that the mother of all of us lived in Africa about 200,000 years ago. Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) was chosen for the
study because it accumulates mutations rapidly, and because it is passed on intact from mother to offspring. Therefore, it can be used to trace maternal ancestry without the complications of recombination. (Barinaga, Science)
Since Africans have greater diversity in their mtDNA than the inhabitants of any other continent, it stands to reason that in order to accumulate the largest number of mutations, humans must have lived longer in Africa than anywhere else. This diversity is the strongest piece of evidence for an African origin and was suggested before the Eve hypothesis was published.
Further evidence from the ZFY gene in males supports the Eve hypothesis. ZFY, or zinc finger Y, is a gene on the Y-chromosome that helps with sperm or testes maturation. It is handed down exclusively from father to son and sits on a part of the Y-chromosome that doesn't recombine. Scientists compared the DNA sequence of humans to chimps, orangutans, and gorillas. They then divided the number of DNA mutations by the number of years since the two shared a common ancestor. The results from this study show that humans had to have originated roughly 270,000 years ago to have such similar Y chromosomes. Most importantly, results from this experiment support the Eve hypothesis, but from a different part of the genome. (Adler, Science News) Harvard University molecular anthropologist Maryellen Ruvolo says that by using sequence data and the use of a molecular clock instead of a simulation program, she has come up with a more concrete time for the origin of Eve. She says that Eve was around about 222,000 to 370,000 years ago. Though her findings say nothing of the geographic origin of Eve, she was able to come up with a time which supports that conclusion found by the Wilson group. (Gibbons, Science)
Most scientists have little trouble believing that one African woman was the mother of us all. Even though the fossil record disagrees, paleontologists agree that it is still very sparse. "The surprise was not that all sequences traced back to one woman. Rather, because it claimed to locate mitochondrial Eve in time and space, and to give information about the size and movements of the human population as a whole." (Goldman, Nature)
The biggest question that arises from all this is shared by palaeoanthropologists across the world. Why are the time estimates from the Eve hypothesis and those from the fossil record so different? The Eve hypothesis and it's backing evidence says that the origin of man was anywhere between 130,000 to 370,000 years ago, while the fossil record places the dawn of man at over 1 MYA.
The question of whether or not Eve existed will remain challenged until technology can come up with a better method for finding her. Using the best of our technology and knowledge, great strides have been achieved towards answering that question. At this point, most studies show that there was a woman who lived 130,000 to 350,000 years ago that was the mother of mankind. The greatest advancements of this subject will be in the near future, when better methods for making decisions between alternative hypotheses, and for estimating population sizes and gene flow from DNA sequence data will enable scientists to better pinpoint the origin of humans.
References
Marcia Barinaga, 2/7/92, "'African Eve' Backers Beat a Retreat", Science, Vol. 255, Pg. 686-687.
T. Adler, 5/27/95, "Lineage of Y chromosome boosts Eve theory", Science News, Vol. 147, Pg. 326.
Ann Gibbons, 2/26/93, "Mitochondrial Eve Refuses to Die", Science, Vol. 259, Pg. 1249-1250.
N. Goldman and N. H. Barton, 6/11/92, "Genetics and Geography", Nature, Vol. 357, Pg. 440-441.

The Genetic Eve Gets a Genetic Adam
Eight years ago, researchers "found" the mother of all humans, the proverbial Eve. By peeking into the cells of several ethnic groups, they traced the family tree of modern humans back 200,000 years to a single--albeit theoretical--woman. "Mitochondrial Eve," named for the part of the cell passed from the mother and examined in the study, was hardly the only female human who was bearing children at the time, but scientists said her genes were the ones that endured.
Now, Eve has an Adam. In two reports in last week's Nature, researchers suggest that virtually all modern men--99.9 percent of them, says one scientist--are closely related genetically and share genes with one male ancestor, dubbed "Y-chromosome Adam." Unlike other chromosomes, Y's are passed strictly from father to son, thus enabling scientists to follow the human race patrilineally.
Each study dates Adam differently. One says he appeared roughly 188,000 years ago. The other estimates he lived up to 49,000 years ago. But both buck the notion that modern humans emerged in disparate spots across continents. "We are finding that humans have very, very shallow genetic roots which go back very recently to one ancestor," says the University of Arizona's Michael Hammer, author of one of the studies. "That indicates that there was an origin in a specific location on the globe and then it spread out from there."
Time Magazine 1995

Blessings in your study of God's Word!

Marvin Hunt

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