Written and collected by Zia H Shah MD, Chief Editor of the Muslim Times

I may have been one of the first writers, to write about Historical Adam in 2008, in a volume of the Muslim Sunrise, and its implications on Original Sin and the ideas are now becoming main stream, at least in the Western Christianity.

To understand William Lane Craig and his account of Adam and Eve, one has to understand Homo heidelbergensis.

So, here is the account of Homo heidelbergensis from the website of Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History:

In 1908 near Heidelberg, Germany, a workman found the type specimen of  H. heidelbergensis in the Rösch sandpit just north of the village of Mauer. This mandible was nearly complete except for the missing premolars and first two left molars; it is heavily built and lacks a chin. German scientist Otto Schoentensack was the first to describe the specimen and proposed the species name Homo heidelbergensis. 

Before the naming of this species, scientists referred to early human fossils showing traits similar to both Homo erectus and modern humans as ‘archaic’ Homo sapiens.

There is evidence that H. heidelbergensis was capable of controlling fire by building hearths, or early fireplaces, by 790,000 years ago in the form of fire-altered tools and burnt wood at the site of Gesher Benot Ya-aqov in Israel. Why did they come together at these early hearths? Perhaps to socialize, to find comfort and warmth, to share food and information, and to find safety from predators.

H. heidelbergensis probably took advantage of natural shelters but this species was also the first to build simple shelters. Evidence for this comes from the site of Terra Amata, France. 

H. heidelbergensis was also the first hunter of large game animals; remains of animals such as wild deer, horses, elephants, hippos, and rhinos with butchery marks on their bones have been found together at sites with H. heidelbergensis fossils. Evidence for this also comes from 400,000 year old wooden spears found at the site of Schöningen, Germany, which were found together with stone tools and the remains of more than 10 butchered horses.

One site in Atapuerca, northern Spain, dating to about 400,000 years ago, shows evidence of what may be human ritual. Scientists have found bones of roughly 30 H. heidelbergensis individuals deliberately thrown inside a pit. The pit has been named Sima  de los Huesos (‘Pit of Bones’). Alongside the skeletal remains, scientists uncovered a single well-made symmetrical handaxe —illustrating the tool-making ability of H. heidelbergensis.

As species arise it is logically not possible in biological evolution to find and name the first couple as that is an oxymoron. How are new species formed? When members of a species divide into two groups and some natural wall, real or virtual, gets erected between the two groups and they keep evolving separately for a long time, until they cannot mate and have fertile offspring, ground is set for two new species. The process happens to communities and groups of individuals so there is no such thing as the first person or the first couple of any species. In other words there is no literal great-grand-pa Adam or literal great-grand-ma Eve.

It seems to me that William Lane Craig still has an unconscious need to find a literal first human couple, namely Adam and Eve and as a result he has postulated the last common ancestor of Homo sapiens and Homo neanderthalensis, who was a Homo heidelbergensis as Adam and Eve.

To erect his thesis he has also come up with the idea that human language is as old as 750,000 years. Around minute 25 of the above video the conversation goes to human language and during this Robert Lawrence Kuhn quotes Noam Chomsky among others in saying that language is likely to be 75,000 to 200,000 years old only.

It seems that William Lane Craig has awakened to find that Genesis in the Bible is mytho-history but still wants to maintain some literalism.

I believe that accounts of the first Adam, both in the Bible and the Quran are metaphors and not literal and let the scientific research take us where it may.

With that in mind let me collect what I and others have written about this in the past:

Charles Darwin: An Epiphany for the Muslims, A Catastrophe for the Christians

Written and collected by Zia H Shah MD, Chief Editor of the Muslim Times The National Museum of Natural History, located on the National Mall just across from the Smithsonian castle, is America’s […]

A History of Warfare of Science with theology in Christendom

Book by Andrew Dickson White, the Founding President of Cornell University Because the suppression of scientific thought by the medieval Church represents one of blackest periods of human history, many […]

The Story of Adam and A Progressive, Metaphorical Reading of the Quran

Surah Al Baqara (The Cow): Section 4: Adam and Eve Written and collected by Zia H Shah MD, Chief Editor of the Muslim Times 2:30. Call to mind, when your Lord announced […]

Surah Al Baqara (The Cow): Section 4: Adam and Eve

By Zia H Shah MD, Chief Editor of the Muslim Times 2:30. Call to mind, when your Lord announced to the angels: I am about to place a vicegerent in […]

The Single Quranic Verse that Can Convince You about Evolution

Written and collected by Zia H Shah MD, Chief Editor of the Muslim Times Allah has advised us to read the Quran on a daily basis. (Al Quran 17:78/79) This is […]

Are the 1.6 billion Muslims like Young Earth Creationists in Christianity?

Epigraph: Your creation and your resurrection are only like the creation and resurrection of a single soul (نَّفْسٍ وَاحِدَةٍ). Indeed, Allah is All-Hearing, All-Seeing. (Al Quran 31:28) Written and collected […]

We have preserved the above video in the Muslim Times: