Dating Archaic Humanity
Harmonizing Idealism and Materialism
Sometime between 2.5 and 2 million years ago the proper ‘Homo’ Genus emerged, but important to remember is the split into further species such as the Homo Sapien had yet to occur. There are numerous Homo species - all of them being grouped under the helpful term “Archaic Human” differentiating the human proper as a species within the Homo Genus - such as H. antecessor, H. bodoensis, H. rudolfensis, H. rhodesiensis, H. ergaster, Denisovans and the important Neanderthals. Other than the last two groups each of these was extinct by roughly one hundred thousand years ago; these final two being critical to the human story due to their realistic interbreeding with H. sapiens proper.
Readers must keep in mind Noah’s genealogy, and the three broad groups that Adamites are divided into: Cain, Abel, and Seth. While a huge machloket (dispute) could arise even bringing up the point, it is very possible that the Cainite murder of Abel was more of a genocidal, territorial dispute that led to the complete annihilation of Abel’s ‘Genus’. If we are to view these three broader groups as sort of sub-species of the Homo genus then it would be the extinction of these various groups described in the Flood event of Noah. Since there are no Homo, or Australopithecus genuses left alive today other than ourselves, we can safely assume it was this Flood event bookending the survival of all the other archaic human groups.
A clear distinction between Australopithecus and Homo can really only be made on minor morphological grounds rather than any technical cultural differences, with groups like the Sediba likely being closer to a Homo genus as implied by their features. What really is the difference when another group looks so close they seem brother-like, and you can successfully produce offspring? This is like Wolves and Dogs, Wild and Domesticated, with our wild status being equivalent to a “domestication under God” where we dwelled in paradise, and the domestic phase being a tacit structural change in way of life, rather than biology.
Looking at these distinct Homo groups, most of them terminate and become extinct in what can be called multiple mass catastrophes leading each group into a dead end. Important is that they were not wiped out simultaneously, possibly showing this was not the “Flood” itself, but a series of other destructions by water at the hands of God. This is affirmed in the Torah itself which says in Genesis “And the Lord smelled the pleasant aroma, and the Lord said to Himself, "I will no longer curse the earth because of man, for the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth, and I will no longer smite all living things as I have done. So long as the earth exists, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.”1 This line confirms that despite the singular Flood that destroyed the world, there were previous “floods”, or other natural calamities of sorts that took out certain groups. This is importantly different from the extinction of Abel which appears to have been at the hands of man rather than at the hands of God - his hands being nature itself - like the other destructions.
While the Habilis was defined as the handyman with his usage of tools, it was only the Homo Erectus, known as the “upright man” (the fact this term ‘upright’ is used could be given an entire section to parallels with the Hebrew word ‘yashar’) who develops manipulation over matter itself: fire.
The earliest claim of fire control comes from an anonymous Homo species as early as 2 million years ago2, but verified evidence for these claims comes from “microscopic traces of wood ash” in use by Homo Erectus some time around 1 million years ago.3 While likely beginning prior to our own evidence, the first evidence for the specific usage of fire in the cooking process interestingly comes from ~790,000 years ago in none other than Israel attesting to its provenance as a cultural crossroads for archaic humans.45 What is the coincidence between this mastery over fire, a fundamental Kabbalistic building block of creation, and the emergence of the “Ish”, or man? Perhaps the Torah is hinting at man's emergence among the group of Homo first manipulating fire?
It is further pertinent that Homo Erectus actually survived longer than the total time alive of modern Homo Sapiens, living for over two million years dwarfing our measly ~300,000. Homo Erectus has a similarly huge range like modern humans, implying a sort of descent from these groups in some capacity as an explanation for their disappearance. Many “Homo” groups all descended from Homo Erectus in some form due to their unparalleled success with its range of sites depicted on the map. These varying genealogical dead ends are not critical for our discussion, but represent a multi-phased destruction of humans, or post-Adamites descending from the three sons of Adam. As depicted in Cain and Abel’s fierce competition, these groups would have similarly competed each other into extinction with perhaps a third Sethite group hunkering down on a small mountain in the Ethiopian highlands waiting for their war to subside.
Whether Homos represent Cain is unclear, as the distinction between the fire manipulators might be the critical formation point for Adam-kind while Cain may only arise as one of the Homo species. It is important to keep in mind that Homo is the genus, while Homo Sapiens, Ergaster, Habilis, etc are all species within a wider ‘genus’ family. The Homo genus could therefore be viewed as the connected Adam ancestor group of humans.
Helpful to connect these events with the bible is Genesis 4:2 where we get the line “Abel was a shepherd of flocks, and Cain was a tiller of the soil.” This line directly associates Cain as a ‘farmer’ and Abel as a ‘shepherd’, but it doesn’t credit them with their invention. Obvious for dating the competition of these groups is the origin of farming and animal husbandry; when did they begin? Farming development began sometime around 105,000 years ago when evidence for the first wild grains being collected existed.6 By 23,000 years ago certified cultivation of emmer, barley, and oats were observed around the Galilee inside Israel.7
Looking for a date of animal husbandry is slightly trickier due to the development being a much longer process as seen in animals like the dog. When something becomes “domestic” is hard to classify, and it's very possible non-domestic manipulation of wild flocks could be included in the biblical terminology for Abel as a shepherd. Abel could have been less of a ‘breeder’ of domestic animals and more like a tamer of wild herds, but keeping that in mind it's helpful still to look at domestication.
The earliest domestication was the obvious canine at least 15,000 years ago, but possibly earlier. Around 8500 BCE seems to be the most important catalyst for domestication with the pig8, sheep and goats9, and cattle10 all having their origin somewhere around the Fertile Crescent. Even elephants were domesticated by 6000 BCE11 and the wild fowls of tropical Asia showing records of fossilization around human civilizations for the purpose of sports such as cockfighting.12 It doesn’t take more than a couple hundred years of intense selective breeding programs to domesticate an animal, but morphological changes could vary like with modern pugs coming far after the domestication of the wolf.
If we are to view these as proper ‘professions’ for archaic humans then it is very possible this story of Cain vs Abel is really the story of Fertile Crescent cultural competition between the two rivaling modes of settled lifestyles. Neither Cain, nor Abel are hunter-gatherers, giving us a probable hard cap on their birth era sometime during the onset of the Last Glacial Maximum around 25,000 years ago that pushed humans to diversify their foraging strategies.13 Prior to the end of the LGM it would have been very hard to farm given the extreme tropical desert conditions across nearly the entire fertile band. Eden might have been the only place inside that region still producing food during this period.
The dispute between Cain and Abel is ended by Cain wandering across the earth which may be reference to an event around the LGM forcing a transition in life environment for Cain. Eden would have dried up, and Cain might have gone east, toward regions in India or China that were more fertile than the Near East which was a barren desert incapable of supporting his increasingly overpopulated tribe. Given that Abel died and we all still know how to shephard our flocks, it's safe to assume Abel was not the last, nor the first, and his role was a more common profession shared by Cainites and Sethites. Therefore it isn’t even consistent that the species of ‘flocks’ Abel manages are the same as modern domesticated animals. There is the very real possibility that some archaic human species was able to learn domestication of a now extinct animal before the process of losing and recovering the knowledge of domestication. Cain’s murder of his brother might have even resulted in this animal population being wiped out along with Abel.
Returning to our story of primate evolution it was sometime around 750,000 years ago that the Homo Sapien split from the ‘Neandersovans’ - a collective term for the pre-split Neanderthals and Denisovans.14 However, there is a massive range for this dating with some proposing 300,000 as a more realistic split for Neandersovans and Homo Sapiens, but what's necessary to take away from this is the “humanness” of all three of these groups, as well as their genetic interbreeding with one another to form a distinct species of Homo Sapiens that could be further classified as “Homo Sapiens Sapiens”.
While anatomical modernity for Homo Sapiens separate from the Denisovans and Neanderthals is sometime around 300,000 years ago, and this was the period human migration out of Africa first began15, the cultural differences between groups had yet to cement. Lining up with our earliest dates for farming 100,000 years ago is the range of dates given for the relative ‘behavioral modernity’ exhibited by all three groups between 160,000-60,000 years ago.1617
Two notable behaviors associated with humans is the usage of art in a macro-religious context and the production or wearing of clothes. Rock art from 4000 meters above sea level high up on the Tibetan plateau is possibly some of the oldest art dating back ~169,000 years18, but there is scant evidence for extensive religious value in this art being childrens hands placed in mud. More complex art really develops across a number of sites sometimes after 35,000.
Found within these cave paintings is actually the earliest pictorial evidence for clothing around 30,000 years ago depicting skin drapes made from fur. Actual textile fragments only appear around 7000 BCE, but evidence shows this process of development is further back to around 27,000 years ago.19 We actually find sewing needles among the Denisova cave in Siberia dating back 50,000 years ago, some possibly as far back as 60,000, implying a much earlier genesis for this cultural modality.
Wrapping up this discussion let me quote Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan “There is the Talmudic statement in Chagigah which speaks of the 974 generations that existed before Adam. It is derived from the posek, “Something He commanded for 1000 generations.” We know that the Torah was given 26 generations after Adam, by simply counting the generations from Adam until Moses. The 26 times that the expression Ki LeOlam Chasdo occurs in the Psalm allude to these 26 generations. Subtracting 26 from 1000 yields 974. If we are to assume that the 974 generations before Adam were to have lived for the full 1000 years that Adam was intended to live, and that they gave birth at ~100 years old (Adam and Chavah had a child at ~130), that would mean that the first human forms took shape ~100,000 years ago, in line with current scientific thought.”20
Genesis 8:21-22
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Brooks AS, Yellen JE, Potts R, Behrensmeyer AK, Deino AL, Leslie DE, Ambrose SH, Ferguson JR, d'Errico F, Zipkin AM, Whittaker S, Post J, Veatch EG, Foecke K, Clark JB (2018). "Long-distance stone transport and pigment use in the earliest Middle Stone Age". Science. 360 (6384): 90–94.
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The Age of the Universe: A Torah True Perspective by Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan, pp. 14-15
Detailed and interesting. Great job.