Introduction: An Interconnected Historical Puzzle

Praise be to God. There is no other God.

What I want to talk about today is: when did Adam live? It’s kind of a heavy topic. To answer this question, it really connects with many other topics. To answer it, we also have to answer:

• When did Noah live?
• Where did Adam live?
• And where did Noah live?

They are all connected. I’m going to give an almost complete answer—almost complete, but not fully there—because to do all of those would probably take four Friday sermons. God willing, I’ll answer the others at other times, very likely in the following Friday sermons. But I think it’s still good enough to learn a lot just by tackling this issue alone.

The Clash Between Science and Direct Biblical Chronology

First of all there is a dispute between scientists and usually Christians. Muslims don’t go too much into this, but even Muslims will sort of lean towards the Christian perspective about when did Adam lived. Of course, scientists don’t believe in Adam at all. They say that humans—what they call the “Out of Africa” theory—evolved in Africa and then eventually, about 50,000 to 60,000 years ago, moved out of Africa to other continents as well. This is what they call “Out of Africa” theory.

Then we have on the other side the Christians who, if they are honest with their Bible, believe that Adam was created about 6,000 years ago—about 4004 BC or something like that. That is also hard to believe, even though according to the Bible they can conclude that. Cities existed before that. Before that time, there were cities in today’s Iraq, in Sumeria.

There is a place called Göbekli Tepe; that’s a location where people gathered. Let me show it, I hope it shows. It is in Turkey. This is an ancient site where people gathered for whatever dances or worship they did. It’s a weird place, but it existed 10,000 years ago.

And by the way, these are accurate. Here’s the thing: the scientific story is one thing, but scientific data we cannot dispute. It’s a fact. This place exists. It’s in the southeast of Turkey. They did their scientific methods, which is usually called radiocarbon dating, and they found that it’s about 10,000 years ago—or 11,000, or whatever it says here. Yeah, 9,500 BC. So that’s at least 11,000 years ago, if not 12, depending on where you start to count it.

It exists. It’s there. Now, what story scientists will tell or the story religious people will tell around this, that’s a different thing. But it’s a fact. Therefore, we cannot deny this fact. It’s a fact that there were human settlements, there were people before 4000 BC.

Therefore, there should be something wrong with the Bible, or the part of the Bible which talks about this.

How the Biblical Timeline Was Calculated

To tell you what’s wrong about this—because Christians generally don’t know where it went wrong, and Jews don’t know where it went wrong, and as a result, Muslims also don’t know where it went wrong—for the first time, I want to pinpoint where it went wrong.

The way the Christians calculated when Adam lived is they pretty much relied on two chapters of the Bible:

1. Chapter 11, which gives a genealogy of who gave birth to whom.

2. Chapter 5, which goes from Adam to Noah.

They combine those two chapters together and try to figure out when Adam lived. Here’s how they do it:

They start from something which they know for sure. What do they know for sure? They know for sure when Jesus lived. But Jews don’t really like to start from Jesus because they hate him. So they might start from Daniel. Daniel lived during the time of Cyrus the Great. Historians know when Cyrus the Great lived. They see that Daniel and Cyrus the Great lived at the same time according to the Bible.

So they are like, “Okay, if Cyrus the Great lived at this time, Daniel must have been alive at that time.” Then they just check who was the father of Daniel, and how old he was when he gave birth to Daniel—was he 20 years, was he 50 years?—and so on.

They go backwards until they reach what they think is Adam, which turns out to be about 4,000 years ago BC. It’s ridiculous, but that’s what they conclude. It started with the Jews, the Christians copied it, and then some Muslims—not all, but some—also took that idea. It’s totally ridiculous. I just showed you stones which existed before that, made by humans.

Identifying the Flaw: Genesis Chapter 11

Where did it go wrong?

First of all, I want to introduce what’s called the Documentary Theory about Genesis. Most scholars who study this seriously—not religious people—have concluded that Genesis is just a bunch of documents put together. Different people wrote different documents at different times, and they were put together as chapters. Someone wrote one document, someone else wrote another, they existed in different part in historical and geographical contexts, and eventually someone put them together and created what we call Genesis today.

You can see this because:

• The name of God is mentioned differently.
• The styles are different.
• It’s not like the Quran, which is one unique, complete, consistent source.
• The stories restart many times.

Different people wrote this, and Chapter 11 is one of the most problematic ones because it’s easy to tell that it’s fake. I wouldn’t say fully fake, but a scribe tried to get it right and faked a lot of stuff. Some stuff might be true, but it’s pretty much a fake chapter. It’s not inspired; it’s not by a messenger; it’s just a fake chapter.

Comparing Chapter 5 and Chapter 11

How do we know? Chapter 11 is the chapter which connects the time of Abraham with the time of Noah.

In Chapter 5, we have all the years. Let’s go to Genesis 5. Here we have all the years: Adam lived 130 years, he fathered a son just like him, and then how long Adam lived.

How do we know this chapter is correct? Because it matches with the Quran. It says Noah lived 950 years, which is what the Quran says. There’s no big reason to believe this is not correct, because it matches with the Quran.

Now, Chapter 11 doesn’t match with the Quran at all. It contradicts it by a lot.

So from Adam up to Noah, we have the correct description of how people came to be. Then in Chapter 11, whoever wrote this chapter tried to fake it.

In Chapter 10, another author describes the people who lived after Noah, but he describes them as people. Even this guy—at least he got it right. I don’t think this is an inspired chapter from God either, but at least he got it right because his logic was: “Given that all people come from Noah, let’s look at the nations.”

He looked at who exists:

• The people of Sheba in today’s Yemen.
• People up north called Magog.
• A guy called Ashkenaz, where the Ashkenazi Jews get their name.

He logically went backwards and imagined these were names of people—which very likely they were, because even Israel gets its name from their father. Israel was a person, and all the people who came after him were his descendants—called Israel. So it’s kind of logical, but he doesn’t give any years.

See, Cush and Egypt are included. He’s actually giving nations. Eventually, that group of people became a nation. It’s totally logical. I can see how that’s right. He might have gotten something wrong. So we have names of countries here. I can see how this is very likely true, even though it’s not inspired by God.

The Chronological Absurdity of Chapter 11

Now, in the next chapter, Chapter 11, the author tries to do the same thing. He actually uses those names (from Chapter 10) of people from Noah to Abraham from the previous chapter, but he actually tries to add years to them.

Here’s what he says:

Shem lived 100 years and fathered Arpachshad two years after the flood; Shem lived 500 years and had other sons; when Arpachshad lived 35 years, he fathered Cainan.

He’s taking names that were nations in Chapter 10—which means a lot of time must have passed before we get these nations. There is a big distance from Noah all the way to Abraham. We have nations by then. But here this guy imagines that those are just people and forgets that they were nations. Then he tries to imagine how many years they lived with fake numbers, telling us how long they lived and how old they were when they had children. This is totally fake.

How do we know this is fake? First of all, it contradicts itself and the rest of the Bible. And by the way, Jewish and Christian scholars know this, they just don’t make a big deal out of it. If you add all the years from Noah all the way to Abraham (when Terah lived and fathered Abram), you know what happens? Abraham was born when Noah was still alive according to this.

If Abraham was born while Noah was still alive when he left his homeland to go to the chosen land, why didn’t he take Noah with him? Did Noah not agree with him? Was Noah not already a chosen prophet and messenger towards the end of his life? Why would Noah not go with him, or why would Abraham go against the community where Noah was the leader?

The Quran tells us that Abraham told his people not to worship idols, that they were wrong, and he left them. They tried to put him in the fire to kill him. But according to the Bible, Noah was the leader of that community because he was still alive. In those times, people respected their parents. So according to this, Noah would have been the leader of that idol-worshipping community, which would make Noah a bad person. That makes no sense. Both the Bible and the Quran tell us that Noah was a good person.

Historical Textual Manipulation

Scholars know that these don’t match. So what the Jews did secretly—that’s why there are two versions of the Bible—is they changed it. To remove that contradiction (they didn’t fix it at all, they were just trying to remove the contradiction), they added 100 years to all of these. That’s why today we have two versions:

• The Septuagint version
• The (Jewish version) Masoretic text

In that one, they added 100 years to all of them because they noticed the contradiction, just so that Abraham could live after Noah, not during Noah.

This shows that they manipulated it, which shows that even this could have been manipulated in the beginning. So this is totally fake, first of all. It’s taking some ideas from the previous chapter where it talks about nations, tries to imagine them as people, and then adds years thinking that it has to do what Genesis 5 does, which gives years all the way to Noah, but not later.

From Adam to Noah, Genesis does give us the years. But there are no correct years in the Bible from Noah to Abraham. These years we can see are fake because according to these years, Abraham and Noah lived at the same time, and it’s totally not possible. Because the Quran tells us Abraham lived in an idol-worshipping community. He preached to them, they rejected him, and they wanted to burn him. Lot left with him. In the meantime, what was Noah doing if he was alive? By the way, all of this Abraham did when he was young, which means Noah was still alive according to this, which is not correct.

Quranic Clarification on Abraham’s Father

Just to drive the point home, I think God mentioned in the Quran intentionally the name of the father of Abraham. Other than that, I don’t see a reason why we would have the name of the father of Abraham, just so that we know that this chapter is fake.

If we go to the Quran in Surah 6, Verse 74, it says:

“Recall that Abraham said to his father, Azar, ‘How could you worship statues as gods? I see that you and your people have gone far astray.'”

According to the Quran, the father of Abraham is a bad person and his name is Azar. Why would God tell us the name? God doesn’t tell us the name of the fathers of other messengers. God tells us the name because God knows that Jews have changed stuff.

Let me give you an example: God knew that Christians will call Jesus the Son of God. What does God say in the Quran? It almost always makes sure to say, “Jesus, the son of Mary.” Why does God say that? He doesn’t need to say that; He could have said just “Jesus.” But He repeats it and emphasizes the correct version so that we don’t fall prey or make the mistake of following the Bible in that issue. It’s sort of a correction of the Bible. If the Bible is correct, the Quran doesn’t necessarily have to correct it. But if it’s something wrong, the Quran makes sure to correct it.

That’s why we see the name of the father of Abraham, Azar, here. When you go to the fake chapter of Genesis here, you see that the father of Abraham is Terah. It’s a totally different name. It doesn’t have any connection linguistically; it doesn’t have the same meaning in the Jewish version versus the Arabic version. If you translate them, it still doesn’t make sense; they have different meanings. So it’s totally a fake name. This shows that this chapter is fake.

Once you exclude this chapter from the attempt to find out when Adam lived, then you are free to be objective and really find out when Adam lived. This is what’s wrong with why the Jews got it wrong about when Adam lived, along with a lot of Christians and some Muslims.

By the way, according to this, Terah is a good guy—Terah took Abraham to migrate and all of that. According to the Quran, we know that Abraham’s father is a bad guy. Even some Muslims were so duped by this that they thought, “Oh, maybe Azar is the uncle of Abraham,” because they couldn’t understand why the name is different. They said maybe Azar is the uncle, because sometimes people use the word “father” for uncle in today’s Arabic. But not in Quranic Arabic! The Quran is very clear: every time it uses the word “father” in the Quran, it’s always the father, never the uncle. Why would it be the uncle when it says father? God doesn’t switch words.

What I’m saying is, first of all, we should forget about this chapter—and this doesn’t mean that other chapters are wrong—we should forget about this chapter. What we are left with is to see what the scientists say: can we use scientific facts to find out when Adam lived? But before we go there, let’s repent. Toubou ila Allah.

The Scientific Narrative and Genetic Mixing

Praise be to God. There is no other god except God.

Okay. So, what about the scientific version?

Scientists do have the data and the facts correct. However, their story is not fully correct. I just want to say what the position of the scientists of today generally is—and when I say scientists, I mean people of this field, whoever studies evolution. According to them, people came out of Africa and then they went into other continents and evolved—like even in Africa, they evolved anyway.

The problem with this is that even before they knew there were problems with this—some of the guys already know, probably like 10 or 15 years ago I said that people are mixed with what I call sort of animal-like hominids or human-shaped animals, what today they call Neanderthals and Denisovans and some other ones. Before they had discovered this, I told the submitters back in Kosovo when I was preaching there that people have animal genes in them (before scientists discovered that). Then, within five or 10 years, they discovered it.

What they discovered is that the story which they believed is not fully correct, because humans had mixed:

• in Europe, they had mixed mostly with Neanderthals;
• in Asia, humans had mixed mostly with Denisovans.

Basically, they found genes of Neanderthals in Europeans, and they found genes of Denisovans in some very East Asian people. But the scientists still stuck to their story.

The “Ghost DNA” Contradiction

I thought, “Wait a minute, why do they stick to their story?” Because they still hadn’t found that even in Africa they are mixed with whatever animal was there—well, human-shaped animal—and recently they have actually found it. However, they still don’t admit it.

Here is their version of the story: according to them, people moved out of Africa and went to Europe and Asia (of course, some of them stayed in Africa), and there they got mixed with Neanderthals and Denisovans, with about 1 to 4% of animal genes. I’m calling them animals—whatever they are, like the Quran calls them later Gog and Magog once they are mixed.

So they got mixed, and their prediction came wrong. They predicted that if this story is correct, then we should not find animal genes in Africans, because Neanderthals only lived in Europe and Asia. So when people moved there and mixed with them, that means Africans didn’t get the chance to mix with them. They predicted that Africans shouldn’t have animal genes.

But recently, very recently, they found that even Africans have animal genes—not Neanderthal genes, not Denisovan genes, but some other sort of human-shaped animal. They haven’t informed the public yet, but they call it “ghost DNA.”

Scientists can be tricky: whenever they don’t understand something, they call it ghost, dark, hidden, stuff like that. They do the same thing in physics. Let me say, if they don’t understand why the universe is expanding faster than they expected, they call it dark energy. It’s just a made-up thing; it doesn’t exist. They just decided to call it like that, because they don’t understand. Basically, their model doesn’t fit with the data they found out. So they will invent a third thing to sort of make sense, but that third thing doesn’t even exist; it’s just a hidden variable. So they call it now ghost DNA, meaning: “Oh, wait a minute, there are genes—animal genes, human-shaped hominin genes—in Africans as well, but we’re just going to call it ghost DNA because we still don’t know what it is.”

Even before what they thought were monkeys—which they think we are descendants of—when people moved out of the Middle East, when Adam’s sons moved out of the Middle East and went to Africa, they mixed with that human-shaped animal a little bit. It’s not a lot; in all cases, it’s not a lot. We’re mostly human. We’re actually fully human, but we have some animal genes.

In my case, for example, this (arm) hair is unnecessary—it’s just for animals, but anyway, I have it. I got it from Neanderthals, I guess.

People get different diseases from that. Some people have diabetes, some people are not as smart, some people are not as pretty. We got all of these mostly from those animal genes. If it’s visible, actually, you’re more lucky, because if it’s not visible, you probably have it somewhere else—in some kind of immune deficiency or whatever it could be. It’s even more dangerous inside your body.

Reinterpreting the Data: Middle Eastern Origin

Back to the topic: the only story which makes sense with the data which the scientists are providing is that humans started in the Middle East. During that time, there were human-shaped animals in Africa, in Europe, and in Asia. As humans spread, they mixed with those, and that’s it.

However, the data also fits their story as long as they sort of call part of it ghost genes and don’t explain it. According to the data which the scientists have provided, for scientists and us, we can fit both stories into the data. Their story, though, doesn’t fully fit; there’s a part which they call the ghost part. Our story fits more. However, they don’t want to change their mind. I’m quite sure they will change it because there’s no other explanation.

Anyway, what I want to say is that the way I knew about this partly is through the Bible. The scientists cannot even say, “By the way, we found out that Neanderthals have mixed a little bit with humans, and that’s not in the Bible.” Actually, that’s in the Bible!

Biblical Narrative & Lifespan Shortening

If we go to Genesis 6 it says:

“And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the ground and daughters were born unto them, that the sons of God…”

And this is what they called the Neanderthals, and then later on they called Nephilim. Look at the name here: Nephilim are kind of called the sons of God because people didn’t understand what they were.

Imagine: we are sons of Adam, we are people, we’re living it, we’re kind of spreading through the earth, and we meet these new guys—we don’t even know where they come from. They cannot speak to us; they have basic language like dogs, or more like monkeys. They look almost exactly like humans, like stronger bones and stronger muscles, and you can see why the daughters of men would be attracted to them.

So the mixing happened both ways. One way is the daughters of men slept with them—not all of them—but that was enough to put the genes in the whole human society, because then the children would get married with someone else and stuff like that.

So what I’m saying is, here it’s explaining that the women, the daughters of Adam, got mixed. But the other side also happened, which is us. This kind of led to Gog and Magog— what the Quran calls later Gog and Magog.

I’m going to continue to read here:

“…that the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all that they chose. And Jehovah (God) said: ‘My spirit shall not strive with man forever, for that he also is flesh; yet shall his days be 120 years.'”

Look, now God is even explaining why the life was shortened. Noah lived 950 years; now God is saying from now on your lifespan will be 120 years—much shorter. Why? Because they got animal genes, and those animals lived 20 or 30 years—like Neanderthals live 30 years. So you get those genes.

By the way, they got benefits from it. They got so much protection from certain things. I think white people use vitamin D a little bit better when they go to the sun; they probably got it from Neanderthals. So they got benefits from it. However, all those benefits came at the cost of shortening the life. Meaning that okay, now you have different genes, a better immune system, like you can get protected from mosquitoes and from that, which children of Adam didn’t have before because Adam was created in a perfect place where he didn’t need that. God says that He created Adam in the perfect form; he didn’t need protection from all of these very earthly things. But they got that protection by mixing a little bit with these animals. So it was a good thing in some ways, but it came at a cost: life became much shorter because when you have an immune system, it’s going to spend energy to protect you. So it’s going to shorten your life, protecting you now at the expense of shortening it later.

Then it says:

“The Nephilim were in the earth in those days…”

Nephilim in Hebrew means giants or strong people.

“…Nephilim were in the earth in those days and also after that, when the sons of God…”

meaning whatever creatures they couldn’t understand which looked like humans,

“…came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them; the same were the mighty men that were of old, the men of renown.”

And:

“…Jehovah saw the wickedness of men.”

Basically what happened: some females got attracted to the animalistic male behavior of those creatures and they had children. And those later became Gog and Magog. Even these can be called Gog and Magog. They become Gog and Magog in Europe and Asia, but like in in Africa, they don’t have a name. It’s something else.

The opposite also happened. The sons of man, meaning men, children of Adam, got mixed with some of them. Very small portion, probably like one in a thousand, one in a 100, whoever did it (the bad boys). It happened a little for slightly different reasons because the men were not really as strong. So I don’t think the females were as attracted to them, or they (sons of men) were not as attracted to the females of Neanderthals. Because they were not as good-looking. What happened there is they usually would take them for slaves and something would happen. So basically they would be like “Oh, here’s a woman I can kind of force her to wash my clothes, if they had clothes”. But eventually they might have had children so the reason was slightly different and we are the descendants of those people. So the mixing happened both ways.

Evaluating Science and Biblical History

Now, why am I bringing this up? Because as you can see, the Bible also tells us what scientists found much later.

Now, back to finding when Adam lived: what I’m saying is scientists cannot complain that the Bible got it wrong. Chapter 11 got it wrong by the way, that’s fair. But to say that the Bible got it wrong because we now discovered that they are mixed. Well, the Bible already knew this. We can already find it in the Bible. But also, religious people don’t have a very good argument to say that those facts are not true, because it’s a fact that people existed before that anyway.

Why weren’t they able to find when Adam lived until recently, until I found out? I’ve told a lot of you many times before, but today I’m making it the main topic.

Why can’t the scientists find out?

Because they are looking at the wrong data, the wrong evidence. When scientists try to figure out when was the first human, what they look for is bones. As we can see, bones can be misleading because people got mixed with animals.

In the early times, you can find a bone which is 30% hominin or 30% Neanderthal and 70% human. That’s going to look like, “Oh, there’s evolution!” No, there’s a mixing.

So the bones can be misleading, even though there is a clear distinction between Humans and Neanderthals and Denisovans. There are lots of similarities as well, so they will use that to still stick to their story. Eventually, I believe scientists will come to agree with this gradually—they are stubborn.

They are looking in the wrong evidence. They are looking for bones, and they are looking for tools usually: “Oh, did they use stone tools? Did they use knives?” They look for those things to distinguish when the first modern human evolve. Because they are looking at the wrong data, they will not be able to find it like that.

Now let me tell you what they should look for. First, they have to analyze what is the difference between Adam, or humans, and those human-shaped animals. I want to be more nice to Neanderthals because they are not really fully animals. They are kind of like human-shaped; they have a lot of human emotions. I think the name is hominin, meaning human-shaped. I like to use the word humanoid, but then they use it for robots in Japan and China. Is someone suggesting any name?

Bigfoot. No its not Bigfoot, Faisal. Bigfoot is another thing. And we don’t know if they have big feet. It doesn’t exist, by the way. You need a certain amount of population to have a Bigfoot; Bigfoot is a mythical creature which is supposed to exist in California or West America.

Homo Sapiens. Homo Sapiens includes humans as well as previous creatures, so it’s a very general term. I think they call them hominin, meaning human-like, creatures which look like humans, because Homo sapiens means smart humans, I think, and we’re not automatically agreeing that they are smart anyway. So I’m just going to stick to human-shaped animals. Sorry for being not nice to Neanderthals—part of that is us. I’m just going to call them human-shaped animals until we find a better name. They do deserve a better name, though, because I don’t think they are actually fully animals anyway.

It’s really hard to tell from the bones. Yeah, you can tell the differences, but there was mixing as well. So the scientists will say, “Oh, there was evolution,” because we can see some cases in between. While according to the Bible, we can tell them, “No, there was just mixing.”

Both stories fit the data. You can believe this and the data will fit, and you can believe the other story and the data will still fit. So you cannot tell the difference of what really happened if you look at the bones.

The Fundamental Difference: Language and Realistic Art

To understand that, we have first to understand what is the fundamental difference between Adam and those human-shaped animals, which are Neanderthals and Denisovans.

The basic difference, according to the Quran, is naming things. The Quran says God created Adam and He taught him how to name things. So Adam came up with names of things: “This is a tree, that’s a river, that’s a mountain, that’s the sky.” Adam came up with these. Neanderthals couldn’t name things; even angels couldn’t name things. Almost all of us know the story where God tells the angels to tell the names, and they don’t know the names. God says, “Okay, so Adam knows the names,” and animals don’t know the names (Quran 2:31-33).

The basic difference is language, but I’m talking about names. Can a dog name the eye? Could a Neanderthal say “I”? No. That’s the basic difference: Adam and the children of Adam, including us, can name things. We can give names to things; we can create an expression, a symbol, a sign which represents something else, a category of things. That’s naming.

The ability to name things is fundamentally the same thing as art. I’m talking about realistic art, not abstract art. Even a monkey can do abstract art—express anger, express emotions, express brighter colors, darker colors—that’s different. I’m talking about realistic art where you draw a human being, you draw a tree, you draw a car. You can never do that unless you name it.

Even with AI today, AI never knew how to draw new things until first they taught it how to speak, meaning the language model. After that, automatically we got those software which can create pictures and photos. That’s just an imitation, but that’s for another day.

The Theory of Forms

What I’m saying is it’s connected, because you cannot imagine the concept of “pens” unless you have the word “pen.” Once you think of all the pens of the world and you know what distinguishes a pen from a non-pen, and once you realize what it is that makes a pen a pen, that’s when you actually have the ability to name it. But also, because you know enough about it, you also have the ability to draw it and paint it.

The basic difference between Adam and the human-shaped animals is that the children of Adam can communicate names of things. And art is an expression of that. Because, if humans had tools, that tool could have been used because it just felt good. Neanderthals probably used stones to skin animals—they removed the skin from the animal, they used the stone. Neanderthals could do that. But could he draw a cat? He never could, because he was a human-shaped animal; he was not a child of Adam.

Only the children of Adam can name things, and as a result, only the children of Adam can make art—realistic art: like drawing a human being, drawing a cow, drawing a sheep. Only humans can do that. Angels wouldn’t want to do that—God created them for real—and animals don’t know how to. The only creatures which does it, are the children of Adam.

The conclusion is that to know when Adam was created and when Adam lived, all we have to do is look at until when did we have art. So that’s what I did. I asked AI to do it for me because it’s easier. To answer that question, we have to look at art. This will definitely answer the question: not looking at bones, not looking at tools—we have to look at art. When did we have art? When did Adam live?

Cave Painting Evidence Across Eras

I asked this question to AI:

“Going back to the past, during every 5,000 years, give me the two most reliable dated examples of cave paintings. Once you cannot find examples further into the past, stop. Give me a full list chronologically from the most recent ones to the most ancient ones. Do not include the ones which only have hand stencils.”

By the way, hand stencils are these. The reason why I excluded these as examples of art is because even Neanderthals potentially could have done this. All the way these were done is they had something in their mouth—probably it started with blood, but this is with paint—and they put their hand on the wall and blew into it. That’s how that was done. That’s kind of easy, and probably a monkey can do it.

Example of hand stencil “painting”

They might have learned it with blood, because in the past those creatures used to drink blood. Let’s say they had a mouthful of blood while eating, they put their hand on the wall, they sneezed, and they saw the wall: “Oh, that’s interesting, there’s a shape of a hand there.” So they kept doing it.

These are very likely human hands; however, what I’m saying is even Neanderthals can potentially do them very likely. So let’s exclude them; we don’t want to rely on things which are not reliable. So I told AI:

“Do not include the ones which only have hand stencils or abstract line figures…”

Because even a Neanderthal might have done some lines by accident, or he could have done an X by accident if he was angry and just scratched the wall.

“…so do not include hand stencils or abstract lines—only realistic pictures. Do not include the same examples twice if their date ranges overlap through many 5,000-year periods, unless there’s no other example.”

This is what I asked AI, and this is what AI gave me as an answer: a list of cave paintings—the list was produced by AI, but the cave paintings were produced by humans—which we definitely know must be by humans. They cannot be done by human-shaped animals; only humans can do these.

• 0 to 5,000 years ago: We have an example here in Somaliland of what looks like cows. Definitely human-made. A monkey cannot do this; only a human can do this. Why cave paintings? Because those were protected. People did these outside of caves too, but the rain would wash them away. In the caves, they were more protected.

• 5,000 to 10,000 years ago: We have this in Argentina: a human, a tree, what looks like the sun, some other humans, and these look like llamas or ostriches. Then in Peru, we have some other animals from 5,000 to 10,000 years ago.

What does this show? This means that until 10,000 years ago, there were children of Adam. It cannot be that Adam lived 4,000 years ago; he must be beyond 10,000 years ago.

Let’s continue and see where it stops. Basically, where it stops, probably a few years before that is when Adam existed.

• 10,000 to 15,000 years ago: We have this in France—a beautiful drawing. By the way, these are people who never trained in art; this was probably his first or second painting. He never went to school. Imagine sending a child today to school and asking him to draw a cow or a bull—could he do this good of a job? Probably not. This shows that these were actually fully developed humans; they were not evolving. They don’t look very good only because they are on a stone and drawn with fire, not with electricity. They started a fire, someone helped with the fire, and he drew a picture—and it was probably his first picture. Look how good it is.

• 15,000 to 20,000 years ago: Again, very advanced art in France. This looks like horses with some dots, or donkeys or whatever existed then in Europe. Picasso probably likes to do some of this stuff—look at Picasso photos and you’ll see similar things, or maybe he stole the ideas from here.

• 20,000 to 25,000 years ago: Again, a cave in France with shapes of heads of horses and lions.

• 25,000 to 35,000 years ago: Here we have animals again from 25,000 years ago. Some of the caves go over many years: someone drew something, and then 5,000 years later someone saw that and added something to it. But scientists can know exactly by carbon dating when each of them was done. Here we have a cave in Romania—look, the shape of the cow is amazing here. It’s really hard to do these shapes. You can see it’s sophisticated shapes; they didn’t forget the tail details.

• 35,000 to 40,000 years ago: We have these in Indonesia. This looks like a pig; this looks like a cow. Now, these are a little bit questionable because some say that these are even older, but some say that these are around this age.

We can see that until about 40,000 years ago, there were definitely humans. No one else could have done this except for humans—except for children of Adam—because they are the only ones who have the ability for art, and they are also the only ones who have the ability to name things.

The conclusion from this is that the children of Adam, or Adam, must have been created or existed before 40,000 years ago.

Archaeological Statue Data and Neanderthal Timeline

I wanted to do the same thing with ancient sculptures or statues. Here I had a bigger advantage because with paintings, some include different things done by different people, so it’s hard to classify them as one painting or two or three. But with sculptures, you can classify them: this is one sculpture, so basically you can count them.

I asked AI something slightly different to give me a better picture. Question to AI about the number of statues:

“Please tell me, to the best of your ability, how many human-made statues or sculptures have archaeologists found for each 5,000-year period from 5,000 years ago until 60,000 years ago…”

I excluded the first 5,000 years because there are millions of sculptures now; I just wanted to know about the past ones.

“…Include only the cases for which there is a scientific consensus?”

Because some of them are debatable: they found something which looks like a flute in Slovenia, and some say it’s just a bone which was bitten by a wolf, while some say it was used as a flute. So those are questionable. I wanted only the ones where scientists fully agree.

Here is the answer:

Age (years ago)	Estimated number of accepted human-made statues
5,000–10,000	500–1,500+
10,000–15,000	8–15
15,000–20,000	15–25
20,000–25,000	90–110
25,000–30,000	50–70
30,000–35,000	20–30
35,000–40,000	15–20
40,000–45,000	2–5
45,000–50,000	0
50,000–55,000	0
55,000–60,000	0

These are sculptures which people have found to exist from that time. How do they know that they were made in that time? Because they have carbon dating and also the layers of the ground and all of that; there are different methods.

And look where it ends: after 45,000 years ago, zero. Zero after that.

Now, I wouldn’t rush to conclude 45,000 exactly, because maybe those statues which were found were done at 39,000 years ago instead of 41,000, as there’s a slight range there. So, we cannot know the last one for sure. But based on the sculptures, we can conclude Adam must have lived before 40,000 years ago. Because definitely at 35,000 to 40,000 years ago there were sculptures, and we know these can only be done by humans. Which means that Adam must have existed by then.

So again, we’re reaching a similar conclusion: about 40,000 years ago, sculptures stop; about 40,000 years ago, cave paintings stop. Which means that Adam was probably soon before that—45,000 years ago, 50,000 years ago, something like that. It took some time for people to spread and start painting. Because a lot of those are in France; it took people time to get there.

This gives us the lower limit; now I want to know the upper limit.

The Recurring Pattern of Human Conquest

As scientists generally know, when humans came—what they used to call Cro-Magnon, but they don’t use that term anymore, though it was a more modern term—basically, the ancestors of humans, when Cro-Magnon came, they killed the Neanderthals. This is basically human behavior always.

What happened when Europeans went to America? What did they do? They killed pretty much all of them, even though they were not even Neanderthals—they were humans. But if a group of people finds another group which is a little bit weaker, they will kill them. How fast did they go extinct? About 200 or 300 years.

Same thing in Australia: they went there, there were people there—Aboriginals or whatever they call them, natives of that country—and what happened? They almost went extinct. If it wasn’t for the state, they would go extinct, they would vanish. It’s just that the state protects them, otherwise they would vanish. Why? Because that’s what humans do.

So the same thing happened to Neanderthals: humans came into existence, and they killed them all, pretty much. They also had reasons, like if your sister or daughter sleeps with a Neanderthal, of course you’re going to kill them. Whatever, I’m joking now. But what I’m saying is, they killed them anyway. They killed them anyway because they didn’t actually see them as humans—they saw them as animals. So one way to know when humans started to exist is just to check when Neanderthals stopped existing.

Question to AI about Neanderthals:

“Please tell me, to the best of your ability, how many Neanderthals lived for each 5,000-year period from 5,000 years ago until 100,000 years ago.”

Here we have a table produced by AI:

Years ago	Estimated living Neanderthals
5,000–10,000	0
10,000–15,000	0
15,000–20,000	0
20,000–25,000	0
25,000–30,000	0
30,000–35,000	0
35,000–40,000	500–3,000
40,000–45,000	3,000–10,000
45,000–50,000	8,000–20,000
50,000–55,000	10,000–30,000
55,000–60,000	15,000–40,000
60,000–65,000	20,000–50,000
65,000–70,000	20,000–60,000
70,000–75,000	15,000–50,000
75,000–80,000	15,000–45,000
80,000–85,000	15,000–40,000
85,000–90,000	10,000–35,000
90,000–95,000	10,000–30,000
95,000–100,000	10,000–25,000

The population didn’t change much over tens of thousands of years; depending on the climate and ice ages, sometimes they produced more, sometimes less. It didn’t change much. Then, when humans came into existence—which we already know from the paintings should be around this time—look, the Neanderthal population almost immediately starts to vanish. It goes to 8,000, then 3,000, 500, then zero. Within about 10,000 or 20,000 years, they go extinct. They vanish!

Why? Because humans killed them, or gave them diseases, or starved them by taking all the animals they hunted.

According to this, we can see that humans (Adam) must have existed before 55,000 years ago. In the other case, we found the lower limit; here, we are finding the upper limit, the more ancient time. Between those two limits, that’s where Adam was created. According to this table, Adam was probably created around 50,000 to 55,000 years ago. I know exactly when he was created, but I’m just kind of following the logic anyway.

Synthesis & Conclusion

What is the conclusion from all these tables?

• Based on ancient cave paintings, Adam must have lived before about 40,000 years ago.
• Based on ancient statues, Adam must have lived before about 40,000 years ago.
• Based on Neanderthal population estimates, Adam must have lived after about 55,000 years ago.

If we combine all these three facts, we reach the conclusion that Adam lived between about 40,000 years ago and 55,000 years ago. Between this time, Adam must have lived according to scientific facts.

God willing, in other Friday sermons I’ll tell you from the Quran exactly when Adam and Noah lived. The Quran tells us specifically—not a range, but the exact year. God willing, you’ll enjoy that even more. From science, we concluded approximately when Adam must have lived.

For those who have to do the contact prayer, do the contact prayer. The rest of you, peace be upon you.

 
Friday Sermon by: Alban Fejza, Online Congregation Director