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45 named after the discovery site in Germany) who can be traced there to 100,000 years ago. But, as skeletal remains discov- ered in recent years in caves in Israel reveal, Neanderthals were migrating through the Near East at least some 115,000 years ago, and Cro-Magnons had dwelt in the area already 92,000 years ago. Where do The Adam and Eve, the first created humans, and Adam and Eve, the progenitors of Seth and Enosh, fit into all that? What light do the Sumerian King Lists and the Bible shed on the issue, and how does it all correlate to modern scientific discoveries? While fossil remains discovered in Africa, Asia, and Eu- rope suggest that hominids first appeared in southeastern Af- rica and then branched out to the other continents possibly half a million years ago, the true predecessors of today's humanity made their appearance in southeastern Africa some- what later. The genetic markers for Homo sapiens, first stud- ied through the Mitochondrial DNA that is passed by the female alone, and then through studies of Nuclear DNA that is inherited from both parents (reports at the April 1994 an- nual meeting of the American Association of Physical An- thropologists) indicate that we all stem from a single "Eve" that had lived in southeast Africa between 200,000 and 250,000 years ago. Studies released in May 1995 of the Y chromosome indicate a _ single "Adam" ancestor some 270,000 years ago. The Sumerian data, we have concluded, places the creation of The Adam at about 290,000 years ago—well within the time scales for the two progenitors that modern science now suggests. How long the stay at the Garden of Eden, the attain- ment of the ability to procreate, the expulsion back to south- east Africa, and the Cain-Abel birth had taken place, the ancient texts do not state. Fifty thousand years? One hundred thousand years? Whatever the exact time lapse, it seems evi- dent that the "Eve" who was back in southeast Africa, bear- ing offspring to The Adam, fits well chronologically with the current scientific data. With those early humans gone from the stage, the time came for the specific Adam and his line to appear. According to the Bible the pre-Diluvial patriarchs, who enjoyed life spans ranging in most cases almost 1,000 years, account for ancestor some When Paradise Was Lost