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Anthropologists have now determined that the earliest mitochondrial DNA can be traced back to an oasis of the Makgadikgadi–Okavango palaeo-wetland of southern Africa, in Botswana, just south of the Zambezi River.  Anatomically modern humans originated there around 200 thousand years ago, and continued to live in that isolated area for 70,000 years, before a green corridor opened up and enabled some of them to migrate both northeast and southwest.  Was this the Garden of Eden, and was that when archetypal Adam & Eve left the Garden?

Eva K. F. Chan, et al., “Human origins in a southern African palaeo-wetland and first migrations,” Nature (28 Oct 2019), online at https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1714-1 ;  Kerry Grens, “The First Modern Humans Came from What Is Now Botswana: Study,” The Scientist, Oct 28, 2019, online at https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/the-first-modern-humans-came-from-what-is-now-botswana--study-66643

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Those pictures are NOT necessarily representative of conditions from 200K years ago.  Some theorize of uniformitarianism but there could have been catastrophic upheavals before and after that time.  There could have been shifting deserts, flooding, bulging land masses, ruptures in the surface, etc.

It is ridiculous for some to insist that God has to depend on evolution for "forming" the bodies of Adam and Eve.  The creation of the Earth could have taken a lot less time (maybe 30K years).

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1 hour ago, Tacenda said:

Does this falsify Joseph Smith's statement that Missouri is where the Garden of Eden was? 

Not really, this is not the Garden of Eden as we define it (variations include the consecrated paradise where no death occurred or the consecrated place where covenant man first practiced the Gospel).  We don’t know enough about what happened before or after the Garden to insist the stories we have force certain locations, imo. 

Edited by Calm
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8 hours ago, Tacenda said:

Does this falsify Joseph Smith's statement that Missouri is where the Garden of Eden was? 

No, not at all.  What it does do is to place the earliest known human mtDNA at an origin point in Botswana 200,000 years ago.

The Missouri location (for which we have no date) was merely the place in which an endowment ceremony was held to inaugurate the sequence still in effect today.  It has to do with saving temple ordinances.  The two separate locations and occasions are only related as archetypal events.

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13 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Yeh, adams may be a dime a dozen.  😕

It also begs the question: What, exactly, does it mean to be human? I'm a biological anthropologist so my thoughts on that may be more broad than the non anthropologist. I noticed that your article specifically said "anatomically" modern humans. Since we have almost exactly the same body plan as Homo erectus, then I assume "anatomically modern" refers to differences in our skulls (we all have to have chins, vertical foreheads and appropriate brain size with globular braincase, and some other less obvious differences.) Since we all have some DNA from earlier forms of humans, maybe we should think in terms of modern behavior rather than anatomy when we think about Adam and Eve--especially in light of the fact that they grew their own food and had domesticated animals. 🤔

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1 hour ago, katherine the great said:

It also begs the question: What, exactly, does it mean to be human? I'm a biological anthropologist so my thoughts on that may be more broad than the non anthropologist. I noticed that your article specifically said "anatomically" modern humans. Since we have almost exactly the same body plan as Homo erectus, then I assume "anatomically modern" refers to differences in our skulls (we all have to have chins, vertical foreheads and appropriate brain size with globular braincase, and some other less obvious differences.) Since we all have some DNA from earlier forms of humans, maybe we should think in terms of modern behavior rather than anatomy when we think about Adam and Eve--especially in light of the fact that they grew their own food and had domesticated animals. 🤔

Yes, and every bit as smart or cunning as we are today.

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