A chart from a paper by Melinda Zeder of the Smithsonian Institution. The dates are in years before present that the various animals were found to be domesticated with the core zones shaded. This paper was published without access to a study which came out just afterwards which pushed back the date on cattle domestication.
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There is quite a bit of evidence out there, a sliver of which I will reproduce in this post, that Adam was a real, historical person. There are too many coincidences coming together from our rapidly growing knowledge of antiquity to ignore. Something happened to mankind, starting in a particular place and time- but not the time predicted by either Young Earth Creationist Models or the dominant Old Earth Creationist Models. Instead, the evidence lines up extremely well with the Christ-Centered model for Early Genesis. This is part of why I say that the Christ-Centered Model is the "Last Creationist Model Standing".
The Christ-Centered Model for Adam as described in Early Genesis the Revealed Cosmology takes the view that the events in Genesis chapter two are not just re-hashing those of chapter one. Rather it is describing a smaller creation within the larger creation of chapter one. The LORD God "sets up" Adam to have an agricultural lifestyle and even provides versions of some animals which would be useful to a farming ecosystem. That is, new domestic varieties of existing plants and animals were provided to Adam. Adam was, as a part of his mission to reconcile humanity to God, given the means to "jump start" civilization from a life of hunter-gatherers to those who truly ruled the natural world.
1) He lived around eleven to thirteen thousand years ago, reading the genealogies the "long way" but with no gaps in time between listed generations. He is a figure of Christ, not the sole father of humanity. He was formed to bring the line of Messiah which would reconcile and redeem the human race, not start it.
2) He benefited from his time with the LORD God, not only in learning how to tend a garden and handle domestic livestock, but even by obtaining access to domestic versions of plants and animals. The entire world benefited from what even the fallen Adam was able to share.
3) A northern location for Eden, near the source of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, not their mouth. Afterwards Adam lived just east of the Garden.
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Now if you compare those things to the picture at the head of this post, you will see a most amazing thing. Scientists trace the origin of all four our our major domestic farm animals to the same area that the book predicts for Adam, and just after the time predicted for Adam (in this model). The world first received its major domestic stock right there.
The same can be said for many plants. Wheat was first domesticated in the same geographic and temporal region. Grapes can only be grown in a narrow zone, but this same region is in this zone as shown below...(I have circled in red where I think Noah's ark landed. You may recall he made wine soon after landing, and domesticated grapes originated in that region or just above it 10,000 or so years ago).
So the evidence we have from domestication of plants and animals indicates there was an epicenter for domestication. The account in Genesis makes the garden an epicenter of domestication. What was begun in the garden then spread to the whole earth, making civilization possible. Then, at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. Adam was an actual person with a real place and time in history. It may not have been what we were taught in Sunday School, but it was real (and in scripture) none-the-less. We may not be able to find his grave, but the echos of what he did with the gifts given to him resound in our world even today, regardless of whether or not their source is recognized.
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