Did Adam Start the "Pre-Pottery Neolithic"?

I noticed an archaeological paper with an interesting take on the formation of the so-called "pre-pottery Neolithic" This quote is found at the end of the section "The Pre-Pottery
Neolithic Period (10,500–7000 BCE), Pre-Pottery Neolithic and the problem of origins:"

The beginning of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic culture in southeastern Turkey is at least a millennium earlier than in central Anatolia. There, as in northern Syria and Iraq, it appears almost suddenly, fully developed with no detectable predecessors. The early stages of PPNA are now known from Hallan Çemi, Körtik Tepe, Gürcütepe, all sharing similar but at the same time rather sophisticated assemblages; considering the homogeneity and the high level of sophistication, it seems obvious to surmise that there must have been a long period for it to develop earlier. In our view,the early cultures of the southern Levant do lack the degree of sophistication to be the ancestral stage of these cultures;

The authors are suggesting that Southeastern Turkey was where this phase first appears, and that the traditional view that it was borrowed from the Natufian culture in the southern Levant can't be right because it was too sophisticated. Yet the culture appears out of nowhere, with no detectable predecessors. This is very similar to the time and the place I think Adam and Eve wound up after they were expelled from the garden. Here is the extent of the culture when it moved to "phase B"....




The "Pre-Pottery" Neolithic B around 7,500 B.C. , Click for Larger View

The "pre-pottery" Neolithic wasn't a culture without pots. They had gorgeous and durable pots which they fashioned from various types of stone, like this one form about the same time period as the map...




So the development of clay pots via a potter's wheel is analogous to the printing press. It didn't make something new, we had books before that. It didn't make books more beautiful, the handcrafted books books were often much more artistic. It did make them much cheaper and and more common. Over in what is now China they had been making clay pots for some time. So "pre-pottery" as a label is somewhat deceptive. The "Pre-pottery Neolithic" was a time of tremendous advancement in both tool-making and manner of life (true agriculture and animal husbandry).

The pre-pottery Neolithic started around 10,000-10,500 BC and the "B" phase around 7500 BC. It is in about the right time and place for Adam's clan after they were expelled from the Garden of Eden according to the Christ-centered model described in "Early Genesis, the Revealed Cosmology". It is a two-population model which moves Adam from "Father of the Human Race" to his more biblical role of "figure of Christ" (Romans 5:14). There were already humans here when Adam was specially formed by God to bring line of Messiah into the world. This model posits that the plants and animals the LORD God provided in the garden were meant to "jump start" civilization by making Adam a "domestic man" at the right time- when humanity was able to adopt such a lifestyle. This culture is associated with the rise of true farming and animal domestication.

The other possibility is that Adam and Eve and the animals formed for them in the garden to "jump start" domestic living were introduced a bit after the start of the Pre-pottery Neolithic A" and were responsible for the "Pre-pottery Neolithic B" which saw an increased use of farming and domestic animals. In other words, once there was a place ready for farming (because they were already sedentary and harvesting wild grains anyway) the Lord God picked that as the spot to jump-start true civilized living and introduce the line which would produce Messiah into the world. There is a lot more evidence that needs to be gathered, but so far it amazes me how the cite from the paper above fits with what I wrote in "Early Genesis, the Revealed Cosmology."

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Have We Been Getting the Gihon River Wrong This Whole Time?

By MapMaster - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3578442

The location of the Garden of Eden isn't a salvation issue. This is a good thing because none of us really knows where it was! But the text does go to some trouble to describe its location as a real place in the physical world. This shows that it wasn't meant to be a metaphor or just a story about an imaginary place. Rather it was an account of events which happened in a real place. There was a time and a place where the LORD God dwelt with His people. And it is the hope of believers that a world such as this will be manifested in this earth again, made possible and more perfect by the finished work of Christ.

What we know from the text of Genesis chapter two is that a river flowed out of the land of Eden and watered the Garden. From there is was divided unto four chiefs or heads. Even that is somewhat vague, but I think it argues for a northern location for the garden. We believe that we have a good idea as to the identity of two of the rivers - the Tigris and the Euphrates. It is the Pison and the Gihon which are a mystery. 

In my book, I suggested among other things that the Murat or the Aras river could have been the Gihon, and that could still be the case. But there is another possibility that I and everyone else I know of has overlooked. The key to identifying the Gihon is that it runs through or around "the whole land of Cush". The KJV of the bible says "Ethiopia" here but the original Hebrew says "Cush", as in one of the grandsons of Noah.  It isn't likely to be the country in Africa. Cush was a common name in the ancient Near East. For some reason, translators in English usually spell it "Kish". Can you see the city of "Kish" on the map above?

Most of the rivers in that area have since changed course, been diverted or dammed up, or some combination of those things. We don't know exactly how they flowed. There is a map at Ancient Origins which shows Kish on a more eastern branch of that division of the Euphrates, basically where the Hillah Branch of the Euphrates River is now. The point is, Kish was a very ancient settlement. And if someone wanted to identify a river in 2000 B.C. (or earlier) by saying that it was the one which ran around or through the "whole land of Cush" that would be the Cush that they meant, not the Daga Cush in eastern Anatolia and certainly not what we now call Ethiopia. 

If so then the Gihon would be this river which flowed through the territory surrounding the long abandoned city of Kish (Cush). The title "King of Kish" was considered an important one to ANE rulers. To add weight to this idea, Kish bears strong indications of Semitic influence. Don't let it confuse you that Cush was a son of Ham. "Semitic influence" refers to a culture which went beyond what we normally think of as "Semite" such as Arabs and Jews. 

So I am now leaning to the idea that the remains of the Gihon River, which was one of the "heads" or "chiefs" unto which the rivers which flowed out of the land of Eden were divided is now called the Hillah. This also raises questions about the identity of Nimrod. In the book I suggested that David Rohl was onto something when he identified Nimrod with Enmerkar of Ur and Uruk. That is still a possibility, but he was a Sumerian and he came later in history, though we don't know quite when, than a Semitic figure who was a King of Kish named Etana. It was he who "consolidated all the foreign lands" according to the Sumerian King's List.  It could be that Etana is the one we know from scripture as Nimrod. 

None of what I have written above changes my proposed locations for the Garden of Eden. The Tigris and Euphrates come close together (and may be fed by the same underground aquifer) near what is now the Keban Reservoir and Lake Hazar. Somewhere between just west of there and Lake Van to the east fit the descriptions either way one reads it. 

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The book isn't mostly about questions such as this, but something vastly more extraordinary. It is about how early Genesis points to the work and person of Christ. Directly, as the original point. Of course this could not be so unless Christ is indeed who scripture says and that same scripture is the product of Divine Inspiration.

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