Adam was not the first man, claims expert

JAKARTA (JP): Adam could not have been the first man in the world, nor Eve the first woman, a medical scientist has said, disputing the prevailing thought on the genesis of the first human species.

Jurnalis Uddin, in an oration marking his professorship at the School of Medicine of the Islamic YARSI University here Saturday, expounded his concept of the "theistic evolution" in which he argued that Adam could only have been one among a group chosen by Allah, the way Prophet Muhammad was chosen from among the Arabic Quraish tribe.

"Before Adam's tribe was 'established', there had not been any species of Homo sapiens in the world," he said. "What had existed before were preceding species that had become extinct."

Jurnalis, who has written almost 200 articles including Theistic evolution versus the textual school of Quranic exegesis on the emergence of species in the YARSI medical journal, first rejected the theory that "Eve was created from the rib of Adam", saying such asexual reproduction was illogical, even if seen from the perspective of the current technology of cloning. Cloning, he argued, needs at least a somatic cell and an ovum, the latter of which could not have been possessed by Adam.

Uddin delivered his speech, titled "The Creation of First Humans in the Perspectives of Koranic Text and Bioanthropology", before a senate of the university presided over by Rector Asri Rasad.

He rejected a textual interpretation of the Koran that Allah "sculpted" Adam instantly, and argued for the use of sequence of process and time in the creation of the universe and human beings.

"If on such a small scale of development such as a fetus Allah uses sequences, then on a macro scale Allah also uses sequence," he said, adding that the creation of the universe and people went through a "theistic evolution".

He also theorized on how Adam and Eve's offsprings could have survived and had children of their own.

He argued against inbreeding or co-sanguineous marriage, or crossbreeding. He said that incestuous inbreeding could not have been accepted by Adam, while crossbreeding with other species would have genetically caused the eventual extinction of Adam's species.

"The most possible scenario is that when the Cro-Magnon pre- human species was about to become extinct some 25,000 years, Allah summoned the angels and said he would create 'a creature' that would become the vicegerents on earth as the Koran says in Sura Al Baqarah," Uddin said.

The creation was in sequences, something that anthropologists called "evolution," he said. The verse min nafsin waahidah or "from one creature" (Sura An-Nisa: 4) that textual scholars argued depicted the creation of Eve from Adam's body, should instead be interpreted as "from the same species", Uddin said.

He said the Koran, revealed 14 centuries ago, contains information about the creation of the universe even before science could explain how.

Uddin said theistic evolution does not mean that Homo sapiens or modern man originated from apes as some evolutionists would have it.

Citing theories on bioanthropology, including one based on the present knowledge of chromosomes, Uddin said there was no way apes, with 48 chromosomes, could have evolved and "given birth" to men whose chromosomes are 46.

"Apes will only give birth to apes, no matter how many hundreds of millions of years have to pass," he said. "Even if there has been an extraordinary mutation of their genes, what would have emerged would be a new, entirely different species."

Born in Sulit Air, West Sumatra in 1937, Uddin graduated from Gadjah Mada University's School of Medicine in Yogyakarta in 1965. He is married to Zoraida Jurnalis, has five children, and teaches at the YARSI University. (swe)