If Adam & Eve were the first people how did different races come to be.

Question

Not a bible reader or religious, but curious as so how different races came to be when there was just two people, Adam & Eve. All answers welcome, incl. religious.

Answer 1

Remember abel and cane killed on of the other - not sure which.  And the winner went over the Mts and took a wife ie God was sneakin some creatin in other places so God not be talkin about this kind of stuff!  Adam and Eve were a fable to explain to humans how humanity came about as they (at the time did not have the knowledge (science, brains) to understand (EVOLUTION).  

Answer 2

They weren't the first people it is just a Jewish folk tale trust me scientist have proven life started in ethiopia even though the first organized country's were in Mesopotamia.

Answer 3

It's an allegory, a fable, a myth, etc.  

Adam and Eve never existed.

Answer 4

What you have to remember about the ancient hebrew texts is that they don't specify race.  Race is an artificial designation we have imposed on people.  

And despite the popular thought, since the Jews were Semetic people living in the Middle East/Levant, they would have been olive-skinned (and in fact, most are who live there)- not white.

Genetically, different colored skins & attributes evolved from natural selection.  People far from the equator developed paler skin to allow for more Vitamin D production (since the sun was less direct); people at lower latitudes developed darker skin; and one group developed extremely dark skin.

But then came wars, conquests, disease, etc.  For example, we think of Africans as all dark skinned blacks.  The dark skinned black people originate from the Ivory coast, and it was the introduction/development of farming that pushed out other tribes like the Pygmies.

Answer 5

The body changes over thousands of years to accustom to the climate, food, environment of your chosen continent or country.

Answer 6

according to the bible, the differentiation of races occurred after noah landed the arc following the flood which killed all people on earth.  noah's sons and their wives were dispersed to the various parts of the earth and created the races there.  

scientific perspective uses a much longer time line and the effects of evolution to differentiate racial variance.

Answer 7

When God cast Cain out of the land because of the death of Abel, Cain started a new nation. The Bible does not specify if there were more people after Adam & Eve were cast out of the Garden, but what I believe is there was.

Then, when the Tower of Babel was being created, God seperated people into different nations and gave them different languages so nobody could understand each other. They then went their own ways and created their own nations.

Answer 8

Evolution and the process of natural selection.  As much as most Christians don't want to admit this and those of the "Scientific" community want to believe they have cornered the market and have it all to themselves, the Bible supports evolution.  You don't think that Noah had two of each breed of dog, etc.?  Do you?  You'd have to admit, two s**+-tzus, two German Shepards, two Chihuahua's would be a bit much...

Answer 9

If the story about Adam & Eve are real.

The rest of the human races are the result of incest by the sons and daughters of Adam and Eve.

That is why many people have become atheist.

Answer 10

Because there was no Adam & Eve.  This is a simple story created to explain something that couldn't be explained at the time.  Really, 2000 or so years ago when the bible was made up they didn't even really know how babies were made, let alone have the science to explain what we now know as fact.

Humans evolved initially as a dark skinned race and due to evoloution and spreading out throughout the world skin colour changed.  Think about it - natives from warmer, sunnier climates have dark skin while closer to the north pole people have fairer skin.  In hot areas of the earth it is an advantage to have skin that does not burn or absorb too much of the sun's UV rays (dark people have a much lower rate of skin cancer than white people).  In the cooler climates white skin was an advantage as it allowed the often limited sunlight to be more readily absorbed by the body (and thus more vitamin D).   This is a bit of a generalisation and a simple explaination.  There are more factors, including avaliable food sources, lifestyles etc, but it still comes down to evolution of a species.

There is no gene that determines the colour of your skin, or your race.  It is just an evolutionary trait.  Race is really an illusion - we are all one race, we just have variations in appearence due to geographical placement.

Answer 11

many people deal with this issue by 1) badmouthing religion or 2) trying to take the story literally.  what many people do not realize is that many religions, including Catholicism, do not necessarily take this story literally.  they take it as a story representing the start of man's life on earth, with lessons to learn about morality and knowledge and sin.  in that case you can think whatever you want about how the different races came about.  you can even think of it literally, if you wish, and simply imagine that as man multiplied and spread about the earth, they naturally developed different physical characteristics, just as in the fields of history and anthropology and archealogy.

Answer 12

Perhaps there were more than one Adam and Eve.

Some paleoanthropologists postulate that humanity originated at various locations, and, eventually interbred as migrations occured.

By the way, many current anthropologists argue that the concept of race does not really exist, in terms of biology.  They point out that the various features that identify one race from another can be explained by simple biological diversity.  A people that lives together for many generations, interbreeding for millenia are bound to share genetic similarities, the same as family members often share certain visible traits.  Hence, Asians tend to look like other Asians, Africans tend to look like other Africans, Caucasions look like others, and so on.

The fact that the various races CAN interbreed and make babies PROVES that humans are, biologically, the same.  Take the example of horses.  There are many breeds of horses, and, of course, those breeds tend to share the traits that identify that breed.  But no one makes claims that there are different "races" of horses.

What we, now call a subset of humans, as a "race" may be more accurately described as a "breed."  And what is breeding but familial ties where certain traits are, either encouraged by artificial means, or, simply, allowed to happen because of geographical location?

Answer 13

we do not know what was Eve's race..she could have been Asian or something else :)

Answer 14

Adam and Eve is just a story about one of the first people to live. Whether it is true or not we don't know. Personally, although I am Christian I believe in evolution but God had a hand in it. If Adam and Eve were the first people to be, they started having families who had families and those families went all over to where they soon had no connections and became of different race. If the Adam and Eve story is true, what I am taught in religion class is that they were just one of the first people and there were many like them all over the world, creating different race and religion.