A Brief History of Mankind
By
Naseer Ahmed, New Age Islam
28 January
2023
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The Broad Outline Of The History Of Mankind
From The Quran And From Science Match Very Closely. The Significant Difference
In Detail Is Only In One Aspect. While The Quran Speaks About The Creation Of
Adam Or Modern Man, Science Considers That Modern Man Evolved From Among The
Homo Sapiens.
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Pre-Historic
Man
Dahr is the Arabic word for
"time" from the very beginning of the Universe. We know from science
that time began an estimated 13.8 billion years ago. Human beings came into
existence only an estimated 2.5 million years ago and have therefore existed
only for a very small period in Dahr. For about 2.43 million years,
man’s existence was not even worth a mention. The Quran says about Man
(Al-Insan) during this period:
هَلْ أَتَىٰ عَلَى الْإِنسَانِ حِينٌ مِّنَ الدَّهْرِ
لَمْ يَكُن شَيْئًا مَّذْكُورًا
(76:1) Has
there not been over Man (هَلْ أَتَىٰ عَلَى الْإِنسَانِ) a period of Time in Dahr(حِينٌ
مِّنَ الدَّهْرِ),
when he was not a thing ( لَمْ يَكُن شَيْئًا) worth mentioning?( مَّذْكُورًا)
What Yuval
Noah Harari, a historian says, echoes the same. He says, “There were humans
long before there was history. Animals much like modern humans first appeared
about 2.5 million years ago. But for countless generations, they did not stand
out from the myriad other organisms with which they shared their habitats. The
most important thing to know about prehistoric humans is that they were
insignificant animals with no more impact on their environment than gorillas,
fireflies or jellyfish.”
Modern
Man and His Exceptionalism
Harari
says, “Then about 70,000 years ago, according to the most commonly believed
theory, accidental genetic mutations changed the inner wiring of the brains of
Sapiens, enabling them to think in unprecedented ways and to communicate using
an altogether new type of language. We might call it the Tree of Knowledge
mutation. Why did it occur? As far as we can tell, it was a matter of pure
chance. But it’s more important to understand the consequences of the Tree of
Knowledge mutation than its causes. The Cognitive Revolution kick-started
history”. By history, Harari means the
most distant time in the past from which we begin to see in archaeological and
fossil evidence significant achievements of mankind. It is not what we normally
understand the beginning of history as a written record of our life which
started only around 4000 BC.
There is
absolutely no doubt about human exceptionalism from the time of the “Cognitive
Revolution” (CR), which resulted in us acquiring unique intellectual and
cognitive capabilities that enable us to understand at the micro level the
nature and attributes of everything, as well as the design, the order, and the
rationality built into the natural world at the macro level. This event is called the “Cognitive
Revolution” because it happened suddenly, and not as a slow process spread over
thousands of years, and ever since, there is little change. Most researchers
maintain that the people who drove the Neanderthals to extinction 45000 years
ago, settled in Australia 50,000 years ago, and carved the Stadel lion-man
41000 years ago, were as intelligent, creative and sensitive as we are. If we
were to come across the artists of the Stadel Cave, we could learn their
language and they ours. We’d be able to explain to them everything we know –
from the adventures of Alice in Wonderland to the paradoxes of quantum physics
– and they could teach us how their people view the world.
The above
description resonates with the Quranic description of the creation of Adam and
his progeny and the exceptionalism of this new creation:
(2:30) Behold, thy Lord said to the angels:
"I will create a vicegerent on earth." They said: "Wilt Thou
place therein one who will make mischief therein and shed blood?- whilst we do
celebrate Thy praises and glorify Thy holy (name)?" He said: "I know
what ye know not."(31) And He taught Adam the names of all things; then He
placed them before the angels, and said: "Tell me the names of these if ye
are right."(32) They said: "Glory to Thee, of knowledge We have none,
save what Thou Hast taught us: In truth it is Thou Who art perfect in knowledge
and wisdom."(33) He said: "O Adam! Tell them their names." When
he had told them, Allah said: "Did I not tell you that I know the secrets
of heaven and earth, and I know what ye reveal and what ye conceal?"(34)
And behold, We said to the angels: "Bow down to Adam" and they bowed
down. Not so Iblis: he refused and was haughty: He was of those who reject
Faith.
We know God
from His names. The Ahadith tell us that there are ninety-nine names of
God and I can add many more to that list such as the ultimate Mathematician and
Logician . Each of these names is an attribute of God that give us an idea of
what God is like. “He taught Adam the names of all things” is therefore a
metaphor for giving this new creation the intellectual and cognitive
capabilities to know the nature and attributes of all things and learn “the
secrets of heaven and earth”. The exceptionalism of this new creation is
underlined by making the angels bow to Adam. It does not matter whether we take
the story of the creation of Adam literally or metaphorically as long as we
understand that the story is describing the coming into existence (suddenly) of
such a human being and the exceptionalism of this new creature and its progeny
as regards its intellectual and cognitive abilities to make sense of the world.
The believers in “evolution” can continue to believe in it and yet remain
believers while treating the story is Quran as metaphorical.
Spreading
out of Adam’s Progeny
The Quran
says that soon after the creation of Adam, Allah spread out Adam’s progeny far
and wide.
(4:1) O mankind! reverence your Guardian-Lord,
who created you from a single person, created, of like nature, His mate, and
from them twain scattered (like seeds) countless men and women;- reverence
Allah, through whom ye demand your mutual (rights), and (reverence) the wombs
(That bore you): for Allah ever watches over you.
(30:20) Among His Signs in this, that He
created you from dust; and then,- behold, ye are men scattered (far and wide)!
We Learn
The Following From The Scientific History Of Man:
Between
80,000 and 50,000 years ago, a wave of humans migrated out of Africa. These
humans are likely to have been ‘modern’ in terms of their appearance and
behaviour. Due to their newly cooperative behaviour, they were more successful
at surviving and covered the whole world in a relatively short period of time.
As they migrated, they would have encountered earlier, primitive humans,
eventually replacing them. Genetically, the six billion (now eight billion)
people of today’s world vary very little from these earlier Homo sapiens that
ventured out of Africa.
The broad
consensus now is that all modern humans are descended from an African
population of Homo sapiens that migrated around the world but bred with local
archaic populations as they did so. Modern humans reached Asia 70,000 years ago
before moving down through Southeast Asia and into Australia. The settlement of
Australia is the first unequivocal evidence of a significant sea crossing and
rates as one of the greatest achievements of early humans. Molecular clock
estimates, genetic studies and archaeological data all suggest the initial
colonisation of Sahul and Australia by modern humans occurred around
48,000–50,000 years ago.
Conclusion
The broad
outline of the history of mankind from the Quran and from science match very
closely. The significant difference in detail is only in one aspect. While the
Quran speaks about the creation of Adam or modern man, science considers that
modern man evolved from among the homo sapiens. Considering that the CR was
sudden and not spread over a long period, and increasing evidence that
“evolution” happens only in short bursts, it is unreasonable to assume that the
entire population of existing homo sapiens underwent the CR. If the CR took
place 130,000 years after the homo sapiens came into existence and thereafter
there is no change of any significance over the last 70,000 years, then the
most reasonable conclusion is that this was a rare occurrence from a happy
coincidence of circumstances the details of which we cannot fathom.
Such a rare
accident could have happened to only one member of the homo sapiens species who
then passed it on to all his or her progeny. When millions of such accidents
have brought into being new species which are well adjusted to their
environment, and procreation requires at least one pair to start with, science
has a long way to go to discover how such happy accidents produce at least one
pair of the new species so frequently. As for the believers in the Quran,
science supports everything the Quran says on the subject and there is no
challenge to even a single verse of the Quran. For a believer, the fact that
Science is progressively converging to what the Quran said more than 1400 years
ago on every subject, and the fact that not a single verse is proven wrong, is
sufficient proof that the Quran is the word of God.
The
disbelievers will believe that it is a matter of time before scientists find
good reasons for why such happy accidents occur so frequently that have
resulted in the creation of millions of new species. Scientific inquiry,
whether directed or misdirected, can produce outstanding results but not
necessarily succeed in proving what we were seeking to prove. The believers
pursuing science should also, therefore, approach science with the mindset of
disbelievers. Nothing can be achieved by becoming complacent that we know what
we need to know from a study of the Quran. Such an attitude cannot lead us to
the knowledge of certainty or Ilm al-Yaqin and Ayn ul Yaqin which
is to be found in the pursuit of science alone. The dichotomy between Religion
and Science is an artificial one created by unevolved beings who understand
neither science nor religion.
As we have
repeatedly seen, Science complements the Quran and there is no dichotomy
between them. “Religion without science is blind and science without religion is
lame” as Einstein famously said. There is nothing more hideous than an enemy of
religion or an enemy of science. It is a sure sign of a diseased mind.
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A frequent contributor to NewAgeIslam.com, Naseer Ahmed is an Engineering
graduate from IIT Kanpur and is an independent IT consultant after having
served in both the Public and Private sector in responsible positions for over
three decades. He has spent years studying Quran in-depth and made seminal
contributions to its interpretation.
URL: https://newageislam.com/islam-science/history-mankind-science-sapiens/d/128980
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