Adam's Ancestors

Race, Religion, and the Politics of Human Origins

David N. Livingstone

• Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
• Year: 2011
• eBook ISBN: 9781421401430
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European Medieval History
• Index: History

Winner of the Selection for Professional Reading List of the U.S. Marine Corps

Although the idea that all human beings are descended from Adam is a long-standing conviction in the West, another version of this narrative exists: human beings inhabited the Earth before, or alongside, Adam, and their descendants still occupy the planet.

In this engaging and provocative work, David N. Livingstone traces the history of the idea of non-adamic humanity, and the debates surrounding it, from the Middle Ages to the present day. From a multidisciplinary perspective, Livingstone examines how this alternative idea has been used for cultural, religious, and political purposes. He reveals how what began as biblical criticism became a theological apologetic to reconcile religion with science—evolution in particular—and was later used to support arguments for white supremacy and segregation.

From heresy to orthodoxy, from radicalism to conservatism, from humanitarianism to racism, Adam's Ancestors tells an intriguing tale of twists and turns in the cultural politics surrounding the age-old question, "Where did we come from?"

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface
• 1 Beginnings Questioning the Mosaic Record
• 2 Heresy Isaac La Peyrère and the Pre-Adamite Scandal
• 3 Polity The Cultural Politics of the Adamic Narrative
• 4 Apologetics Pre-Adamism and the Harmony of Science and Religion
• 5 Anthropology Adam, Adamites, and the Science of Ethnology
• 6 Ancestors Evolution and the Birth of Adam
• 7 Bloodlines Pre-Adamism and the Politics of Racial Supremacy
• 8 Shadows The Continuing Legacy of Pre-Adamite Discourse
• 9 Dimensions Concluding Reflections
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index