WHERE WAS THE GARDEN OF EDEN?

Marlborough Express, Volume XLII, Issue 218, 14 September 1908, Page 6

WHERE WAS THE GARDEN OF EDEN?

Modern criticism, says Professor Serviss, in one of his speculative articles on the origin of things, regards Adam and Eve as legendary characters and the Garden of Eden as a myth. Yet there must have bsen a first man and a first woman, even it they were only a grade higher than monkeys, and they must have had a locp.l habitation somewhere on tho earth. . AH 'the hypotheses which place tho earthly paradise somewhere in Asia have no better basis than the limitations of history. Because we find the earliest historical nations grouped about the plateau of Iran, and because Hebrew history m particular points backward m vthat direction, ?t is assumed that the birthplace of the human race was in that part of Asia. But the Hebrew legend- concerning Adam and Eve was simply an outgrowth ■of older traditions, and if these traditions could be traced to their ultimate soiirce it would be discovered that they led gradually back to the spot, or region, where creatures .sufficiently intelligent to communicate their impressions'and memcries from one to another first found a freehold on this planet. Can that spot 'or region now l;e recognised? If so, Then we can answer the question, where did the real Adam and Eve live?.

It begins to look as if the answer may be found, Geological science is contributing to it. When some explorer finds the North Pole he may set his foot on the very place ni question. Tho whole trend at present is toward the recognition of tho North. Polar region of the earth os that where the first stable land appeared, find a? the place where climatic conditions earliest reached a state suitable to the presence of organic life. Recent studies bring put t-learly the fact that the areas about the Arctic Ocean, Avhich have remained undisturbed since an early Paleozoic time, have formed a central move against which the more southern portions of Eurasia and North America have been folded. When otologists speak or roleozois time"' they t-re referring to an epoch of almost unimaginable remoteness. Every step that they talc* shows more convincingly that the -'lithosphere," as, they call _ the. enclosing- rocky shell of the globe, is in .continual movement. First continental mounds rise and mountains begin to grow; then .the high levels . are worn down, and ihe sea invades the margins of tho continents. At present we are living near the beginning of a cycle of mountain growth. But around' the North Pole the ancient mass of the earth's crust has remained through cycle after cycle virtually undisturbed. ' There ,then, it is natural to conclude, the first land life emerged into existence. The Adam and Eve ot. -that paradise were, not .the beautiful and perfect creatures pictured by Milton; but who can set limits to the " ancestral voices" that have been- " prophesying " clown through the agO3 Avhich have beheld 'the evolution of terrestrial life to its crowning phenomeoon —man? Is it not conceivable that a kind of race memory, of immense antiquity, is tli« real basis of the paradise myths, and that this memory runs dimly back •to the time when the first intelligence began to glow on the first stable and habitable land surrounding tlie northern point of the earth s axis? ■■:■■•, .