On the Origin of Man

Adam, the first man, walked the earth about 6000 years ago. He and his wife, Eve, are the progenitors of the human race. Every human living today has received a spiritual soul created at the moment of their conception with the conceptus being formed from at least one, but sometimes only one, parent. The single exception to this was the miraculous creation of Adam. All of creation was ordered toward that pinnacle act of God, after which He rested.

6000 years is not a long time. 

There is archaeological evidence for modern humans forming cities beginning around that time. Human settlements and religious sites go back even further with Gobekli Tepe being 12000 years old.

Gobekli Tepe

Who built those cities and temples?

Anyone who reads Genesis is confronted with the problem of Cain. He went out from his parents in exile and feared someone would kill him because he was a rootless wanderer. Who was going to kill him? His dad? His mom? Further, Sacred Scripture tells us he had a wife. Where did she come from?

So many possible answers. Nephilim are not even mentioned until Genesis Chapter 6 and we are still only in Chapter 4!

One answer that I never heard growing up was that there were humans who looked like us in every possible way but lacked a spiritual soul. This was inconceivable to me throughout my education since the very idea of a rational soul was tied to the idea that only humans possessed the ability to reason and that faculty was what made our technical prowess possible. Aristotle was a very smart man.

And yet, there were these cities and temples...

More recently, evidence of interbreeding among humans and Neanderthals and Denisovans has been demonstrated through DNA analysis. These early human relatives shared enough genetic similarity to allow for interbreeding and fertility among the offspring as demonstrated by the persistence of the DNA in modern humans. Could such a process not have occurred with humans who lacked spiritual souls but otherwise were genetically identical?

Our modern world is predicated so much on our intellect that people lacking intellect, such as people with developmental delays or traumatic brain injuries, are marginalized and vulnerable populations because some people do not see them as fully "human". It is a perennial problem of recognizing the humanity of others who do not look or act like us. Given our spiritual souls, this faculty of being able to see beyond the physical is what more reasonably makes us who we are and is very difficult to demonstrate empirically. 

6000 years between Gobekli and Adam is the same length of time as between Adam and us.