They have it all wrong!

I have this theory that the Anthropologists have it all wrong. Key things we've been led to believe don't make sense at all, here's why.

According to the Good Book, people began their existence in a place called Eden. If memory serves, scholars think that Eden was some place in Lebanon. I think they're wrong - Eden was in Siberia. Why I think so will become clear below.

Follow this reasoning...

When we come home in 2007, we walk into a toasty apartment with double-glazing central heating great big thick brick walls and one could walk around in the nick if one was so inclined without raising a chill of any kind and certainly oblivious to the -n outside. When we leave the apartment, we tuck up into thermal undies, mohair socks and thinsulate boots, goretex gloves, ski jackets, beanies and scarves.

One can feel the bracing chill of the wind on the face, which reminds one that its is actually cold. But apart from your chin and lips going numb after a while one retains ones operating temperature quite effortlessly, and upon boarding a bus or train, getting into a car or shop one can shed all the above and do ones doings in a T-shirt.

I've heard people say that snow is warm. This is my first real experience of real snow, and there's lots of it around at the moment. Based on this limited experience I can tell you categorically that snow is not warm, its not even cool, its outright freezing and when the wind blows along 3 day old ice and snow lying 2 feet deep on the ground if there was any doubt this will erase it. If you dip your hand into the snow to make a snowball, your hand is going to come out close to frozen.

This is how we live today, but to understand how things began we have to go all the way back to... well the beginning.

Lets say that people have been around for a few thousand years to adopt the creationist point of view.

Six thousand years ago, give or take a few...

One day Adam and Eve are strolling through the garden of Eden and they come across this odd looking object in the yard. Eve says to Adam

"Honey what do you suppose that is?"

Adam shrugs and wonders what the cricket score is. Eve is intrigued though and persists.

Eve - "Adam, are you listening?!"

Adam - "Huh?", "Oh yeah", "...ummm I don't know baby, lets go to Bill's house and see if he knows what the final score was" (they didn't have telly in those days)

Eve - "Adam!"

Adam - "Honey I don't think you should be fiddling with that it looks complicated"

Eve - "Nonsense, its just a stick with a knob on it. Here, let me give it a pull..."

Eve pulls the lever with the red knob (now you know where the whole apple error came in) and there is this dull grinding, grating noise deep in the earth beneath their feet. Its not particularly loud, more like a distant rumble.

Startled, Eve quickly tries to push the lever back to the vertical position she found it in but its stuck and she tries to force it. Adam is nervous and joins in, together they heave on the lever. Sure enough it breaks off!

Adam looks nervously around and says:

"Hunny we better get out of here"

Eve steps back looking at the lever lying on the ground and slowly turns to follow her husband who's already 20 paces away.

What has actually happened here is that the lever was God's axis control for the earth, Eve, by fiddling with the control adjusted the earths axis to the odd angle we know it to be today. We also know that it is the angle of the earths axis and its rotation around the sun that brings us the seasons, summer and winter. So from the perfect climate in Siberia in the pre-adjustment days the earth has now tilted and the weather is changing...

Meanwhile, up on the hill, God is having a cup of tea when this all happens and the sudden adjustment causes His tea to spill on His white robes.

"Darn!" He says getting up and flicking the drops off His coat. Thinking for a second He says "Let there be Vanish!". Immediately in a bright pink flash, you guessed it - the stubborn stain has, well... Vanished. He pauses for a moment and smiles to Himself thinking how happy Eve is going to be 6000 years from now.

On arriving at the scene of the original sin He sighs and calls for His kids:

"Adam!, Eve!"

A few days later, back at the cave things are starting to change. Eve turns to Adam one evening rubbing her shoulders and comments:

"Good heavens I believe I'm cold!"

"Huh?"

"Adam, I said I'm feeling cold!"

"Don't be silly woman, the temperature hasn't ever moved a degree since the beginning... you're imagining things." Adam turns back to the paper and has a sip of beer. (Yes, they had periodicals and beer in those days)

Eve rolls her eye's and looks around for something to warm her. She stands next to the fire for a few minutes and takes some comfort. She realises that this is not going to be a good enough solution for when she goes to Gill's tea party on the other side of the garden though.

That evening as they retire, lying on their straw bed she's still feeling cold, and is getting good & grumpy. Adam is feeling something too, but it has nothing to do with temperature. He spoons really close to her and kisses her on the neck. Eve leaps out of bed, now that she has all the ammo she needs.

"You unfeeling..." (she searches for an adjective for a few seconds, but because they hadn't come up with swear words yet and because chauvinism had not yet been associated with the pig, she settles for...) ...man! How can you even think about that when I'm so uncomfortable and cold??!"

She spins on her heels and walks determinedly out of the cave. Adam looks dumbfounded after her with unspoken words in his throat, hand in mid gesture. He sighs, rolls over and within a few seconds is sound asleep.

Thinking deeply Eve leaves the cave, her mind gnawing on her husbands insensitivity and this new and serious problem.

She looks around the entire Garden for something to warm herself with.

You might be wondering how she could be looking around the garden in the evening, but remember we're in Siberia, and the sun is up for a long time during the day, well it used to be, and still is in the summers when temperatures rise into the 40's (centigrade), but this is changing now and the sun is low in the sky when, resigned, she sits down on a log, holds her head in her hands and cries.

Nearby, Wooly the sheep sees her distress and comes over to comfort her. The big sheep gently rubs up against her, Eve is glad to have the company and leans against the sheep, hugging it.

Over the next 2 hours she relates her woes to Wooly, who not being able to speak the language endures in friendly silence nibbling on the green grass occasionally. All spoken out, Eve feels much better, and without realising it has forgotten completely that she's not feeling cold, mainly because she isn't. As she stands and bids farewell to her friend the sheep, the cool breeze reminds her suddenly that it really is getting cold.

The realisation seems to dwell with her in an odd way as she walks back to the cave containing her snoring husband. Eve walks into the dim cave and can hear Adam snoring from the entrance, suddenly like a tidal wave it hits her. She stops dead in her tracks and a slight and very sly smile appears in the corners of her mouth as one eyebrow raises.

Eve wakes Adam roughly, whispers in his ear that there's something he needs to do for her tomorrow, and then she gives him the night of his life...

In the morning Adam wakes up feeling like he's been mauled, he's hardly slept and he's tired. But he can hear God calling for them and so he sits up and puts his feet on the floor. Eve is still sleeping peacefully next to him and shows no sign of stirring even as the call gets louder. Something is bothering Adam as he stands up surveying his surrounds, and when he looks down he almost falls over the bed with shock. There's been some shrinkage! Dazed and confused as to how this could have happened he sits back down again catching his breath. After a few moments he's inclined to lift his feet off the floor and as he becomes aware of this, he realises that he's... cold.

Rousing Eve, for the insistent call, Adam walks out into the garden with his wife and shivers, he tucks her under his arm and together they walk off in the direction of the call. They stop at a nearby fig tree for a snack and Adam gathers some ripe fruit for himself and Eve in a fig leaf. For a moment they pause and eat. As they finish, Adam tosses the empty leaf into a thicket and notices that his hand is colder as he does so. He examines a leaf on the tree and notices for the first time that its soft fur-lining on the underside is quite warm to the touch. In a nanosecond he covers his delicates with the furriest leaf he can find explaining happily to Eve his discovery and picking some leaves for her to try.

Eve is a smart girl, even for a blonde, and she stands back, weight on one leg and hands on her hips looking at Adam slightly side ways with a knowing expression on her face and taking pleasure in what is about to happen.

"I told you so!" she says

"Huh?" says Adam, picking more leaves.

"You're cold too!"

"I am not"

"Oh yes you are"

This goes on for a bit... they hear Gods call and drop the argument walking off wearing four fig leaves between them and feeling marginally more comfy.

Soon enough they arrive at the spot of the transgression and see God standing there in a warm heavenly coat, arms folded and tapping His foot.

"Ok, which of you can tell me about this?" He says holding up the broken lever.

Adam says "It was Eve!"

Eve elbows him in the ribs so it bruises, but before another word can be said, God says

"Well now its broken, and I can't fix it"

Adam and Eve look sheepishly at their toes and squirm about in the uncomfortable silence.

After a about a minute of deafening silence God says
"Well, that's it... you'll have to leave the garden"

Adam - "Why, we love it here"

God says "Me too, but I'll leave it to you to see why"

And with a poof (not a gay you understand, but a sound that goes "poof!") and a little smoke for effect God vanishes before their eyes. (Don't worry, nothing to do with the pink stuff :) )

Adam looks at Eve with a completely blank face, she returns the look for a second, then her brow furrows and she kicks him in the shin.

"That's for telling on!"

So, here we are. The garden is cooling rapidly and as the days go by the fruit begins to fall off the trees, the leaves start browning and dropping off in the wind. Soon Adam and Eve (in her new sheepskin coat and boots) are standing in the entrance to their cave surveying the changing landscape of their once pristine garden and wondering about the future.

Adam says

"It's getting worse" and it is.. the fig leaf is not doing the trick anymore and there are fewer and fewer leaves on the tree every day, so a change of underwear is getting to be a worrying issue.

Eve agrees with a nod.

"What shall we do?" she says

Adam, looking out at the sun slung low in the sky comes up with a stroke of genius that would turn out to save the entire human race.

"Lets follow the sun"

This was before men had to ask for directions - the sun is a pretty obvious landmark and having rounded up, Bill, Gill, and all the other people in their sheepskin coats and boots, Adam and posse moved South.

After a long cold trek they came to some horribly inconvenient coastline, and to make a long story short weren't prepared to stop there, so they invented boats and set off again. They only stopped when the sun was directly overhead. When it was, they turned right in their boats and sailed until they found the first piece of ground, they got off the boat, took off their coats and reveled in the warmth and sunshine.

They were so happy to be there in the warmth and sun, they were also tired from all the travel that they lay down on the beach and fell fast asleep. When they awoke later they were all brown as berries, you know how hot the African sun is and they didn't mind the change because they were warm again.

From that day on they swore that they'd never go back to the freezing place they'd fled and they said they'd always follow the sun. They spread out as the population grew and so, before the first person could die in the cold wasteland of Siberia all those thousands of years ago, leaving their remains as a clue to the real origin of life, the oldest dated known human remains are found in Africa, or on the way there.

So how do we know that life didn't start in Africa? Well if you walk outside my apartment right now clad in nothing but fig-leaf undies you will be dead before morning. See, back then, although God was inventing stuff all the time, people weren't discovering His inventions until much later. Glass has been made for hundreds of years, but no one had double-glazing until relatively recently. Thinsulate and Gore-Tex are very recent and you can go back to the source of humankind now even in the coldest of winters with these marvelous inventions. But I tell you this, people couldn't survive there because of the cold, and anyone who wandered too far North or South would have turned around long before his toes turned blue.

Even the ones with sheepskin coats.