Science reveals one mother of humanity, calls her Eve

As often happens, science is now coming to understand a truth which has been proclaimed by people of God for centuries. In this case, I refer to new evidence which shows that all humanity came from a single mother. Sound familiar? Of course this single mother is Eve, and even in the scientific community, this discovery is termed "Mitochondrial Eve". After analysing human mitochondria, which is a small part of the cell, scientists found that we all descended from a single female.

There are some misconceptions about Adam and Eve. We have to sift through the myths to find the truth. We do not assert, as Catholics, that the two first humans were actually named Adam and Eve. Adam means earth or ground because we believe God formed Adam from the Earth. Eve means life of living one. Much of the accounts of Adam and Eve use metaphorical language to explain situations. For example, the fruit on the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was not necessarily literal fruit, but rather some form of disobedience.

There are many things though that we are obliged to believe. We must believe that there were two first parents. At first, this might seem hard to accept, but if we think about it a bit, we will find it isn't. First of all, we have certain characteristics that animals do not have, not even a little. We have a rational soul. No animal has a partially rational soul. Therefore, this is infused in our soul and makes us unique. Even if you believe in evolution, it is still possible that there were humanoids but that they did not possess a rational soul, and that God infused a rational soul into the first true man and the first true woman. Now, as this article states, we have evidence that there indeed was, according to science, a single first mother.

Another fact we must accept is that the first couple disobeyed God and were expelled from the Garden of Eden, and through this we inherited original sin. This necessitated Christ's coming and dying for us to bridge the gap between us and Heaven because we cannot get to Heaven alone.

For a much more detailed treatment of the topic of Adam, Eve and Evolution, please see the Catholic Answers Tract here: http://www.catholic.com/library/Adam_Eve_and_Evolution.asp