A basic error, in fact the basic error, in understanding the origin of human life is when we confuse the word people with the word humans. Most books that study of the origins and development of human society, the academic field referred to as anthropology, do not make a difference between the word people and the word humans. But in Biblical terms there is a huge and significant difference. People are homo sapiens sapiens. They had a nefesh, the soul of animal life. All animals have a nefesh. They were sufficiently sophisticated to invent farming. But they did not have a neshama, the soul of humans. The oldest fossil evidence of the existence of people [i.e., the first homo sapiens sapiens] is over 100,000 years.
Humans are also homo sapiens sapiens with a nefesh [the soul of animal life] but humans also have a neshama [the spiritual soul of humans] and the neshama gives them social and cultural habits that are very different from homo sapiens sapiens without a neshama.
The difference between people and humans is totally spiritual. We learn this in what is written in Genesis 1:26, 27 – “Then God said, "Let Us make (na’a’seh) adam/man in Our image, according to Our likeness; … So God created (b’ra) the adam/man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.”
And again, written in Genesis 2:7 - “And the Lord God formed (ye’tsar) the adam/man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath (nesh’mat - neshama) of life (khai’eem); and the adam/man became a living soul.”
In both verses there are two stages in the bringing of humans Adam and Eve into existence: 1st is the physical making or forming of the body, and then 2nd is the creation of the soul, the spiritual soul of humans – the neshama - put into our physical being.
Making and forming are process verbs. They take time and physical material to accomplish. This is the physical body of Adam and Eve.
The spiritual soul of humans, the neshama, was then created and put into their physical body that had already been made. Creation is instantaneous and does not need any physical material. The neshama is the metaphysical part of our lives, the part of us that when we look in the mirror we do not see, but it is what makes you you! The neshama knows the oneness of life and the oneness of existence.
The first humans were Biblical Adam and Eve. Because the Bible gives the ages of humans for all the generations, we can calculate that Adam and Eve lived just a bit under 6,000 years ago.
Major exhibits in the British Museum in London and an article in National Geographic document a sudden change in society that date directly to the age the Bible tells us that Adam and Eve lived. Neither the museum exhibit nor the article mentions Adam, Eve or neshama. When I asked the person in charge of this major exhibit at the British Museum (i.e., the curator) what caused society to change, he said it was a mystery since there was no evidence of what caused it. The change in society was the appearance of the first large cities. He said these first large cities were not the result of a population explosion. The population explosion goes back five thousand years earlier to the invention of farming.
However, the Bible gives the cause that led to the sudden appearance of large cities. The cause was the creation of the neshama and the change from people to humans. Before the neshama, if you did not belong to my family or clan, then you are my enemy, automatically. Only after the neshama entered our minds could people of different clans live together in peace and form large cities. And these cities date to soon after the timing the Bible gives for Adam and Eve, the first humans.
People and humans are both homo sapiens sapiens. People and humans are physically identical in body and size of brain. Based on fossil evidence, brain size in both ancient people and modern humans is about 1.3 liters. The fossils show that the size and shape of the brain has not changed much in the past 100,000 years.
People invented agriculture 11,000 years ago. That is 5000 years before Biblical Adam and Eve. Those people had brains filled with intelligence and inventiveness. They had language and speech. But they lacked what the neshama brings – a care for other persons who are not of their clan, the awareness of the oneness of all existence, that the world is one magnificent creation with each part dependent on all other parts.
The neshama lets us know God.