Modern Homo sapiens evolved about 250,000 years ago, in Africa, and spread out from there. These were the pre-Adamites. They were biologically Homo sapiens, but could not speak and had little abstract thought. But remember they had souls, just as much as dogs and cats and we do, and, if they did not know truth, beauty, and virtue abstractly, they did have opinions, know pleasure and pain, and loved and hated and empathized and tricked (and you cannot trick without at least implicit self-awareness, other-awareness, and an understanding that things are not always what they seem). If they had no language, they still had a wide and culturally-transmitted vocabulary of utterances, expressing feelings, desires, and intentions. They certainly had tools and fire and, sometimes, leather clothes. They felt awe, treated their dead with hopeless tenderness, paired off in marriages, and raised families, even as wolves can. Even as we sometimes do.
To them, Adamites were like a race of psychic geniuses – transferring thoughts through a subtle art they could only imperfectly learn and could never have invented, sparkling with cunning and imagination, motivated by concepts the pre-Adamites could never really grasp.
The mental and spiritual leap to modern humanity took place in the Garden of Eden, which was on a wide, low hill in the Persian Basin. This is now the Persian Gulf but it was then dry due to an ice age.
A pre-Adamite woman bore a baby boy, who arrived dead. She mourned, along with her family, buried the little corpse, and moved on. Three days later, God took a living baby out of the earth and brought him to Eden, where he was raised by God Himself and by angels, all in varying degrees and kinds of manifestation.
The rest of the story is too famous to recount.
Outside the Garden, Adam and Eve bore many sons and daughters, of which the only ones recorded are (in order) Cain, Able, and Seth. These took wives and husbands from among the surrounding pre-Adamites, who regarded the Adamites with awe.
Spiritual heredity does not work on Mendelian lines or pass along by helical molecules. All descendents of Adamites were also Adamite, regardless of the amount of pre-Adamite blood they also carried. Now, there are no pre-Adamites left.
Eden was located at the north end of the Persian Basin. When Cain fled, he went to Nod, east and south of Eden. There, Cain founded the "city" of Enoch, named after a son of his. This was the first settled community in history, but it would look more like a camp than a city to modern eyes. The population was only a few hundreds at its highest and the buildings were of wood and reeds.
The village of Enoch was able to stay settled by the great number of inventions originating with Cain and his children, including early vegetable and fruit gardening and net fishing. This technical inventiveness is a Cainite hallmark.
Enoch son of Cain should not be confused with the more famous Enoch, son of Jared, six generations removed from Adam, great-grandfather of Noah. This Enoch never died, but was removed off Earth to Perelandra, where he dwells on the hidden island of Aphallin.
The early Adamites were not left alone. Angels and demons, their retinues of djinn, and independent djinn all circulated among the Adamites. One might even say they infiltrated. The infiltration was political, cultural, and genetic.
The first genetic infiltration came from an infernal djinnia, Lilith, the first succubus. She is said to have got many children of Adam, perhaps before as well as after the Fall. These children were djinn, the first generation of the lilim.
Lilim have a more human aspect than most djinn. They are weak in physical and magical power, for djinn, but they have an aptitude for human forms, understand humans easily, and have more to do with humans than most other breeds of djinn. They are not all evil, but they clearly do not have a good start. Lilim that distance themselves from Hell usually give their tribes different names.
Male lilim and other male djinn coupled with human women and begot human children with a streak of djinnish nature. These are the mougharabin or lilites. They are long-lived and magically talented, for humans.
Dark and gray eldila also bred with humans. Their children are the nephilim, meant as champions of their parents. Nephilim were at least a head taller than true humans, phenomenally strong and tough, and often endowed with wild talents. A good nephil is a super-hero. A bad nephil is a super-villain. There were not many good nephilim.
The antediluvian age ended with the Flood, which wiped out the infant Adamite race in the Persian Basin, now the Persian Gulf, all except the eight aboard the Ark. The Flood also wiped out all the nephilim, all the lilites, and the demon-run culture that festered around them. That's what it was for, after all.
But all things leave traces. Noah and his wife were Sethites (with plenty of admixture of the other children of Adam and Eve), but their sons' wives were not: Japheth's wife was nephilite, part nephil; Shem's wife was Abelite (for Abel left a widow and children); and Ham's wife was Cainite.
And the Flood killed no lilim or other djinn. So lilites soon arose again, though perhaps not so infernal this time. Perhaps.
That was long ago. Now, we are all descended from all six of Noah's sons and daughters in law, and from the pre-Adamite humans their children married. The default human strain is Sethite, but people in whom the other strains are strong can crop up anywhere, in any race or nation. These strains affect karma as well as aptitudes. It affects, in short, your genre.
Abelites have an affinity for the ghostly. Moderately strong Abelites wind up in ghost stories and tales of the psychic. Very strong Abelites do all too well at occultism, and are likely to haunt afterwards, if they can escape.
Cainites maintain that innovative streak. Moderately strong Cainites meet yetis, lake-monsters, and UFOs. Very strong Cainites can end up as mad scientists or eccentric inventors, or as the vict– er, test subjects of such people; some are in danger of going on to become literal monsters.
Lilites: If anyone is going to find a country in a cupboard, ride a tornado over a rainbow, have a really useful godparent, or find they have sold their cow for some magic beans, it is a lilite. When they get older, they are prone to complex love-lives, which their fairy connections do nothing to simplify.
Nephilites lead lives of action-adventure. Strong nephilites lead lives of pulp action-adventure and tend to accumulate nemeses, sidekicks, and secret identities.
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Copyright © Earl Wajenberg, 2010