It was the first time I had seriously considered the question. “How strong is the scientific evidence against a historical Adam?” asked Dennis Bonnette, a philosophy professor from upstate New York. I knew the scientific story was that we had to come from thousands, but I didn’t know the evidence, so I said I would look. That began quite a journey.
As I was to discover, some work had been badly done, and when corrected, no longer pointed against a first pair. Other work had assumptions which might or might not be justified, and therefore were also not firm results. In fact, there were no direct tests of the possibility of a first pair.
My first discoveries were published in the slim volume Science and Human Origins, together with material from Casey Luskin and Doug Axe.
The absence of a direct test of a first pair’s possibility posed both an opportunity and a challenge. I didn’t have the skills necessary or the knowledge to do the necessary tests. One by one, though, people who were qualified joined our group. There was Ola Hössjer, Swedish mathematician and population geneticist, and Colin Reeves, professor at Coventry University in Operations Research and Mathematical Modeling.
The beginning of their search is told in the book Theistic Evolution, whose pages may have led you to this site. Now follow us through to their results and the answer you have been waiting for.