January the first will begin the Christian calendar year 2027. Christians know their calendar starts from the birth of Jesus. Muslims know the Muslim calendar begins with the escape of Muhammad from oppression and persecution by the Arabs of Makka to freedom in the town of Medina. Buddhists know that their calendar starts with the enlightenment of Siddhartha under a Bodhi tree. But most Jews would be hard pressed to explain what happened 5,787 years ago to start the Jewish calendar.

By analogy to the Christian, Muslim, or Buddhist calendars one might expect that the Jewish calendar starts with the birth of Abraham (the first Jew), or from the Exodus from Egypt (the trans-formative experience of the Jewish people), or from the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai (the enlightenment of the Jewish people). But the second century Rabbis who made up the calendar Jews currently use, chose to begin with Adam and Eve i.e. the beginning of human civilization.

The word Adam in Hebrew means mankind/Homo Sapiens– the species. The exit of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden marks the transition of humanity from a largely nomadic/neolithic stone age society of hunter-gatherers, to a more advanced metal working bronze age society of farmers and village dwellers.

Or perhaps the Jewish calendar begins with the first pair of wheels. The earliest evidence for wheeled vehicles appears simultaneously in Southwest Asia and Northern Europe, about 35-3700 BCE. In Mesopotamia, that evidence is from images, pictographs representing four-wheeled wagons........

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