All language subtitles for Historys.Greatest.Mysteries.S05E02.1080p.WEB.h264-EDITH[EZTVx.to]

Tonight, the search for the biblical
birthplace of man.

God created Adam and Eve and placed them
in this Garden of Eden that no one

knows exactly where it's located.

Is the Garden of Eden a tale to explain
human creation, or could it be a real

place? The three major Western religious
traditions, Islam, Christianity, and

Judaism, all say it exists.

All the way from Genesis to the
Gilgamesh epic for some 4 ,000 years, we

memory of a place like Eden.

If the Garden of Eden did exist, where
was it?

Now, we explore the top theories
surrounding the location of this

Earth. Genesis talks about four rivers
that come together. If we can kind of

chart out where those rivers are, maybe
we can find out where the Garden of Eden

was actually located.

It only makes sense to turn to this
place where humans lived for thousands

years. This is what the book of Genesis
is describing.

This is where you find the Garden of
Eden.

This is the search for the Garden of
Eden.

The first book of the Hebrew Bible is
the book of Genesis.

There's no dispute that the word Genesis
means in the beginning.

And it tells a story of the creation of
the world.

It starts out by indicating that God
gives order to chaos.

That within the context of six days, God
maps it all out.

Separates light from dark. Separates
land from water.

gives existence to various creatures.
And out of dust, God creates the first

man, Adam, and breathes into him the
breath of life.

So we read in the creation story that
God created humankind, Adam and Eve, and

then placed them in the Garden of Eden,
and that this place should be understood

as being a beautiful, life -giving
oasis.

God plants trees.

Beautiful trees, good for eating, all
around the garden.

And in the middle of the garden, he
plants the tree of the knowledge of good

evil.

God tells them, go about your business,
enjoy this paradise, but the tree of the

knowledge of good and evil, you don't
mess with that.

You eat from that, and you will die.

Everyone knows what happens next.

Eve encounters this serpent, according
to the narrative.

And the serpent, Tells Eve, I know what
God has said, but if you eat this fruit,

you won't die.

You'll just get really smart.

You'll have the kind of knowledge that
God has, and that's what God fears.

She eats. She gives some to the man who
was with her. He eats.

And sure enough, the serpent was right.

They don't drop dead.

Their eyes are opened.

They see that they're naked.

And they're ashamed, and they're
fearful, and they hide from God behind a

According to the account in Genesis,
Adam and Eve cover their nakedness by

fashioning fig leaves into loincloths.

And God says, who told you you were
naked?

Did you eat from the tree I told you not
to eat from? They admit it, and God

picks the man and the woman out of the
garden.

And this changes everything.

God says, this paradise, you can no
longer have.

When God chucks the man and the woman
out of Eden, he stations cherubim to

the way back in. The cherubim are
frightening hybrid creatures, and God

stations them east of Eden.

But where on earth did this biblical
story of man's expulsion from paradise

place? Where can we locate the Garden of
Eden?

For those who are determined to find the
physical location of the Garden of

Eden, they will turn to Genesis.

In the early chapters of Genesis, there
are a couple of geographical markers

that relate where Eden was or may have
been as per the writer of this section

the narrative.

The story specifies that God plants a
garden in the east.

Now, the writers are in Israel.

In the east means somewhere east of
Israel.

It is written in Genesis that a river
went out of Eden to water the garden,

from thence it divided and became four
headwaters.

We are given four rivers, the Tigris,
the Euphrates, the Pishon, and the

And we know in our day and age where the
Tigris and the Euphrates are, but we

don't know exactly where the Gihon and
the Pishon are.

We can do our best.

to make educated guesses, but we do not
know the location of those rivers. We do

not know if topography is the same.

And so this brings up another question
as to whether those rivers still exist.

When they stopped existing, we simply do
not have enough information concerning

where these two rivers may have been.

According to the biblical text, the
Garden of Eden is east.

And so you have to think about the
vantage point of those who are writing.

for some of those who are writing,
pushing towards the east and thinking in

terms of two of the rivers that are
outlined, the Euphrates and the Tigris,

would argue that where those are
situated is where you find the Garden of

This is where the Bible is trying to
direct us.

In ancient times, Iraq was part of a
land 500 miles east of Israel known as

Mesopotamia.

Mesopotamia is the ancient Greek word
for the land between the two rivers of

Tigris and the Euphrates.

It's a land in central Iraq, not
altogether too far from the great cities

today, such as Baghdad. And the ancient
city of Babylon is actually relatively

near to Baghdad.

What archaeologists have established
were the first cities in human history,

such as Ur, were built within this
fertile space between the two rivers.

Ancient Mesopotamia was part of what's
called the Fertile Crescent. There were

sections of this area that were fertile
because there was water running through

the Fertile Crescent.

It was a fruitful location.

It produced a great deal, just like the
Garden of Eden.

And there's one town within this once
vibrant region that claims to be the

location of the Garden of Eden.

This is the town of Al -Qorna. Al -Qorna
is about 60 miles north of the city of

Basra in southern Iraq.

It's between the Tigris and the
Euphrates rivers. It's a place then that

certainly... Christian archaeologists
and scholars in the 19th century very

began to associate with the place where
the real Eden might have been located.

In Al -Gurna, we have a sign that says,
the tree of Adam, purporting to be the

tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Even today in Al -Qudna, local Iraqi
Christians and Muslims still go on

pilgrimage to the tree of Adam.

But it's doubtful a tree could live that
long.

Science tells us that the oldest living
tree, an ancient bristlecone pine in

California, is a little over 5 ,000
years old.

For Alcornaz tree of Adam to have been
growing in the Garden of Eden, it would

have to be far older than that.

In the mid -1980s, an American scientist
proposes a theory which backs the

hypothesis that the Garden of Eden was
in present -day Iraq.

Dr. Joris Zarens, he was involved in a
dig in the 1980s where his team starts

do a lot of satellite photography of the
Persian Gulf.

From these satellite photos, Zarens sees
an area of these wadis, these

riverbeds, that are now completely dry.
But thousands of years ago, they were

not. So if you look now at any map...

Google satellite, Google Earth, you're
not going to find the same geographical

location or the same geographical
features as you found thousands and

of years ago. There's been climate
change. Things have kind of moved

Places that were dry were completely
flooded out. One of the really

things, though, about the Middle East is
how dramatically the geography has

changed in the last 10 ,000 years.

So many parts of the world that are
submerged now were really just above

One of those places that was above
ground was the Persian Gulf.

Dr. Yuris Zerens, an archaeologist from
Missouri State University, says there's

a reason that we can't find the Garden
of Eden. And it's because it's in that

part of Iraq that lies underneath the
water of the Persian Gulf.

And today, much of this area of Iraq is
nothing like the lush paradise described

in Genesis.

We need to understand that this was a...
a long, long time ago. And with the 8th

age, there were really profound shifts.
From Zarin's perspective, as the

glaciers melted and began to contribute
their water to the Persian Gulf, the

waters would have risen and covered the
space where the Garden of Eden was.

He notes that the people who lived in
that area were hunter -gatherers who had

to move as the waters rose.

So Zarens presumes that the people who
were living in the place now covered by

seawater would have moved northwest into
the Tigris and Euphrates River Basin

that we're familiar with today.

This isn't in the Bible, but some of the
legends are that the Garden of Eden

ends up being kind of washed away in the
flood.

There was a world before the flood, and
there was a world after.

So, is the story of Adam and Eve's
expulsion from Eden a symbolic

From a flooded homeland?

Or could the Garden of Eden be someplace
else?

What the Garden points to is our most
intense relationship with the divine.

folks will say you have to look in
Jerusalem, that this is where God is

forcefully felt.

The Bible describes the Garden of Eden
as a land of lush vegetation.

Filled with animals and abundant food, a
true paradise on earth.

But where on earth exactly?

There's four rivers coming out of Eden
toward in the garden.

So you can see the garden in the center
of Eden and four rivers coming from Eden

into it.

The book of Genesis makes it clear that
one of the four rivers there in the

garden of Eden is the Gihon.

And we don't really know where the Gihon
is. However, there is actually a

spring.

That's called the Gihon, a word that
means, in fact, gushing up of water. And

that spring is located in Jerusalem.

So some may have identified this word
with the same Gihon that's in the

narrative at the beginning of the book
of Genesis.

And so that may lead people to identify
the location of the Garden of Eden with

Jerusalem in Israel.

You have to understand the...

the symbolic significance of the garden.
What the garden points to is our most

intense relationship with the divine.

And so some folks will say, ah, that's
Jerusalem.

That's the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.

For nearly 3 ,000 years, the Temple
Mount in Jerusalem has been one of the

holiest sites of the Jewish, Christian,
and Muslim faiths. It's where the first

and second Hebrew temples were built. As
the Book of Kings tells it, the

Jerusalem temple was built by King
Solomon in about 1000 BCE, that is,

the time of Jesus.

We know a little bit about this temple.
It's rectilinear, and it's got

progressively smaller rooms. And each
one of these rooms, as you move into it,

becomes more holy.

And the holiest place in the Jerusalem
temple is the Holy of Holies.

And that is where the Ark of the
Covenant was kept.

And it was also thought to be really the
throne of God and that God lived in the

Jerusalem temple. And there are two
places in the Hebrew Bible, in the Old

Testament, where God is said to be
physically present. One is the Garden of

and the other is the Jerusalem temple.

Part of this whole creation narrative is
the idea of God communing with human

beings. Eventually we see God having a
special presence, God's glory in this

temple. He had a special presence there.

This is set up to be the place where God
will commune with humankind, not

dissimilar to the Garden of Eden.

Is it possible the ancient biblical
author had the temple in mind when

describing Eden?

What's interesting about how the
tabernacle and the temple are

the story of the Torah, is that there's
an immense amount of garden imagery.

If we were to go into that temple that
Solomon built, this is a cedar wood

-lined building. Look at the walls.

I'm seeing palm trees. I'm seeing
flowers.

I'm seeing pomegranates.

I'm indoors, but I feel like I'm
outdoors.

And if I was permitted to go past the
guardian curtain that would lead to the

Holy of Holies, what I'd see on the Ark
of the Covenant, two cherubim.

In the Holy of Holies, two giant statues
of cherubim guarded

the Ark.

In the first creation story in Genesis,
God stations the cherubim at the exit

to Eden so that no one can turn and
enter again.

So for some folks who are interested in
finding a physical location for the

Garden of Eden, the Temple Mount is the
proper location.

But you can also look at the Temple
Mount and the Garden of Eden and think

it in terms of just being a metaphor.

Could the Garden of Eden story have been
actually just sort of a metaphor for

Jerusalem and the most important
building in Jerusalem, which was the

Temple?

It is recorded history that the Temple
was destroyed in 587 BCE.

After the destruction of their temple,
the conquered Hebrew people are carried

off into exile in Babylon.

According to the narrative, when Adam
and Eve are forced out of the garden,

head east. When the temple is destroyed,
the people of God also move east to

Babylon. Could it be that the Garden of
Eden story is a metaphor for the exile

of the Jews from Israel and the loss of
the great temple where God and man

coexisted?

An event as cataclysmic and traumatic as
the Babylonian exile, the destruction

of Jerusalem, is bound to be remembered
and imagined and processed in all kinds

of different ways.

One possibility is that the story of the
Garden of Eden symbolizes the Jerusalem

Temple. What we see in the exile of the
people from the temple building all the

way through their exile, we see...

The pattern that we end up seeing also
in the first couple chapters of the book

of Genesis, that is God commuting with
human beings, disobedience, exile.

And there's also some really strong
themes about how while we might have

the Garden of Eden, that there's going
to be a new Eden. And so that's why some

people have really hit on the idea of
maybe it's being Jerusalem where the

Garden of Eden was.

So to think about Jerusalem as the
location for the Garden of Eden.

on the level of metaphor works for a
whole lot of folk the

search for the garden of eden often
focuses on middle eastern lands where

biblical stories take place but some
eden explorers have taken another

While some point to this kind of
physical geography as the way to locate

Garden of Eden, some turn and argue it's
best to try to locate the Garden of

Eden based upon the early presence of
humans. Even in science publications,

there's discussion of the Garden of Eden
as a metaphor of the origin of humans.

If the Garden of Eden story is an
explanation of human creation, then

might the real paradise be found in the
cradle of humankind?

Given that our oldest human fossils
actually all come from Africa,

maybe we should think of the Garden of
Eden as having been in Africa. It's not

Iraq. It's Africa. The science would
suggest this is the birthplace.

It only makes sense to some folks who
are looking for the garden to turn to

place where humans lived for thousands
upon thousands of years, that this is

what the book of Genesis is describing,
this is what the garden is all about.

Some scientists believe that the answer
to human origins is not really just to

be found in the fossil record, but
actually in human genetics.

In 2019,

A scientific breakthrough ushers in a
new theory about the birth of Homo

sapiens. We have very early bone and
skull fragments from South Africa, and

those date back to about 260 ,000 years
ago.

So in 2019, an Australian geneticist,
Dr.

Vanessa Hayes, actually goes to South
Africa and wants to trace back the DNA.

of humans to try to see if they can get
back to the earliest record of human

beings, looking at them genetically.

There are two types of DNA, nuclear DNA,
which comes from both the mother and

father, and mitochondrial DNA, which
only comes down through the maternal

And it stays stable for tens of
thousands of years. You can still trace

mitochondrial DNA.

So it becomes a really powerful tool for
tracing back human genetics.

Using mitochondrial DNA, Dr. Hayes
sought to trace back the genetic

the exact spot where modern humans first
emerged.

One element in that genetic sequence,
L0, can be traced back through mothers

all the way back to one mother, the so
-called mitochondrial Eve.

The best science now tells us that Adam
and Eve, if they existed in the past,

even in the relatively recent past,
would most likely be ancestors of

including everyone in America.

So Dr. Hayes engages in this large study
where she looks at the mitochondrial

DNA of a sample base of about 1 ,200
indigenous Africans.

What the study has done...

It followed the L0 sequence back through
200 South Africans and compared it to

more than 1 ,000 Africans from the north
and determined that mitochondrial Eve

likely is to be located in the Kalahari
Desert of Botswana.

For a whole lot of folks thinking in
terms of the Garden of Eden, within the

context of Botswana, you've got two
things that are undeniably significant

them.

Longstanding presence.

of humans, and a lush environment.

The Kalahari Desert in Botswana is a
very, very arid, dry place.

But it wasn't always so. 300 ,000 to 200
,000 years ago, it was wetlands. It was

very, very green. The wetlands there
were actually part of a giant lake

that was as large as England called Lake
Makati Kati.

Based on the fossil record.

This wetland was home to an abundance of
fish, birds, and other animals large

and small.

Around 130 ,000 years ago, Lake
Makarikari dried up, and the people who

living in that area would have been
forced, really kind of expelled from

area, to go and find where they could
survive.

So once again, we have an interesting
kind of mirroring with the story of the

Garden of Eden, where they're cast out
of the garden that gave them everything,

where they need to go and they need to
find a new way to exist.

Some researchers believe the existence
of 315 ,000 -year -old Homo sapien

fossils found in other parts of Africa
contradicts the Botswana theory.

Ultimately, the birthplace of humankind
remains a matter of scientific debate

and further discovery.

It's a tremendously complex question,
where human beings originated from, and

just don't know the answer yet.

In the search for the Garden of Eden,
scientists and scholars have looked to

some of the oldest sites in human
civilization.

But it's a shepherd in southeastern
Turkey in the summer of 1994 who

upon a temple more than twice as old as
any ancient ruins ever found.

Did he accidentally rediscover?

The Garden of Eden?

There's a shepherd who is tending his
flocks in the sort of mountainous area

southeastern Turkey.

And his foot sort of hits something hard
on the ground. It's a rock. And he

bends down and brushes away the debris
to see what he's got there. And he finds

a large stone, just kind of carved.

And it turns out that's not the only
stone. There are many others like it.

We have now discovered a temple which
very well may be the oldest temple

ever discovered.

We call it Gobekli Tepe, which is just a
word for pot -bellied hill. By 1995,

a year later, this site has caught the
interest of international

And there is a dig there that is
initiated by a German archaeologist by

of Klaus Schmidt.

When Dr.

Schmidt's team arrives on Gobekli Tepe
in 1995, they begin to unearth giant T

-shaped megaliths, some still standing,
surrounded by many millennia of earth

and rocks.

It's a huge site. We have 22 acres of
excavated territory,

and we think that maybe only 5 % of it
has actually been uncovered.

Gobekli Tepe is really a series of
temple structures.

At the center of each one of these
structures are two massive

T -shaped monoliths. They're massive.
They're 16 feet high. They weigh tons.

And the most mind -blowing thing is how
old it is.

The carbon dating results.

appear to fundamentally change the
timeline of human civilization.

The discovery of Gobekli Tepe has really
revolutionized how we start to think

about early human history.

It very likely dates to between 12 ,000
and 14 ,000 years ago.

That would make it...

about 6 ,000 years older than
Stonehenge, probably about 7 ,000 years

more older than the Pyramids of Giza.

That's thousands of years before the
birth of agriculture.

What that means is that this
extraordinary structure was built by

-gatherers who were very likely wearing
animal skins and who hadn't invented the

wheel yet.

Gobekli Tepe's most remarkable features?

are its ornate carvings, carvings which
could link this ancient site to the

story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of
Eden.

The megaliths are carved very
beautifully with all kinds of images,

animals. In fact, snakes are among the
most commonly depicted animals at

Tepe. There seems to be some consensus
that what we have at Gobekli Tepe could

reflect a very...

complex mythology these serpent carvings
aren't the only possible connection to

the book of genesis there is one other
geographical notation in the garden

of eden mythology which is that it is in
the east very likely

what that means is east of the holy land
but west of Assyria.

That location, which is also along the
lines of Tigris and the Euphrates, would

place the Garden of Eden probably closer
to southeastern Turkey than in

modern Iraq.

It's clear that the region around
Gobekli Tepe has been a place of sacred

geography for Muslims, Christians,
Jewish people, and indeed the earliest

Neolithic peoples who made that
transition from hunter -gathering to

cities in that region of northern
Mesopotamia and what is now southeastern

Turkey.

You know, this is pre -agrarian Gobekli
Tepe, but... According to Schmidt, the

site marks this kind of transition of
hunter -gatherers as a culture

into an agrarian society.

So when we think about the Garden of
Eden mythology, it represents a world

before the rise of agriculture.

Maybe this Garden of Eden story about
these primordial hunter -gatherers,

Adam and Eve being cast out and having
to till the soil and work the soil for a

living, that story is very profound
about the change in human civilization

we know actually was factual.

While archaeologists believed the
builders of this massive complex were

-gatherers, the civilization that
occupied the same land thousands of

later was far more advanced.

The Sumerians invented irrigation
systems that made that part of the world

fertile and lush for them.

The Sumerians were the first
agriculturists. They were the first

food.

The Sumerians also developed the oldest
known written language in the world.

They were able to actually write down
their great mythologies.

These stories were able to be spread
beyond the boundaries of the

Sumerian Empire.

Sometime between 2100 and 1200 BCE, a
Sumerian writer produced the Epic

of Gilgamesh.

Scholars believe the Epic of Gilgamesh
predates Genesis by about a thousand

years. The Epic of Gilgamesh is a
Mesopotamian story about a

man who goes on a quest to find the
secret of eternal life.

He makes it as far as a special
mountain, the Mountain of the Sunrise.

sunrise, meaning in the east. Gilgamesh
makes it through the mountain and finds

himself... In a jeweled garden.

We see so many similarities between the
Epic of Gilgamesh and the story of the

Garden of Eden. There's the key role of
the serpent in ensuring that humankind

is going to stay mortal forever.

There's the jeweled garden.

This sacred realm.

unique location where immortality is
kept and guarded is not a

place any human being can ever really
find.

The Garden of Eden that's written down
in the Book of Genesis could refer back

to earlier written precedents like the
Epic of Gilgamesh. And if you want to...

Back to the Garden of Eden story.

Some say the location of the Garden of
Eden might actually have been in

southeastern Turkey.

In the late 19th century, a new theory
emerges, placing the Garden of Eden in

one of the most unlikely locations
imaginable.

In 1885, William F. Warren, who's the
president of Boston University, a

theologian, actually argues that maybe
the Garden of Eden used to be at the top

of the world.

William Warren's book, Paradise Found,
The Cradle of the Human Race at the

Pole, opens with a redrawn world map on
which all the continents are arrayed

around the Arctic Circle.

A few.

take a globe and flatten it out. His
argument was, you get the North Pole at

top and everything else seems to move
around it. And for him, it lent support

his argument that the North Pole, the
top of the world, it is the birthplace

humanity.

For Warren, the similarity in the
perspective on a Garden of Eden -like

the idea that you have a similar story
being told in all of these different

places, suggests a common starting point
that eventually spread over the entire

world.

Warren lives in an era when new
scientific evidence begins to reveal

before the Ice Age, the Earth was not as
cold.

If we look at a world that is much, much
older than maybe we had thought it was

before, we're suddenly going to see
changes in glaciation, we're going to

changes in geologic record that suggest
this world was a warmer place than it

had been before.

Which, by the way, isn't necessarily out
of harmony with the book of Genesis,

which I think suggests a different world
than we had before.

Warren believes a warmer Earth means the
North Pole would have once been a

livable place.

And a study published in the journal
Nature in 2006 may support his claim.

The study, based on core samples taken
from more than 1 ,000 feet below the

floor of the Arctic Ocean, concluded
that over 50 million years ago, the

had an average temperature of 74
degrees.

There is actually really good evidence
that these places often were very lush

the very, very distant past.

So that encouraged some speculation
about the idea about Adam and Eve maybe

being in the Garden of Eden back then.

Warren was looking for a place for the
Garden of Eden. He presumed that he

needed one where he had lots and lots of
sunlight.

A better place than the North Pole.

Because the Earth rotates on a tilted
axis as it revolves around the sun, the

North Pole has six straight months of
daylight followed by six months of

darkness. Warren sees the dark half of
the polar year as a time for spiritual

reflection. There's this romantic idea
that you would be there and you would be

directly under the heavens in
communication with the heavens and you

the stars and everything swirling around
you.

So this was a kind of connection between
the heaven and earth, that sense of

being at the place where God was when he
separated the firmaments and he put the

heavens above.

and the earth below.

In Islamic tradition, the Garden of Eden
is the garden from which humans were

expelled before history.

And when Adam and Eve were expelled,
they were separated in different parts

the world.

For Dr. Warren, as the North Pole
changed, as it became colder and colder,

changes in the natural environment
forced folks to flee, to migrate to

that better supported life.

Warren connects that ancient Ice Age
migration from the North Pole to stories

man's expulsion from Eden.

For Warren, as he looks at these
traditions around the world, he sees

evidence of a memory of being kicked out
of paradise and moving down towards the

equator. And for him, the Adam and Eve
story that we have in Genesis was that

story in Israel.

It's important to recognize in the 19th
century, folks knew very little about

the North Pole. And so for a lot of
folks, this was a real possibility based

upon what they assumed concerning the
North Pole. And so for some folks, this

argument was persuasive.

Till his dying day, age of 96, Warren
maintained the Garden of Eden was at the

North Pole.

However, skeptics point out that the
period when the North Pole had a

climate predates the rise of man.

What he points to in terms of that area
being able to support robust life, we're

talking about roughly 50 million years
ago.

There wasn't really anything like a
human or even a monkey or an ape at that

time. And there's another factor that
makes Warren's theory less likely.

The North Pole itself is really just ice
through and through. If you melt it

away, there's no ground.

Ever since satellite images began to be
taken of the Arctic 40 years ago, it's

been determined that up to half of that
ice has gone away. And the prediction is

that by 2040, it'll be gone. And if that
happens, we're going to watch Warren's

theory quite literally melt away.

In the spring of 1820, in western New
York State, a 14 -year -old Joseph Smith

claims that God came to him in a vision.

In 1820, Joseph Smith was given a
revelation by God. Now,

Joseph Smith lived in the heart of
what's called the Second Great

time of religious revival.

And so young Joseph...

really felt that he was called as a
prophet.

Joseph Smith, it says that, you know,
God the Son and the Father came to him

a vision. And also the angel Moroni came
to him as well and told him that all

these other churches are wrong.

In 1823, Smith claims to have another
revelation in which an angel leads

him to find a series of gold plates
buried for more than 1 ,400 years.

in the hills of Palmyra, New York.

Joseph Smith said that these golden
plates were written in an otherwise

language he called Reformed Egyptian.

And he spends some years translating
these golden plates, and that's how we

the Book of Mormon.

Which is like the testament of when
Jesus actually came to the Americas

rose from the dead and kind of
proclaimed the gospel there.

The Book of Mormon not only lays the
foundation,

for the beliefs of the Mormon faith. But
it also describes Middle Eastern tribes

that leave the Middle East and arrive in
America about 589 B .C.

According to Mormon belief, an Israelite
named Lehi journeyed with his family

from the Middle East to the Americas
around 600 B .C.

Some church leaders teach that during
the great biblical flood, humanity on

ark was carried back across the ocean to
the Middle East.

As Smith builds his following, he claims
to have another visit from God on July

20, 1831.

According to Mormon history, in this
revelation, God shows him

the real location of the Garden of Eden.

God revealed to him that the Garden of
Eden wasn't actually in Mesopotamia.

Although Smith didn't name the location
in his translation, he told many early

followers of his where the site actually
was.

It's not uncommon for religious
communities to think theologically about

location as being powerful, important,
connected to the biblical.

And that is the case for the Mormons who
argued that God told Joseph

Smith that the Garden of Eden wasn't
over there somewhere. It's not Turkey.

not any of those locations. The Garden
of Eden is actually in Missouri.

In 1831, Smith establishes a Mormon
outpost in Jackson County, Missouri,

the town of Independence.

Smith says God revealed this location.

as the site of the Garden of Eden.

Mormonism, as the quintessentially
American religion, quite naturally

places the Garden of Eden in America.

After all, that is the birthplace of the
religion. It's the birthplace of the

prophets of the religion. So if a Mormon
is looking for the Garden of Eden,

chances are that they're looking in
Missouri.

According to Mormon tradition, Adam
built two altars in this Missouri Garden

Eden, an altar of sacrifice and an altar
of prayer.

And in fact, if you go to that area
today, you'll find that those stone

are still there, the ones that Adam
himself was said to have built.

For a time, Smith and his followers
settled in Missouri to be near their

garden paradise.

But tensions with their non -Mormon
neighbors grow violent, and they're

to move.

After they were asked to leave Missouri
by the governor, they end up going a

little bit north and settling just to
the north of Missouri.

Smith and his flock settled in Nauvoo,
Illinois.

But in 1844, Smith and his brother were
arrested and jailed in Carthage,

Illinois. An angry mob attacked the jail
and shot Smith and his brother to

death.

Two years later, Smith's successor,
Brigham Young, leads the Mormons west.

finally settling in Salt Lake City,
Utah.

But a group of Joseph Smith's original
followers actually don't go with

everybody out to Utah, and they stay
put, and they're still there in the area

around Independence, and they're known
as the Community of Christ.

They're still there in the Promised
Land.

Official Mormon teaching hasn't
abandoned the idea that the Garden of

Missouri. Joseph Smith believed that
when Adam and Eve were kicked out of the

Garden of Eden, which he had near
Independence, Missouri, they moved 70

the north to a valley called Adam -on
-de -Aman, which is translated,

the Valley of God, where Adam dwelt. So
Joseph Smith has suggested that Adam

will return to this place, Adam -on -de
-Aman, in order to prepare for the

second coming of Jesus.

Starting in 1947, members of the Mormon
Church began purchasing land in Missouri

near the Valley of God where Adam dwelt.
As of 2021, the church owns

approximately 3 ,000 acres there.

We really have no reference in the
biblical text to places in North

reference to any place that could have
been maybe even misunderstood as

North America.

Why is it important to locate the actual
Garden of Eden? Human beings have been

asking since day one where we came from.

It's important to us as contemporary
readers because we are inquisitive. We

to know. We want this to also be part of
our story.

And so that's why I think we're asking
this question.

While researchers and scientists
continue their quest to find the cradle

human life, for many people of faith,
There's no point in searching, because

it's written in Genesis that after Adam
and Eve were banished, God blocked man

from ever returning to Eden by posting
an angel to guard the entrance.

An angel with a flaming sword. So even
if someone does locate the garden, they

may have a challenging time trying to
get in.

I'm Lawrence Fishburne. Thank you for
watching History's Greatest Mystery.