Adam Sayid
Adam was not the first man in the sense that he didn’t have parents, but he was the first man to have consciousness and cognitive abilities, and thus the father of modern man. He was not created outside the evolutionary system which all life has been established by, he was simply the first human to be gifted with these abilities.
The Qur’an narrates this point as a main feature in the Adam story (2:30-34), where Adam’s newly gifted ability of conceptual thinking, and conscious comprehension of the physical world was compared to the angels’ form of consciousness, and the angels acknowledged in awe and reverence, as they found it profoundly extraordinary in comparison to what they possessed.
Scientifically speaking, it is a subject of wonderment to know at which point did mankind suddenly have these abilities and how. There was an article that I read a while ago that made an interesting read in this matter, which claimed that an ancient virus triggered consciousness in man, which then somehow permanently became embedded into our DNA. Below is the link to the article:
