At the Origins of the Sacred: The Cognitive Revolution

The history of human evolution and the religious account of Creation have always been regarded as two parallel tracks, destined never to meet. On the one hand, there is science, with its fossils, DNA, and reconstructions; on the other, faith, with sacred texts and spiritual truths. But what happens if we attempt to relate the so-called Cognitive Revolution—the moment when, according to current theories, Homo sapiens developed abstract thought and symbolic language—to the perspective offered by the Qur’an?

Contrary to what one might think, part of contemporary Islamic theology is building a fascinating bridge between these two worlds.

What Is the Cognitive Revolution?

For anthropologists and historians, according to a theory popularized by Yuval Noah Harari in his bestseller Sapiens, the Cognitive Revolution occurred approximately 70,000 years ago. Before then, human beings would have communicated mainly through simple signals, similar to those used by other animals: calls indicating danger—“Watch out, a lion!”—or the presence of food. Then, at a certain point, a spark seems to ignite. And it is precisely this spark that leads me to reflect. The Sapiens brain changes its “wiring,” so to speak, and symbolic language emerges. We become capable of speaking not only about what we can see, but also about realities that have no immediately perceptible material form: legends, myths, abstract concepts, moral rules, and deities. But if these realities do not exist materially, where do they come from? Why would human beings have needed to “invent” myths in particular? Out of nothing?

It is important to observe that civilizations separated by immense distances have expressed surprisingly similar myths and symbols. Today, scholars define them as religions, mythological narratives, or legends, often attributing their creation to human beings. Yet the possible existence of a common principle is rarely investigated. According to my research, behind what we call “religions” there may lie an original message, one that branched out over the course of history and reached its conclusion with the final Revelation: the Qur’an. It is a message that also warns humanity about the consequences of the way in which it is conducting the affairs of the world. The Qur’an continually calls upon people to acquire knowledge, use their intellect, and study. It does not deny previous revelations, but states that different peoples and eras received a message that was later modified or altered over time. The Cognitive Revolution is regarded as the birth of culture and civilization. But what does this truly mean? Where does symbolic language originate? It is as though Homo sapiens, despite everything, had become capable of remembering something. In my view, the rites and myths that Harari defines as “inventions” may instead represent the transmission—through a different language—of an archaic knowledge, perhaps one that even predates Adam.

The Search for a First Word

Among the various theories proposed concerning the origins of language and symbolic thought, this hypothesis arises from research focused on linguistics and phonetics, with particular attention to their most ancient and primordial manifestations. By comparing words, sounds, symbols, myths, and traditions belonging to different cultures, it seeks to identify possible traces of a common origin, without claiming to offer a definitive explanation or to exclude alternative interpretations.

Before it became an instrument of communication, the word may have been an echo: the sonic trace of a knowledge more ancient than humanity itself. Perhaps languages did not emerge as entirely separate realities, but represent the many branches of an original language, dispersed over time and preserved in different forms by the peoples of the world. Behind apparently distant sounds and symbols, the same spiritual memory may be concealed. The similarities among myths, rituals, and sacred narratives would therefore not necessarily be mere coincidences, but fragments of an ancient message, translated by each civilization according to its own sensibility and expressive possibilities.

After all, religious traditions continually emphasize the power of the Word: a creative Word, capable of bringing order to chaos, making visible what is hidden, and linking the material world to invisible reality. Is it possible, then, that myths are not merely inventions, but symbolic forms through which humanity has preserved an original knowledge? Might every people have safeguarded part of the same message, expressing it through its own language, rituals, and images? My research arises precisely from this question. Every book, every language, and every theory expands my network of knowledge and brings me closer to the possibility of reuniting what human beings have separated over the course of history. For me, the Qur’an is a light capable of revealing the hidden connections among the phenomena of existence. It is an index and a map for orientation: it does not eliminate mystery, but teaches us to recognize its traces.

Iqra’, “Read,” is the first word of the Revelation. It is not merely an invitation to read a text, but an exhortation to read the world, history, the human being, and the signs scattered throughout Creation. In the Islamic context, this first word revealed to the Prophet Muhammad in the Cave of Hira underscores the immense importance that faith assigns to education, research, and the intellectual and spiritual development of the individual. Perhaps the First Word has not been lost, but continues to live, transformed, in languages, myths, symbols, and the deepest memory of humanity. But let us return to the phenomenon of Adam.

“The Event of Adam”: The Teaching of the Names

If we open the Qur’an to Surah al-Baqarah, we find a verse that may be read as an extraordinary representation of this mental leap:

“And He taught Adam all the names.”(Qur’an 2:31)

For the great commentators of the Islamic tradition, this passage does not simply mean that the first man memorized a kind of dictionary. It may indicate that God endowed the human being with the capacity for abstraction. Adam receives the faculty of naming and categorizing the world, of associating symbols with concepts, and of producing language and knowledge. While animals operate predominantly through instinctive patterns and immediate needs, the human being receives a distinctive mental flexibility: the intellect, or ‘aql.

In this theological event, we might recognize something comparable to the Cognitive Revolution.

Theistic Evolution: Reconciling Clay with DNA

The most complex issue remains the biological one. If human beings share a large portion of their DNA with other primates and belong to a natural history extending over millions of years, how can all of this be reconciled with the creation of Adam from earth and clay?

Some contemporary Muslim scientists and thinkers, including the astrophysicist Nidhal Guessoum, have examined the possibility of theistic evolution, or guided evolution. According to this perspective, two moments may be distinguished.

1. The evolution of the body. Over millions of years, the laws of physics and biology established by God shape matter. Hominins change until the biological “vessel” of Homo sapiens becomes capable of receiving a new condition. The clay mentioned in the Qur’an may represent precisely the biochemical, terrestrial, and material component of the body.

2. The breathing-in of the spirit. When the biological body is ready, a metaphysical act occurs: God bestows the rūḥ, together with a higher form of consciousness and responsibility. From this perspective, Adam would not necessarily be the first Homo sapiens in biological terms, but the first human being in the spiritual and moral sense: the first being invested with free will and responsibility before God.

   
   

Before Adam

When we speak of Adam, we are accustomed to asking an apparently simple question: was he the first human being on Earth? Perhaps, however, the question should be posed differently: was Adam the first Homo sapiens, or the first human being in the spiritual sense that the Qur’an attributes to humanity? The difference is enormous. The Qur’an recounts the creation of Adam, but naturally does not employ the categories of modern biological anthropology. It does not speak of Homo sapiens, Homo erectus, or Neanderthals. It tells us something different: the moment in which a creature receives a distinctive dignity, knowledge, and responsibility before God.

In Qur’an 2:30, God announces to the angels:

“Indeed, I will place a khalīfa upon the Earth.”

The angels then ask whether God will place upon it someone who will spread corruption and shed blood. This is a fascinating passage. Why do the angels immediately associate the new terrestrial creature with violence and bloodshed? This question also profoundly struck Dr. Jeffrey Lang in his reflections on the Qur’an. The verse provides no definitive explanation. Various interpretations have been proposed within the exegetical tradition, including the view that other creatures, such as the jinn, had already existed upon the Earth. We therefore cannot turn the angels’ question into proof of the existence of human beings before Adam. Nevertheless, the text opens a space for reflection.

Adam and the Limits of Civilization

What if Adam represented not simply the beginning of a species, but the beginning of a particular human civilization? This possibility could enter into dialogue with the thought of al-Kindī and with the question—already addressed in my article on whether the universe is finite or infinite—of the impossibility of an actual infinity within the created world. For al-Kindī, the world cannot be eternal. If the past consisted of an actually infinite succession of moments, that infinity would have had to be traversed in its entirety before the present moment could be reached. Yet infinity, precisely because it is infinite, cannot be completed or surpassed. The fact that we have arrived at “today” would therefore indicate that time had a beginning and that the world has not always existed.

If this reflection applies to the cosmos, we may also apply it, symbolically, to the history of humanity. No earthly civilization is infinite: it is born, receives knowledge, passes through its allotted time, and eventually reaches its completion. From this perspective, Adam might represent not necessarily the appearance of the first biologically human body, but the beginning of a new cycle of civilization: that of the conscious human being, capable of naming, choosing, and answering morally for his or her actions. His arrival would thus mark a precise threshold: the beginning of humanity entrusted with the task of being khalīfa upon the Earth. And whatever has a beginning already bears within itself the sign of a limit and an end. Adamic civilization would therefore have an origin, a mission, and a conclusion: from the first teaching of the names to the moment when humanity will be called to account for what it has built, transformed, or destroyed. Adam would then be not merely the beginning of a species, but the opening of a spiritual era. The Final Judgment would represent its completion: the point at which human history, having passed through its finite span, returns to its Origin.

Science seeks the biological origin of the human being through fossils, genetics, and evolutionary history. Revelation, by contrast, addresses different questions: who is the human being? Why does humanity possess knowledge? What is its responsibility? What is its relationship with the Creator?

Immediately after the announcement concerning the khalīfa, the Qur’an introduces an extraordinary element:

“And He taught Adam all the names.”(Qur’an 2:31)

It is precisely here that we must pause. Adam is not presented solely through his body. He is presented through knowledge. He knows, names, and distinguishes. He receives a command and can either obey or disobey; he errs, recognizes his error, and turns once more toward God. Is this the true birth of the human being?

Being Biologically Human Does Not Necessarily Mean Being Adam

We may formulate a hypothesis, which must remain precisely that because the Qur’an does not state it explicitly. Before Adam, creatures biologically very similar to us may have existed—even beings that science would place within the history of the genus Homo—without this necessarily contradicting the Qur’anic account. According to this perspective, Adam need not necessarily be interpreted as the first organism possessing human anatomy, but as the beginning of a new condition of being: the human being capable of receiving a command and answering for his or her actions.

It would therefore not be merely the appearance of a new body, but the beginning of humanity’s moral and spiritual responsibility.

A Revolution or an Awakening?

The question of the Cognitive Revolution remains. I am fascinated by the word revolution, because it does not properly indicate a birth, but a profound transformation: the passage from one condition of being to another.

Yet this very idea leads me to question it. Why did the tree not begin to walk? Why did the fish remain a fish, and the apple an apple? Every creature seems to preserve its own nature, a determined form and function. For this reason, I cannot regard the human being as the mere accidental result of an animal transformation. I do not believe that we descend from apes. Rather, I believe that Homo sapiens is a creature conceived and placed upon the Earth according to a precise intention, just as the other populations or human forms that preceded it may also have been.

The Cognitive Revolution, then, would not necessarily represent the transformation of an animal into a human being, but the moment in which an already predisposed creature receives—or finally manifests—faculties that had until then remained hidden: symbolic language, self-consciousness, spiritual memory, and the capacity to recognize the meaning of things. It would not be chance that suddenly produces the human being, but a possibility already inscribed within human nature and awakened at the appointed moment. The cognitive spark would not create the human being out of nothing; it would enable humanity to remember, understand, and manifest that for which it had been conceived.

I am naturally inclined to believe that an unconscious and primordial memory may have existed, remaining inexpressible for a long time. Human beings did not yet possess the linguistic tools required to explain it and may therefore have communicated it through symbolism. In my view, spirituality may have existed even before the full articulation of language. Our ancestors, unable to translate that knowledge into a system of words like our own, may have preserved it through different forms of expression, each transmitting it in their own way, while altering its primordial meaning.

In a later part of my research, I will explore this thesis in greater depth: everything may derive from a First Word, transmitted through the countless branches of a tree that nevertheless possesses a single root. Once again, we return to the Qur’an and to the verses concerning the diversity of languages and peoples. According to this line of reasoning, the Qur’anic perspective, evolutionary theory, and research into language might not exclude one another, but illuminate different aspects of the same origin.

The Qur’an and What It Does Not Say

This distinction also allows us to avoid a common error: asking the Qur’an to serve as a textbook of paleontology. The Qur’an does not provide a chronology of earlier human species. It does not say that Adam was a Homo sapiens in the modern taxonomic sense. Nor, however, does it explicitly state that no creature physically similar to a human being could have existed on Earth before him. The text’s silence constitutes proof neither in one direction nor the other. It is precisely this limit that makes the question interesting. We may accept what science discovers about the antiquity of life and hominin forms without being compelled to reduce Adam to a mere zoological stage. The Qur’anic question may operate on another level.

When Does Humanity Truly Begin?

Perhaps the point is not to establish when a body with our characteristics first appeared on Earth. The deeper question is another:

“When does a creature become responsible for what it does?”

Is it possible to possess hands, eyes, and a brain without yet being what the Qur’an means when it speaks of the human being entrusted with responsibility? Adam might represent precisely this threshold. First, life. Then something radically new: an awareness of one’s position before God.

If such a reading were possible, the conflict between creation and evolution would change profoundly. We would no longer be compelled simply to choose between Adam and prehistory. Science could narrate the history of the body. Revelation could narrate the birth of the human being as a moral being. These are two different questions, and perhaps the mystery of Adam begins at the very moment when we stop asking only where our bodies came from and begin asking when we became responsible for our souls.

Art as Spiritual Memory

I realize that I am presenting a highly complex subject. Yet even if we consider only ancient mythology and art, we may ask whether everything we now call art truly emerged only with the Cognitive Revolution. I am convinced that art is one of the most intimate and original forms of human expression and communication. Our ancestors, often described solely in terms of their animal dimension, may have drawn upon rocks and natural surfaces what they were not yet able to explain verbally: spirituality, received knowledge, memory, and mystery. Perhaps those signs were not mere decorations, but constituted a different language: fragments of a message that has reached us, one that we have not yet been able to decipher fully, leaving a serious gap in our understanding of human history.

We continue to divide ourselves and kill one another in the name of differences that may themselves be constructions of the Cognitive Revolution. Perhaps it is not myths and spiritual traditions that constitute the “fiction,” but the divisions we have created among peoples, languages, cultures, and religions, forgetting the common root from which they may have emerged.

It is in this sense that I venture to question Harari’s thesis. In my view, defining the human being primarily as an animal capable of creating fictions risks reducing the spiritual dimension to a mere product of the imagination. Harari recognizes that the Cognitive Revolution left us an extraordinary legacy, grounded in the capacity to share symbols, narratives, and non-material realities; yet he attributes this legacy to the emergence of “fiction,” without considering the possibility that such similar myths may preserve traces of a common principle. The question then changes: what if human beings did not invent those narratives, but attempted to translate—with the cognitive and linguistic means available to them—a received knowledge or a more ancient memory?

The Meaning of Khalīfa

Finally, the question of the khalīfa remains. What does it mean that God decided to place a vicegerent upon the Earth? Is this merely the conferral of a privilege, or is it above all the entrusting of a responsibility?

Perhaps the appearance of the khalīfa represents an intervention intended to introduce order, consciousness, and responsibility into a condition dominated by instinct, violence, and bloodshed. The human being already possessed certain intellectual resources, but was not yet capable of employing them in accordance with their highest purpose. Adam would then mark the passage from mere cognitive capacity to moral consciousness: not simply a being who thinks, but a being who understands the meaning of his or her actions and answers for them before God. Humanity’s task as khalīfa would not be to dominate the Earth arbitrarily, but to protect it, order it, and use the knowledge received in the most just manner.

In all likelihood, the true revolution does not consist in the birth of intelligence, but in the moment when intelligence receives a direction, a responsibility, and a purpose.

Two Languages for the Same Truth?

This interpretive key shows that science and faith need not necessarily be at war. Genetics and anthropology seek to explain how the human body came to possess such a complex brain. The Qur’an leads us toward another question: why have we received this consciousness, and what spiritual value does it possess?

The true nature of the human being does not reside solely in atoms or in the genetic code, but in the spark that makes us capable of looking at the stars, questioning ourselves about our Creator, and answering for our actions.

Very soon, I will take you into an underground world. Not to dismantle the theories of others, but to build bridges that may one day allow us to live together in peace. The shedding of blood must end. And it will end when human beings fully understand that they are responsible for their actions. In the book on which I am working—whose title I will not yet reveal—I will also address the question of that for which we will be called to account. I will attempt to bring together theories from different fields and to show how our cognitive capacities may not be the result of mere “animal” chance, but the expression of an intentionality conceived down to the smallest detail: A Willed Spark.