Adam's Gene and the Mitochondrial Eve: a Nonincestuous Descent of Man from Adam and Eve

Reviewed By: Phil Angelo of The Daily News

In many ways, it might be the most challenging book you will read.

It is a daunting subject matter, examined in a new and creative light.

What Kutty does, in this text, is to attempt to reconcile science, particularly evolution, but also physics and astronomy, with the core religious writings of humanity.

There are quotes from the Bible, from Quran and the Hindu Vedas. Charles Darwin and Sherlock Holmes drop in, too.

The real audience here seems to be men of science, who are also men of faith. Time and again, Kutty finds support in religious writings for the science of today's world.

At the heart of his argument is the idea that God has directed evolution. The fossil evidence, he finds, is conclusive.

But Kutty will challenge some of your, and he challenged some of my, assumptions.

He points out that the human brain is still evolving, and raises the possibility that mankind may not be the final dominant species on this planet.

Examining the linguistic history, Kutty arrives at the conclusion that the Garden of Eden was located on a hill in Eastern Turkey on Northwest Iran. He also holds that the possibility of mutation might have allowed personalities in the Bible to literally live as long as the texts say they did.

There is also a lot of scientific knowledge on display here. There is a lengthy discussion of the fossilized remains of humanity and its ancestors. Kutty more than touches on the deep question of how life of all kinds evolved. Might it have arrived on a meteorite? Were we molded on clay? Did life start deep in the ocean? What role did wormholes in space hold?

And, as Kutty discussed the beginning of time, he also discusses the end. Will we be the last dominant species, or fail, or destroy ourselves as something passes us?

What it is, through, is thought-provoking, bringing together disciplines that often don t share the same book, or chapter, of page.