Scott R. Frazer, a Latter-day Saint scientist with a PhD in analytical chemistry, wrote the following in support of the “pre-Adamite” thesis:
ADAM’S NEIGHBORS
From archaeological evidence, carbon dating of tools made by pre-Adamites, and extrapolating back from known population counts, it has been calculated that there were about 7,000,000 people on earth at the time of Adam and Eve. What happened to the other 6,999,998 people? There is no record of a colossal extermination of everyone else. Actually, there is no evidence that anything happened to those people. They continued to live.
This population of pre-Adamites does clear up certain otherwise troublesome verses in the Old Testament.
1. If God created Adam from the dust, why not just have created him in the Garden of Eden instead of moving them there later? (Genesis 2:8)
2. Neither Adam nor Eve expressed surprise that Satan shows up in the Garden in the third chapter of Genesis or in the temple account. If they were the only beings on the earth, wouldn’t the appearance of a stranger have been confusing for them and worthy of a question?
3. The presence of seven million other people means that Adam and Eve’s children didn’t have to marry their own brothers and sisters, an incestuous act that would soon be forbidden under the Mosaic law.
4. In Genesis 4:15, the Lord set a mark upon Cain, to warn anyone finding him from deciding to kill him. Would that have been necessary if everyone else on the earth had been a close relative to Cain and would have known him on sight? A few verses later, shortly after being exiled from the rest of his family for murdering Able, Cain “builded a city” called Enoch in the land of Nod (Genesis 4:17). Who lived there? Cain, his wife, and a few children could hardly have made up a city. But, if there were seven million people on the earth, Cain could certainly have found enough people to populate his city in a short amount of time.
So, were the children of these other 6,999,998 pre-Adamites still creatures of evolution or were they men, housing the spirit children of our Heavenly Father? Again, we can only speculate. The idea that Adam is the “father of all mankind” could be figurative. We know that Adam and Eve were evicted from the Garden of Eden and had to make their way out into the world. As Adam and Eve’s descendants continued to spread throughout the land, most would have married outside of the immediate family. But in doing so, their children would all have been descendants of Adam and, thus, should also be living souls. It would take a number of generations, but gradually Adam’s seed would have spread to all parts of the world, inserting themselves into the families of the earth. So figuratively or literally, we have all become Adam’s children.
However, as far as the evolutionary sciences are concerned, nothing of importance happened 6,000 years ago. The spirits of men do not leave a fossil record. But the Old Testament gives us enough detail about the generations that followed Adam and certain key events that were dated in other historical records for us to do the math and determine that Adam and Eve had to have lived 6,000 years ago, in approximately 4,000 BC. We also have the evolutionary account of what was happening on Earth in the same period. This combined scriptural/evolutionary narrative is speculative, but it does allow one to reconcile the two accounts of the beginning of man. (Scott R. Frazer, Where Science Meets God: 12 Ways Science Reinforces LDS Doctrine [Springville, Utah: CFI, 2018], 113-14; cf. the section, “What is a ‘Man’?” pp. 110-13)