''The Eternal Adam'' () is a short novelette by

Michel Verne Michel Jean Pierre Verne (3 August 1861 – 5 March 1925) was a French novelist and editor, who was the son of Jules Verne. He was best known for his adventure novels, which included '' The Lighthouse at the End of the World'' (1905), ''The ...

recounting the progressive fall of a group of survivors into barbarism following an

apocalypse Apocalypse () is a literary genre originating in Judaism in the centuries following the Babylonian exile (597–587 BCE) but persisting in Christianity and Islam. In apocalypse, a supernatural being reveals cosmic mysteries or the future to a ...

. Although the story was drafted by his father

Jules Verne Jules Gabriel Verne (;''Longman Pronunciation Dictionary''. ; 8 February 1828 – 24 March 1905) was a French novelist, poet and playwright. His collaboration with the publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel led to the creation of the ''Voyages extraor ...

in the last years of his life, it was greatly expanded by Michel Verne.

Plot summary

The story is set in a far future in which Zartog Sofr-Aï-Sran, an

archaeologist Archaeology or archeology is the study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of Artifact (archaeology), artifacts, architecture, biofact (archaeology), biofacts or ecofacts, ...

, deciphers the preserved journal of a survivor to the total destruction of civilisation. The discovery comes in the midst of philosophical controversies on the origin of humans, between those that believe in the existence of a unique ancestor and those that do not. The journal describes the struggle for survival of a small group of French men and women after a sudden and unexplained catastrophe destroys the European continent, and the futility of the accumulated knowledge in the group. After seeing that their illiterate offspring will have no immediate use for the scientific knowledge they possess, the journal's author and his friends try to write down everything they remembered and store it in time-capsules for future generations, but sadly, those capsules perished in the subsequent centuries. The conclusion of the novel implies that the unique ancestor is the survivor whose journal was discovered, and that civilisation is doomed to eternal fall and rebirth. The "eternal Adam" is the myth of Adam and Eve, a variation of which is present in Zartog's civilization and he speculates may be the only knowledge that survived from countless previous cataclysms, and the only thing that may carry on after his civilization inevitably falls.

References

External links

* *
Full original text (with illustrations)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Eternal Adam, The 1910 short stories French short stories Science fiction short stories Post-apocalyptic short stories Religion in science fiction Cultural depictions of Adam and Eve cs:Včera a zítra#Věčný Adam Jules Verne

Plot summary

See also

References

External links