The yellow resin is used to make candles, aromatics and gum; the beans are processed into meal, jam, and wine. It is not certain how the tree survives….Tree of Life (Bahrain)

Most civilizations began near rivers and lakes. The people needed the water for drinking and growing plants, a skill learned during the Neolithic Revolution. River Valleys became ideal locations for cities and settlements because of the fertile land surrounding the river beds.

Egypt started, from its unification, around 3,100 B.C while Babylon was founded 800 years later in 2,300B.C by the Akkadian speaking people of Mesopotamia.

In the small southern Iraqi city of Qurna, an unusual shrine stands on the shore of the Tigris: a small, dead tree, protected by low brick walls and surrounded by a concrete plaza. This tree is, according to local legend, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, the one that Eve ate from in the Garden of Eden.

There Adam and Eve are thrown out of Paradise because they eat from the tree of knowledge. The fruit has commonly been represented as an apple due to wordplay of the Latin word for apple, malus, which can mean both “evil” and “apple”.

In Genesis, the Bible mentions the “forbidden fruit.” Commonly identified as an apple, many people contend it was actually a quince. Some quince varieties — Aromatnaya and Karp’s Sweet — are said to be edible without cooking, but heat is what really unlocks the best this fruit has to offer in taste, texture and color.

COMMENTARY, GENESIs 30 (1949). used the plural form in speaking to Eve and that Eve did not have to persuade Adam to eat the fruit. Adam ate it immediately after Eve gave it to him. This analysis concludes that Eve was not a temptress and that Adam may have heard the entire conversation between Eve and the serpent.