re: #264 wheat-dogghazi

But “the land of Nod” suggests an entirely different area from Eden, and to me, suggests a fairly populous area at that. It’s not the next village over, in other words. That would have required Adam to have been the direct ancestor of tens of thousands of people within a millennium, who in turn popped out a lot of kids without a great deal of genetic diversity.

Having re-read the text, it doesn’t even say that there were any people in the land of Nod. In fact, Cain had to build a city there for his offspring - supposedly the first one ever. So what follows from the text is that he went to the land of Nod with his sister and populated this land. (Note that the text doesn’t say that this land was named Nod back then. Bible is sometimes anachronistic like that. Like, when it describes Eden being associated with Euphrates - which of course would not have been named Euphrates back then.)