When Death Entered the World

      Paul wrote that death entered the world through "sin," that is, through the malfunction, and that it entered through one human being. But what was the actual scope of that death which entered the world? Traditionally, the scope has been death in general, that is, nothing died before that one human being's doing what they were told not to. But is that really what Paul meant?
     Here's the problem with this interpretation, death is a part of life. That is, without something dying, nothing can live. Think about it. In order for one thing to eat, something else has to die whether it is an animal or a plant. The fruit which is picked from the tree is dead almost immediately because it has been severed from its source of nutrients, its source of life. Plants cannot grow without the nutrients derived from the decay of other dead plants and animals. There cannot be a functioning ecosystem without death of some kind. This is a known, observable fact.
     So then death entered the world through the malfunction of one human being, but death for whom? The only answer which satisfies all known data is death for our human ancestors in the garden. That is, instead of death entering globally for all of creation, its entry here was a special entry localized to our ancestors and their descendants.
     Adam was told he could eat from any tree in the garden except one. The tree of life was in the garden. It's not too much of a stretch to assume that he, or they as "'adam" literally means "human being" or "humanity," was already eating from the Tree of Life. It's clear from Genesis 3 that perpetually eating from this tree would lead to an indefinite and potentially unending lifespan (how that could be possible is a topic for another time).
      It's also clear that human ancestors lived and died for hundreds of thousands of years, including potentially prior to this event assuming that it occurred around the time human beings started wearing clothes between 70kya and 100kya. This suggests that those in the garden were an isolated group from the rest of our genus of homo, and even possibly isolated from other groups of homo sapiens.
     So, upon the ingestion of the toxic and brain chemistry altering piece of fruit, death was introduced to our ancestors in the garden. How? After their brains were altered and they malfunctioned, they were forced to relocate away from this "Tree of Life" food source and forbidden to return to it. Thus they were allowed to die naturally, each successive generation losing the longevity effects through either mutation, interbreeding with other species of homo, or both. By by about 30kya-40kya, there were no unaffected species of human left.
     So, death did enter the world through one human being or group of human beings, but it was a death specifically for our ancestors which those ancestors were never meant to experience.