Question
Is there any record in the ahadith of how long ago Adam alaihis salaam was put down onto this earth? And also I was recently told that seeing as the people of those times were so large and we now are much smaller that this is evidence of evolution. What answer can I give to this?
Answer
There is no record of this time period in any authentic hadith. However, seerah (history) books mention a few thousand years. But only Allah Ta’ala knows
The fact that people grew smaller in size over the centuries is not the evolution that Darwin and his followers teach or espouse. The evolvement of man from an ape cannot be remotely deduced from the changing of people’s sizes. The human hasn’t change in the basic physical features since the time that Nabi Adam (alayhis salaam) was CREATED by Allah (Not having evolved from a baboon or monkey), though the sizes of people are different nowadays compared to before. But such change is not evolution. Evolution is the process by which different kinds of living organisms are thought to have developed and diversified from earlier forms during the history of the earth, or it is the gradual development of something, especially from a simple to a more complex form. From this definition we can see that the changing of the sizes of people is not evolution.
Allah Ta’ala knows best
Mufti Siraj Desai