The belief that all humans are descended from Adam is central to traditional Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

Traditionally, most Jews, Christians and Muslims have embraced monogenism in the form that all modern humans ultimately are descended from a single mating pair, named Adam and Eve.

Christian monogenism played an important role in the development of an African-American literature on race, linked to theology rather than science, up to the time of Martin Delany and his Principia of Ethnology (1879).

Scriptural ethnology is a term applied to debate and research on the biblical accounts, both of the early patriarchs and of migration after Noah’s Flood, in order to explain the diverse peoples of the world.

Monogenism as a Bible-based theory required both the completeness of the narratives, and the fullness of their power of explanation.

These time-honored debates were sharpened by the rise of polygenist skeptical claims; when Louis Agassiz set out his polygenist views in 1847, they were opposed on Biblical grounds by John Bachman, and by Thomas Smyth in his Unity of the Human Races.

The debates also saw the participation of Delany, and George Washington Williams defended monogenesis as the starting point of his pioneer history of African-Americans.

Monogenism or sometimes monogenesis is the theory of human origins which posits a common descent for all human races.

The negation or opposite of monogenism is polygenism.

This issue was hotly debated in the Western world in the nineteenth century, as the assumptions of scientific racism came under scrutiny both from religious groups and in the light of developments in the life sciences and human science.

It was integral to early conceptions of ethnology.