The Genetic History of the Human Kind: Part 1

This is a comparison of what research in genetics has to say about the Biblical historical account versus the Darwinian model of human history.

Is the Bible’s history of humankind accurate?

If it is, then we should see specific clues in the DNA in our cells. These clues are as certain as if someone had walked across a sandy beach or a snow-laden field that they would leave behind telltale footprints.

The path of the DNA in our human genes…

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• through Adam and Eve
• continued through Noah and his family after they departed from the Ark
• and the nations of people dispersed from the Tower of Babel

should have left a footprint-like trail of those family histories. They did. Recent discoveries about human, animal, and plant DNA have agreed on every point of history in the Holy Bible.

As early as the 1980’s, science began to catch up with the Bible on the identity of the first humans. Scientists identified tiny chambers of the cell known as the mitochondria, which contained DNA. Their DNA would be the easiest to isolate and analyze. This DNA in the mitochondria (known as mitoDNA) specifically codes for the production of more mitochondria.

It was assumed to only be handed down through the mother to both sons and daughters. This made for a first step in retracing the genetic roots of humankind to the first woman.

A trail of DNA led to a single woman from whom we are all descended. (Newsweek , 1/11/1988, p46)

In honor of Genesis, the researchers named this first woman “mitochondrial Eve,” as she has been known ever since.

More research continued to show that the entire human race had only one mother and that she also lived much less than millions of years ago. The variety of mitoDNA found in all human cells was so slight that it was estimated to have developed over only 120,000 years.

“We are finding that humans have very, very shallow genetic roots which go back very recently to one ancestor,” said Michael Hammer of University of Arizona. “That indicates that there was an origin in a specific location on the globe and then it spread out from there.” (US News & World Report, 12/4/1995)

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Before this discovery, evolutionists had been arguing among themselves whether there was indeed only one point of origin for the human race.

The two competing evolutionary models were called the “Out of Africa” theory and the “Multi-regional” theory. Many evolutionists felt that the supposed “missing link” fossils found in Asia, such as Homo erectus, were evidence that humans first arose in more than one place and at similar times. “Multi” theorists still reject the mitoDNA data to this day, because it better supports the “Africa” theory, which is still held by the majority of evolutionists. Perhaps the multi-theorists just don’t like the idea of one “mother of all living,” because it sounds too much like the Bible.

Then something shocking happened in 1998. The respected evolutionary journal Science reported that male mitoDNA could also be donated by sperm-cell mitochondria to offspring of either sex at the moment of conception. This meant that not all the variety we see in human mitoDNA is due to the maternal line, but can also be contributed by the paternal line. It was estimated this could cause variety of mitoDNA to happen 20 times faster than had been thought. Instead of being only 120,000 years old,

“Eve” was now dated at 6,000 years old.

Regardless of the cause, evolutionists are most concerned about the effect of a faster mutation rate. For example, researchers have calculated that ‘mitochondrial Eve’—the woman whose mtDNA [mitochondrial DNA] was ancestral to that in all living people—lived 100,000 to 200,000 years ago in Africa. Using the new clock, she would be a mere 6,000 years old. No one thinks that’s the case. (Ann Gibbons, “Calibrating the Mitochondrial Clock,” Science, 1/2/1998, p28)

The above article quotes the original paper, saying “evolutionary studies led them to expect about one mutation in 600 generations … they were ‘stunned’ to find 10 base-pair changes, which gave them a rate of one mutation every 40 generations” (Nature, Genetics, vol. 15, 1997, p. 363-8) This meant that the same variation that had been thought to take 600 generations, could really happen in only 40 generations.

According to the Bible, the first eight generations of humans took over 1600 years. Only after Noah’s time did generations come and go more quickly. Eve is confirmed as living only 6,000 years ago; not 120,000 or 200,000 years ago; nor six or seven million years ago (where evolutionists date our first split from the apes). Anyone who continues to bring up this knowledge is just ignored by those of the Darwinian faith:

The most recent common ancestor would have lived in the very recent past …the MRCA [modern recent common ancestry] of humans lived just a few thousand years ago. (Douglas Rohde, Steve Olson & Joseph Chang, in Nature, “Modeling the Recent Common Ancestry of all Living Humans,” vol. 431, 9/30/2004, p.562)

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Some might say that one human couple could not give rise to all of the variety now seen in the human race. Creationary anatomist David Menton urged us to remember that Eve was a direct creation of God. All baby girls after her are born with all the egg cells they will ever have. They make those eggs from their parents’ DNA during their own prenatal development.

But where did Eve get her DNA? Where did Eve get the DNA for the egg cells in her ovaries? She had no parents. Menton suggests that each of Eve’s 400,000 eggs could have had a set of alleles (one of a number of the same gene for a specific trait) in the genes that were totally different from each other.

The Bible does not say how many children Adam and Eve had. It only names three of them, and the rest are mentioned only as “sons and daughters.” (Genesis 5:4) How many? We do not know. How many could the healthiest couple in history produce, whose fertile lifespan was perhaps more than half a millennium?

To be continued…