Adam or Noah?

06/29/000

The Dallas Morning News (06/26/2000) featured an article this past week called: A new mystery evolves on trail of early humans: World's common male ancestor seems to have postdated female counterpart By Emily Sohn / The Dallas Morning News. http://dallasnews.com/science/101857_chromo_26dis.A.html

The article stated that according to DNA research by Peter Oefner, a biologist at the Stanford DNA Sequencing and Technology Center, a single male and female progenitor can be traced, however living at different times. The article seems to poke fun at creationists who adhere to Adam and Eve as the parents of all humankind. According to the DNA, the female progenitor predates the male progenitor by some significant period.  They quip that Adam and Eve did not live at the same time.

The research tends to suggest that tracing male DNA is more accurate due to the lone Y chromosome. Thus, they claim that they can (more or less) pinpoint a single male progenitor of the human race. The female DNA is more difficult to classify, and thus, they cannot pinpoint a female progenitor as easily. Therefore, the statistical point at which all variant female DNA converge is at a date significantly earlier than the male identified. The scientists walk away from this proud that they have yet hammered another nail in the coffin of creationists. But, let me please remind the scientists, that the Bible tells of TWO male progenitors of the human race: Adam and Noah.

Due to the corruption of the human race, all humankind sparing only Noah, his three sons, and their wives, were destroyed. Thus, after the flood, we have a single male progenitor and FOUR female progenitors!

Does the DNA research prove creation wrong? Not at all. Does it support Biblical evidence? I will say "yes", but will also mention that the DNA results and calculations placed the male progenitor at 40,000 years ago and the female progenitor at 150,000 years ago. I don’t agree with the numbers, but, I don't think the numbers are highly significant for this discussion.. I was not convinced that the scientists accurately demonstrated how these numbers were achieved. At least not in the Dallas Morning News article, which was an excerpt of a full write-up in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The number of years calculated by the scientists does not seem to agree with Biblical generations, however, the research does agree (and indeed, confirm) with what the Bible says about humanity being reduced to a single man (and his sons) and several women at some point in history.