Could All the Diversity in the Human Race Have Come From Adam and Eve?

When you look at people today, with all of our diverse characteristics- skin color, hair color, eye shape, height, build, etc, you can’t help but wonder: Could only Adam and Eve, who lived approximately 6,000 to 7,000 years ago have been the foundation for the diverse group we have become? Evolutionary science would tell us no- that the human race must have begun around 200,000 years ago to account for the diversity that is represented among us today. Surprisingly, however, some of the most compelling evidence corroborating the Biblical creation account, is coming from evolutionary scientists.

Let’s look at the path evolutionary science takes using the example of skin color. To explain the rainbow of varying shades, (not just the four scientific classifications of race: Caucasoid, Mongoloid, Negroid, Australoid) but the incredible diversity among each race (dark skinned Caucasoids, light skinned Negroids, varying shades of Mongoloids), the October 2002 issue of Scientific American claims that skin color is evolving in order to come to “just the right skin color”. A color dark enough to prevent the nutrient folate from being destroyed in the sun, but light enough to allow the production of vitamin D. Dr. Brad Harrub writing for Apologetics Press sums up the thought process evolutionist currently use to describe the human evolution of skin color (evolution from chimps, of course, who by the way do not have varying skin color), “For those of you keeping track, here’s a quick summary: We lost body hair to cool our growing brains. Our pink skin and folate levels were in danger of UV radiation, so we evolved lots of melanin and became dark skinned. But some humans traveled to areas where there wasn’t as much sunlight, thus they were required to evolve lighter skin.”

Of course, Creationists do not need to rely on mutations, we assert that our Creator, God, created man with the best possible combination of skin-color genes. With this knowledge we can scientifically account for skin color diversity (and most other diversity for that matter) using a simple Punnette Square straight from your high school biology class. Here’s a little refresher: The pigment melanin (which controls skin color) is mainly controlled by two pairs of genes- Aa and Bb. A and B are dominant and produce melanin well, while a and b are recessive and do not. If God created Adam and Eve “heterozygous” (meaning they had both dominant and recessive genes: AaBb) they would have been a middle brown color and capable of producing anywhere from darkest Negroid to lightest Caucasoid.

According to Dr. Brad Harrub, “The whole process is “put into reverse,” however, when people of different skin colors intermarry. Various combinations of genes occur, and the offspring thus begin to show a rainbow effect of skin colors, ranging from black to white.”

Now, obviously Adam and Eve could have literally created a rainbow of offspring within one generation. However, with all the mixing going on through the generations, many varying shades would have been produced. Notice, “race” is never even mentioned in the Bible.

I know what you’re thinking- Ok, but that’s not how it works today- white parents have white children only, black parents have black children only and so on. This is where the findings of evolutionary science fit in perfectly with the Bible.

Evolutionary scientists have come to the conclusion that there must have been some type of “bottleneck” (extreme reduction) in the earth’s population somewhere around 5,000 years ago when the population really began to diversify. Of course, creationists refer to that as the flood of Noah’s day. Dr. Jeffery P. Tomkins writes for the Institute of Creation Research, “A new study reported in the journal Science has advanced our knowledge of rare DNA variation associated with gene regions in the human genome. By applying a demographics-based model to the data, researchers discovered that the human genome began to rapidly diversify about 5,000 years ago.”

Why are scientists just now coming to these conclusions? Dr. Jeffery Tomkins explains, “Typically, evolutionary scientists incorporate hypothetical deep time scales taken from paleontology or just borrowed from other authors to develop and calibrate models of genetic change over time. In contrast this Science study used demographic models of human populations over known historical time and known geographical space. The resulting data showed a very recent, massive burst of human genetic diversification.”

This creates quite a conundrum for evolutionists, but a not so surprising affirmation for Creationists. From Dr. Tomkins article, “The authors [of the demographic study] wrote, ‘The maximum likelihood for accelerated growth was 5,115 years ago.’” Tomkins continues, “Old earth proponents now have a new challenge: to explain why- after millions of years of hardly any genetic variation among modern humans- human genomic diversity exploded only within the last five thousand years?…Since the author’s date represents maximum time, the actual DNA diversification event probably occurred even sooner. A biblical time scale indicates that a global flood occurred about 4,500 years ago, and this closely correlates with the time scale of the researcher’s estimate.”

Dr. Robert W. Carter explains the genetic implications in his article for Creation Ministries International titled Adam, Eve, and Noah vs Modern Genetics and I’ll hit the high points. We really don’t know what type of genetic mutation had occurred prior to the flood, but whatever there was, was reduced to the genetics represented in Noah’s family. Let’s start with the basics. Y chromosomes can only be passed through the male (obviously- it’s what makes a male a male), so fathers pass this on directly to their sons. This means, there was ONLY one Y chromosome represented on the ark even though there were 4 men (Noah and his 3 sons). This means whatever mutations had occurred in the Y chromosome up to that point, were effectively erased because only Noah’s sons reproduced after the flood. (The Bible doesn’t say Noah had any more children, so I assume he didn’t. But whether he did or not is neither here nor there.)

Can we know how many X chromosome lineages were on the ark? We can’t know for sure, but if you do the math, there would have been a maximum of 8 (9 if Noah had a daughter after the flood). Dr. Carter notes, “And since X chromosomes recombine (in females), we are potentially looking at a huge amount of genetic diversity within the X chromosomes of the world.”

This fits perfectly with genetic findings because, as it turns out, Y chromosomes are similar worldwide! Dr. Carter elaborates, “According to the evolutionists, no “ancient” (ie, highly mutated or highly divergent) Y chromosomes have been found. This serves as a bit of a puzzle to the evolutionist, and they have had to resort to calling for a higher “reproductive variance” among men than women, high rates of “gene conversion” in the Y chromosome, or perhaps a “selective sweep” that wiped out the other male lines.” X chromosome lineage fits just as well. Dr Carter notes, “As it turns out, there are only three main mitochondrial (female) DNA lineages found across the world.”

I hear you saying, “So how does this result in the race related diversification that we have today?!?” It all goes back to another Biblical event- the Tower of Babel. Prior to the separation that God ushered in at the Tower of Babel, the culture was described as a homologous one- all sharing the same language and intermixing freely. So much so, that they were disobeying God’s command to scatter and fill the earth. For our discussion today, the applicable verse is Genesis 10:32, “These were the families of the sons of Noah, according to their generations; and from these the nations were divided on the earth after the flood.”

Dr. Carter highlights the significance of this verse on the world we see today, “At Babel, God did not separate the nations according to language. He used language to separate them according to paternal (male) ancestry! This has monumental significance and is the key to understanding human genetic history. Paternal sorting would lead to specific Y chromosome lineages in different geographical locations. Since males and females from the three main families should have been freely intermixing prior to this, it also leads to a mixing of the mitochondrial lines. It is as if God put all the people into a giant spreadsheet and hit a button called ‘Sort According to Father.’ He then took that list and used it to divide up and separate the nations.”

We also know that what little variation there is among Y chromosomes is almost always geographically specific. This means after they were separated by Y chromosome, mutations occurred among the new smaller people groups who now only mixed among themselves. This makes those mutations geographically specific. Mitochondrial DNA on the other hand, is pretty much randomly distributed around the world. The variations we see now in mitochondrial DNA are also geographically specific.

This is nothing short of a perfect parallel to the Biblical account. The people groups were separated according to their father, meaning each group only had a specific amount of genetic information from that point going forward. The groups then dispersed, each ending up in completely different geographical areas. Mutations that occurred within each group were effected by their differing climates/environments to some degree and from that point forward became characteristics specific to that group only. This gives rise to the various characteristics that we consider “race specific”.

Interestingly, today, we can see this very concept working in reverse right before our very eyes. As people groups come together (especially here in the melting pot of the USA) and intermix freely, the attributes regarded as “race specific” are mingled and contribute toward a more homologous human race. We have proven to be a scientific product of our Biblical history and as time goes on we continue to prove it.

 

 

 

 

Sources:

http://creation.com/noah-and-genetics

https://www.icr.org/article/6927/289

http://apologeticspress.org/apcontent.aspx?category=9&article=82