There was a fascinating article in The Times yesterday in which genetics is
showing that the y-chromosome Adam never met the mtDNA Eve. Adam leved about
59,000 years ago and Eve 143,000. Now, if one wants to maintain any sort of
Biblical historicity in the face of this kind of data, one needs to either
move Adam and Eve back to a time prior to 143,000 years ago (as I suggest)
or have Adam and Eve NOT be the parents of all people (as Dick Fischer
advocates). One simply can't have the data-ignoring position of Hugh Ross
who would say that Adam and Eve were created sometime after 60,000 years
ago. Genetics simply doesn't allow that possibility any more. Here is part
of the article.
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,27713,00.html
Tuesday October 31,2000
Even early man was late for first date
BY NIGEL HAWKES HEALTH EDITOR
"WOMEN were the complete article long before men, a new study has shown.
Geneticists have found that female genes acquired their modern form 143,000
years ago but the male version was not up and running for another 84,000
years.
The result overturns the Biblical description of women being created from a
spare rib left over from a man, and suggests that if Eve ever did meet Adam
she was slumming it, genetically speaking.
*The result overturns the Biblical description of women being created from a
spare rib left over from a man*, and suggests that if Eve ever did meet Adam
she was slumming it, genetically speaking.
An international team led by Peter Underhill of Stanford University studied
the Y chromosome, which confers maleness, of more than 1,000 men from 22
parts of the world. By creating a family tree of genetic variations, it is
possible to trace it back to a putative ancestor from whom all varieties of
today's Y chromosome originated.
Similar studies have been made of mitochondrial DNA, which is passed down
unchanged through the maternal line. These studies have shown that we are
all ultimately descended from an "ancestral Eve" who lived in Africa about
143,000 years ago.
But ancestral Adam, measured by the Y chromosome clock, was alive a mere
59,000 years ago. So it is clear than ancestral Eve never met ancestral
Adam, though she must have met some sort of male in order to have begotten
all those descendants. Dr Underhill and his team report in Nature Genetics
that the perfect DNA for men simply took longer to emerge. There must have
been thousands of generations of men whose maleness was provided by
different, less perfect, versions of the Y chromosome.
glenn
see http://www.flash.net/~mortongr/dmd.htm
for lots of creation/evolution information
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Nov 01 2000 - 01:44:56 EST