The story of our ancestry has been contained for thousands of years in the word of God. The book of Genesis plainly gives us the account of mankind’s existence; how we all came from a single male and female. For those who trust in God as a provider of pure truth, this story of our existence has always been accepted. But to those who seek to reject the word of God, the idea that we all came from one man and one woman has been a source of great mockery. However, recent technological advancements in the last several decades have made it possible for us to peer into the past and see our genealogical family tree all the way back to the beginning. A fascinating story lies within our own DNA and the DNA of all mankind. Our DNA is astoundingly detailed, geneticist Spencer Wells explains that the entire genetic code within a single person is over “six billion nucleotides long. If you take all the DNA out of one cell in your body, and stretch it end to end, it’s around two meters long. If you take all the DNA out of every cell in your body, and you stretch it end to end, it would reach from here to the moon and back, thousands of times. It’s a lot of information.” Information that was impossible to quantify and categorize until the modern computer. Today, millions of people have had their DNA analyzed through various companies. Alone, the National Geographic’s Genographic Project has analyzed the DNA of over one million people in over 140 countries. With such diversity in the participants of the project, it would be reasonable to assume that there turned out to be a great deal of diversity in their genetic code, but the results proved the exact opposite.

The results shocked the scientific world. No matter the vast amount of diversity in the world, our genetic history is not very diverse at all. In fact, the findings proved that we are not just related to each other, but that we all have the same mother. A person’s mitochondria code is a full record of their family’s female lineage, a linear line of motherhood. Everyone’s mitochondrial line will be very different from another’s, for we all have very different mothers, grandmothers, great-grandmothers, and so on. However, at a certain point, our mitochondrial code stops with one woman. Everyone’s mitochondrial stops at the same spot, on the same woman. Scientists have conclusively discovered that all mankind came from one and the same female. Interestingly, scientists named this woman “Mitochondrial Eve”. I simply call her Eve, and according to God, she is “the mother of all” (Genesis 3:20). But there’s more! By analyzing this genome, geneticists have determined her area of origin to be East Africa. Yes, this means we are all African, for our earliest mother was African, but we already knew that because we read that in the bible before. Genesis 2:10-14 provides information that the place called “paradise” (i.e. Eden), where Adam and Eve once lived, had encompassed a large portion of land, including both Africa and Mesopotamia. The biblical record even references the land of Cush as included in Eden; Cush is modern-day Ethiopia in Eastern Africa. It is always interesting when evolutionists accidentally prove the bible’s record. But evolutionists wouldn’t give up without a fight, for they quickly responded that Mitochondrial Eve was surely not the only woman on earth at that time and that there must have been thousands of others whose genetic lineage didn’t survive. However, this is just their own unprovable hypothesis, the science does not suggest it; the science only shows that we all came from the exact same woman who lived around East Africa.

This is not the only story told in our DNA. Yet again, down the genetic timeline, everyone on earth comes up with yet another single common ancestor. Today, the analysis of millions of DNA samples from all over the planet has given insight into a fascinating situation in the history of mankind. A time when the human family tree squeezed into a bottlenose. And once again, we all start over with a single person. Scientists have named him “Y-chromosomal Adam”, but he is better known to me as Noah. Geneticist Spencer Wells estimates that at that time in human history, the population of human beings shrunk to possibly 2,000. Paleontologist Meave Leakey said that “extremes of climate had reduced our population to such small numbers that we were on the very edge of extinction”. Scientists do not know what the extreme situation was but hypothesize that it must have been a severe drought that caused mankind to almost entirely die out. However, the bible reader can identify definitively that the severe situation that led to only a small number surviving was a global flood, as recorded in Genesis 6-8. As stated, scientists have estimated that there were only 2,000 people left on earth, but this is only a guess, the evidence only shows that all mankind shares only one ancestor at that time (“Y-chromosomal Adam”) – which could just as well mean that there was only one man and one woman left on the planet. So then, the fact that we all came from only one man during that generation does not prove that he was the only male left, but it certainly does suggest that there were extremely few people left on earth. Now, when we head over to the biblical record, we find that we certainly did come from only one man who survived out of his generation which suffered a catastrophic event (Genesis 6-8). This did not make him the only male left alive on earth – for we know that there were three other men left too (his three sons) – but it does necessitate that all mankind today must share this one man (Noah) as our common ancestor. And this is what is now proven by DNA analysis.

Geneticist Spencer Wells (who is, by the way, an evolutionist), also reported that after “Y-chromosomal Adam” (i.e. Noah), mankind had only four gene pools from which all human beings have descended. Now, this is an interesting little fact, because, once again, as we look back to the biblical record, we find four gene pools left available to mankind after the global flood. There is 1. Noah and his wife, for while Noah had only three sons at the time of the flood, it is clear from Genesis 9:1 that God blessed Noah again to be fruitful and multiply. 2. Shem and his wife, whose gene pool brought about people of many nations (Genesis 10:21-31). 3. Ham and his wife, whose gene pool brought about many more nations (Genesis 10:6-20). 4. And Japheth and his wife, whose gene pool also brought even more nations (Genesis 10:2-5). From these families have come all people residing on earth today, and the microscopic document in our cells tell the story. More importantly, God has told this story in his word, and recent findings in our DNA are just another case in point that God has always told us the truth about our origins. However, the evidence will never be enough for those whose hearts are set on removing God’s works from our knowledge. But we will never forget the great things He has done. To us, this information only strengthens our trust in God and his word, and we anticipate more science in the future that will continue to display the hands of our Creator by the things which He has made.

Article by Tanner Campbell