Michael Kruse

As to the issue of genetics, you have completely misunderstood my point and it is partly because I did elaborate on the nature of the DNA analysis.

“The idea that the first woman could be much older than the first man is a big red flag for me. It could not possibly have any agreement with the bible which clearly says that the first woman was made from the body of the first man. This part of Ross’ findings raises a big red flag for me.â€

I didn’t say that woman came first or that Ross believes this. I said that scientific research suggests an earlier date for woman than for man. Scientist see that as discrepancy. Woman could not have predated man by 10,000 to 20,000 years. How would humanity reproduce? Therefore, the scientist asks why the discrepancy exists. I didn’t fully explain how the DNA analysis works. I will elaborate a little more.

The dating for males comes through studying the Y chromosomes which is passed from fathers to children. The dating for females is through mitochondrial DNA passed from mothers to her children. Over generations DNA tends to mutate at a very constant rate. We follow the Y from father to son, to son, to son… and the mito from Mother to daughter, to daughter, to daughter … Therefore, if we began with Adam’s Y and Eve’s mito and trace it over thousands of years we should expect to see the same level of diversity in the DNA for both men and women. We don’t! We see a more diverse collection of mito than we do with Y.

Yes, everyone is descended from Adam and Eve. At the flood only Noah, his wife, three sons and their wives were spared. Correct? Therefore, since the sons all have Noah’s Y all Y DNA can be traced back to Noah. All of us have Noah as common ancestor. However, since mito DNA is from mothers through daughters we have three separate women (son’s wives) contributing their mito DNA to the gene pool. We are all descended from these three women.

So at departure form the ark, we hit the “reset button†for or experiment of studying the mutation. But now, instead of having one Y and one mito, we know have one Y and three mito lines to deal with. The story of the flood explains why the DNA record appears to indicate that woman came 1,000s of years before man.