Over the past few weeks, we have considered the evidence supporting the concept that at one time in the ancient past, all of humanity was gathered together as one people of one race and culture, speaking one language. Christians hold that there were only eight survivors after the Great Flood: Noah and his family.
Over the next few generations, everyone on Earth was still gathered as one group at a single palace, at Babel, on The Plains of Shinar. God had commanded the people to multiply and fill the Earth, but they refused. God's solution was to confuse their universal language, forcing each family to migrate in different directions away from Babel and away from one another.
There are compelling reasons suggesting that most of the 270 known "Great Flood" stories from around the world originated from a single source. The similarities between most of the 270 stories are striking: there is a focus on one wise and righteous man destined to survive the flood, the building of an ark which is described in detail; animals brought on board to preserve the species; the hero of the story sends out birds to see if they can find dry land; after the floodwater subsides sacrifices are made by the hero to mend mankind's relationship with the divine; and finally, the survivors repopulate the Earth.
It seems that the best explanation of the facts is that there was one Flood story, the original Flood story, and that story was subsequently conveyed orally over the generations and across cultures, giving rise to almost all of these 270 ancient Flood stories. Last week, we presented evidence from linguists that suggests all of the 6,000 languages that are spoken today originate from one of what is likely only 78 proto-language families that were given to mankind by God at the scattering of the people at Babel.
Both ancient Flood stories and studies from linguistics point to a bottleneck -- to a time in history when there was only one very large family on Earth, and all people were gathered together. Even so, there is still another source of evidence to support this claim. It provides a very strong argument that there truly was a world Flood and that a few generations later, the survivors were given new languages and scattered across the land. That source of evidence comes from genetics.
Simple mathematics dictate that each generation only possesses onehalf of the DNA from the previous generation. Genetically speaking, each person is one-half of each parent, one-fourth of each grandparent, one-eighth of each great-grandparent, and so on.
This is called DNA signal dilution. This analogy makes it easy to see that our ancestor's DNA is only detectable going back a few generations. And yet, if that is the case, how do geneticists trace DNA lines, called haplogroups, back thousands of years? The answer to that question is absolutely fascinating.
It turns out that there is a source of DNA that is not halved each generation but rather is handed down in its entirety to each generation found on the Y-chromosome in males. In other words, Y-chromosomal DNA is handed down from father to son unchanged. The Y-chromosome is an interesting molecule with some 60 million base amino acids in linear length, experiencing some minor gene mixing with the X-chromosome at the ends of the strand. While this mixing impacts about ten percent of the whole chromosome molecule, the remaining 90 percent of the sequence is unaltered except for occasional mutations.
It turns out that these occasional mutations lend themselves to developing dating models that scientists call molecular clocks. In fact, the Y-chromosomal mutation rate is observed to be three mutations per generation. Using this information, molecular clocks are then used to backtrack and count how many generations a person's Y-chromosomal DNA has been handed down. Y-chromosomal DNA sequencing also determines what particular haplogroup and subgroup a person belongs to and from what geographical region the haplogroup originated. Using these generic sequencing tools researchers have made some incredible discoveries.
Geneticist Nathaniel Jeanson observes, "At a minimum, Genesis 10 implies that the paternal genealogical tree of the world would have three branches -- one each for Shem, Japheth, and Ham. Since all [three] boys inherited their Y chromosomes from the same father, Noah, these three branches would also collapse into a single ancestor.
This is what the Y chromosome tree reveals." Jeanson, using genetic testing data from currently living men, can trace their lineages back to their origin, and that origin, it would seem, is Babel. Remarkably, Jeanson's data tells us that any two random people on Earth will have a common ancestor, no matter how geographically distant they are from each other. Everything points to this conclusion, and everything points back to Babel.
Whether it is ancient Flood stories from around the world, the world's 6,000 languages tracing their origin back to a small group of proto-languages, or Y chromosomal DNA studies indicating a common ancestor, all things do merge into one. And it seems quite convincing that one place is Babel. In the end, it is no small thing -- the biblical account seems to be incredibly accurate. Join us next week as we continue to pursue an answer to the age-old question: is God dead?
Gloria in excelsis Deo!