DNA Discovery Reveals All Humans Descended from an 'Adam and Eve' after Cataclysm
Now you don't need a DNA kit to find out about your very long-term ancestral line.
Scientists in the US and Switzerland have announced an amazing revelation – all modern humans are descended from a common father and mother who appeared on the scene 100,000 to 200,000 years ago after a cataclysmic event almost wiped out the human race.
Although the researchers believe in an evolutionary explanation and are not pointing to the biblical Adam and Eve, or even to Noah and his wife, their DNA discovery has stirred a lot of debate. It may prove to be one of the most challenging studies ever undertaken and it brings up a huge mystery. What happened to wipe out almost all life on the planet, leaving behind the people who would become the mother and father to us all?
The Daily Mail reports that these new findings throw into doubt the patterns of evolution currently accepted by the scientific community at large.
The research was led by Senior Research Associate Mark Stoeckle and Research Associate David Thaler of the University of Basel, Switzerland and was published in the journal Human Evolution.
Researchers say they studied the genetic "barcodes" from five million types of animals and humans – some 100,000 species – to reach their conclusions. The barcodes are snippets of DNA that reside outside the nuclei of living cells – so-called mitochondrial DNA, which mothers pass down from generation to generation.
Stoeckle and Thaler also found that 90 percent of all animal species alive today come from parents who all began giving birth around the same time, somewhere around 250,000 years ago.
Fox News reports the study does line up with the Bible in two notable ways. Fox states:
1. It confirms that we and our fellow creatures on Earth arose from a recent and profound creation event, orchestrated by some unknown mechanism.
2. The DNA barcodes reveal that species are quantized. Instead of there being a continuum of animal varieties, as one might expect from millions of years of gradual evolution, creatures fall into very distinct, widely separated populations – what the Bible describes as "kinds," from the Hebrew word "min."
So at a time when people tend to look at the differences in each other in terms of race, social status, etc., scientists suggest that when we refer to our fellow man, we're actually referring to our genetic brothers and sisters.
"At a time when humans place so much emphasis on individual and group differences, maybe we should spend more time on the ways in which we resemble one another and the rest of the animal kingdom," Dr. Mark Stoeckle told The Daily Mail.
