1

. This simplified explanation is complicated by heteroplasmy, a newly discovered form of inheritance for mtDNA. Heteroplasmy introduces slight statistical uncertainty in normal inheritance patterns.

2

. Rebecca L. Cann et al., “Mitochondrial DNA and Human Evolution,” Nature, Vol. 325, 1 January 1987, pp. 31–36.

3

. Marcia Barinaga, “‘African Eve’ Backers Beat a Retreat,” Science, Vol. 255, 7 February 1992, pp. 686–687.

Alan R. Templeton et al., “Human Origins and Analysis of Mitochondrial DNA Sequences,” Science, Vol. 255, 7 February 1992, pp. 737–739.

“African Eve Gets Lost in the ‘Trees’,” Science News, Vol. 141, 22 February 1992, p. 123.

4

. Some believe that the Garden of Eden was near today’s Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, because Genesis 2:14 says rivers having those names were near Eden. However, the flood’s destructiveness probably buried the Garden of Eden and preflood rivers under thousands of feet of sediment. (Indeed, today’s Tigris and Euphrates Rivers flow over thick sedimentary layers deposited during the flood. Those layers contain some of the world’s richest oil fields.) Continental movement and changes in continent thicknesses and topography would also have altered Eden’s location and the flow of rivers.  [For details, see pages 104–136.]

It seems more likely that the survivors of the flood gave the two powerful rivers near Mount Ararat (today’s Tigris and Euphrates Rivers) the same names as rivers those people knew before the flood. (Settlers in a new land often name geographical features after familiar landmarks in their “old world.” Noah and his descendants probably did not know where they were, so they may well have attached preflood names to postflood geography.) This would also explain why the other rivers mentioned in Genesis 2 are not known today and why the preflood rivers described in Genesis 2:10–14 had characteristics that differed from today’s rivers:

The river flowing out of Eden divided into four rivers. Today, rivers rarely divide; they merge.

Two of the Genesis rivers flowed around a land. Today, because rivers flow downhill, rarely would a river flow around (or nearly around) a land.

Without preflood rain, what was the source of each river’s water? [See page 358.]

5

. “Our work indicates that the protolanguage originated more than 6,000 years ago in eastern Anatolia [eastern Turkey] ...” Thomas V. Gamkrelidze and V. V. Ivanov, “The Early History of Indo-European Languages,” Scientific American, Vol. 262, March 1990, p. 110.

6

. Colin Renfrew, “The Origins of Indo-European Languages,” Scientific American, Vol. 261, October 1989, p. 114.

“The wild ancestors of the seven ‘founder crops’ harvested by the world’s first farmers have all been traced to the region of southeastern Turkey and northern Syria.”  Michael Balter, “Search for the Indo-Europeans,” Science, Vol. 303, 27 February 2004, p. 1324.  [See also Simcha Lev-Yadun et al., “The Cradle of Agriculture,” Science, Vol. 288, 2 June 2000, pp. 1602–1603.]

7

. Several generations after the flood, languages multiplied at Babel (Genesis 11:1–9). The name Babel gives us our word “to babble,” meaning “to utter meaningless sounds.” Most scholars place Babel’s location somewhere between today’s Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, near the site of ancient Babylon and Mount Ararat.

8

. This widespread (and, I believe, incorrect) belief that the mitochondrial Eve lived 100,000–200,000 years ago should be contrasted with the mathematical conclusion that all humans alive today had a very recent common female (and male) ancestor. [See Douglas L. T. Rohde et al., “Modelling the Recent Common Ancestry of All Living Humans,” Nature, Vol. 431, 30 September 2004, pp. 562–566.]

These authors believe that our most recent common male and female ancestor lived only a few thousand years ago, but the authors recognize that the many assumptions in their model—especially migration rates and realistic mating patterns—could alter that number by a few thousand years.

Therefore, it seems very unlikely that the mitochondrial Eve, who passed down the mtDNA that we all carry today (altered slightly by differing sets of a few dozen mutations), could have lived more than 1–2 thousand years before our most recent common female ancestor. A similar conclusion can be reached for the genetic Adam.

9

. For evolutionists, a time period back 100,000–200,000 years was too close to a common creationist estimate for when the first woman lived (6,000 years ago).  It was also too far from their preferred date (3,500,000 years ago). Those involved in the mitochondrial Eve research knew that this relatively recent date would generate criticism and possible rejection of their study. (A major scientific study that is accepted brings future research grants, continued employment, and status.) Because many uncertainties and assumptions underlie all complex scientific studies, one might expect that everything would be tuned to push the mitochondrial Eve back in time as far as possible.  It is as if one said, “If you are going to err, it might as well be in the direction that pleases the people who count.” As it turns out, that is what happened.

10

. “Regardless of the cause, evolutionists are most concerned about the effect of a faster mutation rate. For example, researchers have calculated [previously] that ‘mitochondrial Eve’—the woman whose mtDNA was ancestral to that in all living people—lived 100,000 to 200,000 years ago in Africa. Using the new clock, she would be a mere 6000 years old.” Ann Gibbons, “Calibrating the Mitochondrial Clock,” Science, Vol. 279, 2 January 1998, p. 29.

“If molecular evolution is really neutral at these sites [occurs at a constant rate at all sites], such a high mutation rate would indicate that Eve lived about 6500 years ago—a figure clearly incompatible with current theories on human origins.” Laurence Loewe and Siegfried Scherer, “Mitochondrial Eve: The Plot Thickens,” Trends in Ecology & Evolution, Vol. 12, 11 November 1997, p. 422.

“Thus, our observation of the substitution rate, 2.5/site/Myr [million years], is roughly 20-fold higher than would be predicted from phylogenetic analyses [evolution studies]. Using our empirical rate to calibrate the mtDNA molecular clock would result in an average age of the mtDNA MRCA [most recent common ancestor] of only ~6,500 y.a. [years ago], clearly incompatible with the known age of modern humans.”  Thomas J. Parsons et al., “A High Observed Substitution Rate in the Human Mitochondrial DNA Control Region,” Nature Genetics, Vol. 15 April 1997, p. 365.

Evolutionists who understand this new discovery are shocked. They are now trying to explain why measured mutation rates of mtDNA are so fast, but their inferred mutation rates (based on fossil dating and the evolution of man from apelike creatures) are so slow. Perhaps, they say, mutations occur rapidly at only a few points on the mtDNA molecule, but later correct themselves. Therefore, many mutations are counted, but the net change is small. This “hot spot” hypothesis, is basically a “special pleading”—something imagined to solve a problem. Tests have shown the “hot spot” hypothesis to be invalid.

Thus, the “hot spot” hypothesis, in the absence of additional elements, does not seem a sufficient explanation for the high observed substitution rate. Parsons et al., p. 365.

11

. Robert L. Dorit et al., “Absence of Polymorphism at the ZFY Locus on the Human Y Chromosome,” Science, Vol. 268, 26 May 1995, pp. 1183–1185.

A similar study was done with this same DNA segment in three types of apes: a chimpanzee, two orangutans, and three gorillas. Among the three types of apes, this DNA segment differed; for the three gorillas it was identical, as it was for the two orangutans. [See Wes Burrows and Oliver A. Ryder, “Y-Chromosome Variation in Great Apes,” Nature, Vol. 385, 9 January 1997, pp. 125–126.]

Statisticians recognize that when variations exist between groups but not within groups, it implies that the groups are distinct, unrelated populations. In other words, gorillas, orangutans, and chimpanzees probably did not evolve from some common ancestor. Of course, this DNA segment in humans was unrelated to an even greater degree.

12

. Assume that many women lived 6,000 years ago, and their descendants now number 6 billion people. On average, each female must have had many children. Whenever the average number of children per female exceeds two, the chance of only one of these many females having continuous female descendants today becomes highly improbable. A similar unlikely event must also happen for males. Having both improbable events happen concurrently, and having agriculture and linguistic origins trace back to the Ararat region a few thousand years ago is ridiculously improbable.