Apologetics

OUR MOST RECENT COMMON ANCESTOR, MRCA

by Clive Campbell
02/08/16
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I was just reading some of Berkhoff's theology on the origin of man and the unity of the races. It got me thinking about the genome project and what it may have learned about our original ancestors and how long ago they lived. I believe I Googled "genome one ancestor" and came across an interesting scholarly paper in "Nature" magazine, 30 Sep 2004, titled "Modelling the recent common ancestry of all living humans." If you Google that title, you'll find it. I don't understand all of the article, but its basic conclusion is that our most recent common ancestor (MRCA) may have lived only a few thousand years ago and that we have identical ancestors (IA) as the people that lived a few thousand years before that.

This is very similar to what the Bible says is true. It says that the global flood was in 2309 B.C., just over 4300 years ago. Noah and presumably his wife were born about 4900 years ago. Certainly every human alive today is related to Noah and his wife.

About 1656 years before the flood, as I recall, about 3970 B.C. and not the few thousand that the article suggests, our identical ancestors, Adam and Eve, were created. The article is a little off in this regard, but still makes an interesting point: that our MRCA came after our IA. This certainly supports the flood occurring after the creation of human beings. So, the article supports that truth as well as the biblical chronology of Noah and his wife and the flood. No surprise there. The Bible is the true word of God.