On the Fall, Mortality, and the Age of the Earth



The oldest known icon of Christ Pantocrator (Saint Catherine's Monastery)
The two different facial expressions emphasize Christ's two natures as fully God and fully human.

What follows is a recent communication with a convert to Eastern Orthodoxy.

I'm wondering if I might get your thoughts on something that causes me uncertainty. From what I've seen on your blog, perhaps you might have some advice/reflections to share on the subject? I see no biblical basis to oppose the idea that the Earth and Universe are billions of years old, and that there was animal death before the Fall. My uncertainty touches on the idea that humans were first created millions of years ago, but the historical time frame of the Bible beginning around 4000 BC or so? I can't wrap my mind around that. Millions of years just seems like an unnecessary amount of time from the creation of man and the Fall, to the eventual coming of Christ, doesn't it? Could there be any reason for this? I'm at a loss on how to look at the origin of mankind. Any advice would be appreciated. Thank you.

You are asking good questions! In response, let's consider 3 points:

1. The Bible isn't about human origins. It makes theological assertions (propositions) about humans that can't be verified by science. The most important assertion is that humans were created from the beginning in the image of the Immortal God. Most of the Church Fathers and theologians find in this assertion the idea that humans were created to enjoy eternal life; that is, we have the potential to be immortal. As to how this was affected by the Fall, the Latin and Greek Fathers take different positions. The Eastern Church never speaks of sin being passed from Adam to his descendants. Instead, each person bears the guilt and shame of his or her own sin. What then does humanity inherit from Adam? In the Eastern view, it is a condition, or a disease. This disease results in corruption and death, which St. Paul also points to in I Corinthians 15:21. Cyril of Alexandria teaches that humanity became “diseased… through the sin of one." If we attend to the Biblical text closely, that is the sin of Eve, the crown of creation. Her action of submitting to the will of a base creature represents an inversion of the hierarchical order in creation, so that all of the creation is subjected to decay. The nature of all things became corrupted in the Fall, but the divine image in humanity was not erased, and the state of Paradise will be restored.


2. That brings us to the second point. The entire trajectory of the Bible is about how God makes man immortal. In other words, the message is less about human origins than it is about the origin of Messianic hope. Through Messiah, the Son of God, we die to death and rise to immortality. Through his work, we receive forgiveness of sins, justification, and deliverance from the second death.

The Bible speaks of two distinct deaths. The Apostle Paul explains that those who die in Christ will rise in Him on the Last Day. These will not die the "second death" of which John speaks in Revelation 2:11 - "Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches. The one who is victorious will not be hurt at all by the second death."

The Risen Messiah is to lead his followers to immortality. Among the Horite Hebrew, the welfare of the people depended on the righteousness of their ruler. The test of absolute righteousness was the ruler's bodily resurrection. The grave would not be able to hold the Righteous Ruler, and upon his bodily resurrection, he would lead his people to eternity. This royal procession language is found in Ps. 68:18; Ps. 7:7, and Eph. 4:8. Jesus is the only Horite Hebrew ruler-priest to fulfill the Messianic hope.


3. That brings us to the third point. The Young-Earth interpretation is based on Bishop Ussher's dating of the so-called "begats" in Genesis. But Bishop Ussher goofed! He did not recognize that the lists of Genesis 4, 5, 10, 11, 25 and 36 are king lists, not lists of the first people on earth. These lists can't be used to calculate the age of the earth by adding the years the rulers lived. This is to abuse this material. In this sense, Young-Earth Creationism is not biblical. The rulers listed are the ancestors of the Horite Hebrew ruler-priest lines. Among them are Abraham, Esau, Jacob, Amram, Moses, Elkanah, Samuel, David, and Joachim, the father of the Virgin Mary, the Theotokos.

This chart shows the Horite Hebrew rulers of Edom who are listed in Genesis 36. This is the clan of Seir the Horite. These are Abraham's people. Edom was called "Idumea" by the Greeks. Idumea means "land of red people" and at least two rulers of Edomite blood are noted for their red skin tone: Esau and David. Horite Hebrew were devotees of the Creator and his son Horus. Horite is "Horim" in Hebrew. Jews call their ancestors their Horim.

We will continue this conversation in a discussion of The Historical Adam. Your questions about Adam and the age of the earth are important! Thanks for asking, and "Welcome home!"

Alice C. Linsley

Related reading: Archaic Rulers, Ascendancy, and the Foreshadowing of Messiah; The Genesis King Lists; Adam was a Red Man; Samuel's Horite Family; Moses's Wives and Brothers; Righteous Rulers and the Resurrection; The Edomites and the Color Red

In the beginning God created...

Greg Goebel


Did God create the world instantly ten thousand years ago? Or did he start the process of evolution in order to create the world?

For several years I led a parish book study, and it was one of the most personally fulfilling aspects of ministry for me. But it was also often quite provocative. One such moment came when we were reading Alistair McGrath’s book Theology: The Basics.

We were reading his overview of the Apostle’s Creed, starting with his discussion of “God the Father, creator of heaven and earth.” McGrath discusses five basic ways that Christians have understood how God accomplished the creation of the world, including young earth creationism, intelligent design, and theistic evolution.

When we got to that point, the room seemed to instantly divide into camps. All of us were fellow Christians, fellow parishioners, and we respected one another. We were also all book lovers. Yet we literally divided physically into camps. I’m not sure how it happened, but it seemed like I looked up and people had actually changed places to be near their group.

One group said that the only way to truly and faithfully read the Genesis account was to believe that God created the world about ten thousand years ago. Another said, no, Genesis is obviously poetic and intended to convey a theology of God, not a mechanism of creation itself. This led to the conclusion that God began the process of evolution. Still another group believed that God didn’t just start evolution’s march, he guided it in a process called Intelligent Design.

The creed was sitting there on the page. It simply read, “God the Father, creator of heaven and earth.” That’s it.

Think about this for a moment. The undivided church gathered in a series of ecumenical councils (there were no separate denominations then). They knew Genesis, they knew Paul’s letter to the Romans. They knew the Gospels. And it may surprise many to know that they knew about evolution too. No, not the modern scientific theory. But they knew about the Greek philosophical schools that had developed a vision of life evolving. And they also knew about Jewish (mostly poetic) readings of the book of Genesis.

So they could have agreed to sacralize one of these views for all time as creed. And yet they didn’t. They were content to simply require all Christians to believe that God purposely created the universe. They left the how outside of what is required for salvation.

We might want to try that today.

That’s not to say that we should stop debating, arguing, and advocating one or the other viewpoint. We should keep on vigorously working and promoting and talking about this, because its important.

Yet rather than advocating the simple creed, and then making space for believers to discuss varies theories, some parishes identify as “Creationist” or “Intelligent Design” or pro “Theistic Evolution.” But our churches shouldn’t be presenting one or the other interpretation or theory as if it is the only authoritative way to understand creation. That’s not the pastor’s job. We weren’t ordained to promote creationism, but creed. We aren’t called to preach evolutionary biology, but to preach Bible basics. Our job is to present God the Father as creator of heaven and earth. Period.

Why? One reason is evangelism.

Here is an example of how staying with the creeds can help evangelism: I got a call from a family member, who said, “I am almost ready to be baptized and become a Christian. But, I can’t because I accept the theory of evolution as proven science. If you can show me that evolution is wrong, I can consider becoming a Christian.”

This was a critical moment. In my past I might have marshaled evidence that evolution is false, hoping to clinch that final argument that would bring him to faith in Christ. At another point in my life I might have argued that God did indeed use evolution to create the world.

But does our faith rest on arguments? Does it rest on scientific refutations? Does baptism require us to first develop a detailed theory of the mechanism of creation? Nope. Just an affirmation of the creed. Period.

So thankfully I was able to say, “Yeah, a lot of Christians wrestle with that. Not a problem. You can be baptized and become a Christian and keep on wrestling with the rest of us Christians. We only require an affirmation that the world is not an accident, or purposeless, and that God the Father is the creator who decided the world would exist and made it happen. He is the source of life.”

So you may be sad, at this point in my musings, to find that I’m not going to try and advocate for one or the other interpretations of Genesis, or philosophies of “death before Adam.” There are many great studies out there on these issues, and they are important questions.

As a priest and pastor, I simply affirm that God created the world. Period. And that is a beautiful, amazing and challenging belief in and of itself.

From here.

Pastors should be informed on the four aspects of evolution: mutation (fact), adaptation (fact), natural selection (evidence, but not a law) and common ancestry (a theory). Bible-believing Christians must reject the common ancestry theory when it comes to human origins as this is contrary to the biblical assertion that humans were a special creation. The growing evidence of archaic humans increasingly supports the biblical assertion of humans as a special creation.

Likewise, pastors should understand that Young Earth Creationism (YEC) does not align with what Genesis reveals. It is neither scientific nor biblical. The Earth is very old, and humans have been on the Earth for close to four million years. From the beginning they were fully human: walked upright, used tools, controlled fire, had human dentition, etc.

Pastors should also be informed about the cultural context of Abraham's ancestors from whom he received the hope of a Righteous Ruler who would overcome death and lead his people to immortality.

Related reading: Ignoring Anthropologically Significant Data; Abraham's Kushite Ancestors; Kushite Diversity and Unity; Who Were the Horites?; Kushite Wives; Biblical Anthropology and Antecedents; Biblical Anthropologists Discuss Darwin; Facebook Conversation on Creationism

Many Groups of Archaic Humans

In 2011 researchers discovered jaw bones and teeth of four individuals in the Afar region of Ethiopia which date to between 3.3m and 3.5m years old. These archaic humans were alive at the same time as other early human groups, suggesting that it may be time to abandon the linear evolution hypothesis. Clearly, there were more archaic humans living in Africa 3 million years ago than has been generally recognized.

Dr Yohannes Haile-Selassie, curator of physical anthropology at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, believes that the growing evidence of archaic human fossils indicates that the early stage of human evolution was complex.

He is quoted in this BBC report: "Historically, because we didn't have the fossil evidence to show there was hominin diversity during the middle Pliocene, we thought there was only one lineage, one primitive ancestor - in this case Australopithecus afarensis, Lucy - giving rise to the next."

Lucy’s species lived from 2.9 million years ago to 3.8 million years ago, overlapping in time with the new species Australopithecus deyiremeda. The new species is the most conclusive evidence for the contemporaneous presence of more than one closely related early human ancestor species prior to 3 million years ago.

Dr. Haile-Selassie states, "That hypothesis of linear evolution has to be revisited. And now with the discovery of more species, like this new one... you have another species roaming around.

"What this means is we have many species that could give rise to later hominins, including our own genus Homo."

Dr Haile-Selassie said that even more fossils need to be unearthed, to better understand the path that human evolution took.

He added that finding additional ancient remains could also help researchers examine how the different species lived side-by-side - whether they mixed or avoided each other, and how they shared food and other resources in their landscape.

The original study is published in the journal Nature.

This report states that modern humans lived alongside an estimated eight now-extinct species of archaic human populations about 300,000 years ago.

The Upper Nile Valley region is likely the point of origin of archaic humans and the idea of a "new species" is another example of having to force material findings into the Darwinian "common ancestry" mold. Just wait until the Rising Star Expedition reports come out about a burial cave near Krugersdorp in South Africa. The large number of individuals found in a tiny underground chamber suggest clan burial. By April 2014, between two localities, 1724 human specimens were recovered, and they show a range of anatomical features consistent with modern humans.

Related reading: Time to Jettison the Theory of Common Ancestry of Apes and Humans?; A Flawed Paradigm; The Dispersal of Archaic Humans; Was Lucy Human?; Getting the Facts About Human Origins; The Northern Range of Archaic Humans; Protruding Jaw a Human Feature; Is Scientific Dating of Fossils Reliable?

Genesis on Human Origins

The highest concentration of R1b in Africa is in the Lake Chad region, Noah's homeland.

The book of Genesis is the most helpful written source of information about human origins. The first 12 chapters provide significant information that can be used in anthropological study of the first humans, the earliest human communities, the development of settlements, early technologies, the origins of the priesthood, circumcision, animal sacrifice, the dispersion of archaic peoples, and the development of languages. The focus of this article is human origins. The next in the series looks at what Genesis tells us about Abraham's Nilo-Saharan ancestors. The last in the series addresses the movement of archaic populations out of Africa to regions as distant as Northern Japan and Scotland.

To understand what Genesis tells us about human origins we must set aside preconceptions that cause us to filter out essential information. We must allow Genesis to speak for itself without imposing our beliefs on the text.

There is no conflict between the data of Genesis 1-12 and the concrete findings of science. Genesis provides an accurate and reliable picture of human origins, as we will see in this series on scientific verification of the Genesis data.

The First Humans

Humans appeared suddenly and unheralded upon the Earth about 4 million years ago. These humans, though anatomically archaic, were fully human. This aligns with the Genesis explanation. After the Earth had cooled and vegetation covered the ground, after the environment was safe for humans, that is when they appear (Gen. 1:27). Further, Genesis states that humans were a special act of creation, not the result of a long process of evolution from a primitive common ancestor. That assertion has the support of science also. The common ancestry theory has never been proven. It is impossible to prove something that is not true. The theory of humans and apes having a common ancestor is not indicated by the genome research. See “Study Reports a Whopping ‘23% of Our Genome’ Contradicts Standard Human-Ape Evolutionary Phylogeny,” Evolution News, June 3, 2011.

The oldest Homo fossils exhibit all the physical traits of humans. They walked upright, had opposing thumbs, short fingers, human ankle bones, and human dentition. In humans, the back teeth are larger than the front teeth (not so with apes), and the canines are not pointed. Humans also lack the characteristic diastema, or tooth gap, found in apes.

These archaic populations were fully human, as evidenced by their anatomical structure, the presence of tools, controlled fire, and evidence of hunting and butchering. The archaic brain cavities were small compared to modern humans, though proportional to the smaller bodies. Further, brain size does not indicate lack of complexity of thought.

The earliest fossils that scientists agree to be fully human date to about 160,000 years and were found in desert sands near the Ethiopian village of Herto in 1997. These fossils show a range of anatomical features yet all the features are found among humans today. The nearly complete skulls of people who lived 160,000 years ago are, in the words of the American paleontologist Tim White, “like modern-day humans in almost every feature.”

Recent discoveries in Dikika, near Gona and Bouri, Ethiopia indicate that they shared food, and used flints to scrap, saw and chop. Two fossilized bones have been found that appear to be marked by stone tools. On the basis of low-power microscopic and environmental scanning electron microscope observations, these bones show unambiguous stone-tool cut marks for flesh removal and to access bone marrow.

Lucy's skeleton

When Jeremy DeSilva compared the ankle joint, the tibia and the talus fossils of human ancestors ("hominins") between 4.12 million to 1.53 million years old, he discovered that all of the ankle joints resembled those of modern humans rather than those of apes. Chimpanzees flex their ankles 45 degrees from normal resting position. This makes it possible for apes to climb trees with great ease. While walking, humans flex their ankles a maximum of 20 degrees. The human ankle bones are quite distinct from those of apes. (Read DeSilva’s research here.)

A recent discovery of a complete fourth metatarsal of A. afarensis at Hadar that shows the deep, flat base and tarsal facets that "imply that its midfoot had no ape-like midtarsal break. These features show that the A. afarensis foot was functionally like that of modern humans." (Carol Ward, William H. Kimbel, Donald C. Johanson, Feb. 2011) From here.

Some of the earliest evidence of controlled use of fire by humans was found at Swartkrans in South Africa. Other sites that indicate fire use include Chesowanja near Lake Baringo, Koobi Fora, and Olorgesailie in Kenya.

Mary Leakey’s 1979 discoveries in Tanzania added to the evidence that humans walked the earth about over 3 million years ago. At Laetoli, about 25 miles south of Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, Leakey discovered footprints of a man, woman and child created about 3.6 million years ago and preserved under falling ash from the nearby Sadiman volcano. The raised arch and rounded heel of the footprints showed that whoever left these footprints walked as humans today.

Early human footprints at Laetoli, Tanzania date to 3 million years.

Some of the Australopithecine fossils dating between 2.4 million and 700,000 years are recognized by scientists as early human fossils. Mary Leakey considered her Tanzania finds to be Homo, that is, human, and not ape.

Other archaic humans lived in Africa near Lake Chad, Lake Turkana, Lake Baringo, and in Southern Africa. Paleoanthropologist John Hawks has written (here) about the Lake Turkana-Omo region:

"Ancient people were using this area throughout, leaving stone artifacts. It is amazing walking along the exposures, noting the stones that are the marks of ancient human activity. These early modern humans were making fundamentally the same kinds of artifacts that we find across western Eurasia, made by the earliest Neandertals, and across most of the African continent at the same time. There were regional differences in the pattern of toolmaking, but there was a broad technological commonality. This was the cultural background of our ancestors."

These archaic humans used polished bone tools, butchered animals for food, and controlled fire. Some of the earliest evidence of controlled use of fire by humans was found at Swartkrans. Other sites that indicate fire use include Chesowanja near Lake Baringo, Koobi Fora, and Olorgesailie in Kenya.

Using bones found at Pinnacle Point Cave in South Africa, archaeologist Corey O’Driscoll identified projectile impact marks which are between 91,000 and 98,000 years old, the oldest direct evidence for the use of projectile weapons.

Pinnacle Point cave

Human occupation of Pinnacle Point began about 162,000 years ago. The oldest level reveals a fairly sophisticated stone technology in which silcrete stone was heat-treated. Silcrete is a fine-grained stone brought from the South African coast. This is the oldest known example of such technology.

Large pieces of red ochre have been found at Pinnacle Point and at other sites in southern Africa. The pieces were either ground or scraped to produce a pigment for painting the body and for use in burials. The burial of rulers in red ochre was a universal practice among Late Stone Age peoples ( c. 100,000 to 20,000 years ago.)

This was also a period of human expansion. Humans moved along the major water systems of the ancient world. That world was also a wetter world in Africa and the ancient Near East. Human populations had spread out of Africa to virtually every continent. During this time the heads of clans were buried in red ochre powder, a symbol of blood, by which they expressed hope in life after death. Perhaps the oldest case (at least 50,000 years ago) involves the burial of a small boy in the Lebombo Mountains of Southern Africa. He was buried with a sea-shell pendant and covered in red ochre dust (ground hematite).

A man buried 45,000 years ago at La Chapelle-aux-Saints in southern France was packed in red ochre. The Fox Lady of Doini Vestonice in Czechoslovakia was covered in red ochre at her burial 23,000 years ago. The Red Lady of Paviland in Wales was buried in red ochre about 20,000 years ago. Her skeletal remains and burial artifacts are encrusted with the red ochre. Another 20,000 year old burial site in Bavaria reveals a thirty-year-old man entirely surrounded by a pile of mammoth tusks and nearly submerged in a mass of red ochre.

Between 100,000-12,000 years ago a genetic and linguistic distance began to grow between two main groups: African and Asian. Genesis 11:1 speaks of a time when "the whole world had one language and a common speech" and this describes how the two groups were once so closely related that we can speak of a common cultural underpinning that expressed itself in the Afro-Asiatic Dominion.

Haplogroup N mitochondrial DNA 

The classification of fossils as ape or human has been revised several times because the criterion of classification of human and ape has not been consistently applied. Some scientists interpret evidence through their preconceptions and try to force the data to fit their interpretation of human origins. There is also a great temptation to publish research that might gain them funding to continue their work and the funding comes mainly from organizations and institutions that favor evolutionary theory.

The evidence indicates that humans have been on the surface of the earth for millions of years and that a range of physical features from population to population has been the norm. Population specific features were likely enhanced because archaic people practiced endogamy (marriage within the clan). From 3 million years to the present, physical changes in humans have not been very great. From the beginning, humans were fully human, the result of a special creative act of the Creator. The essence of the human being has remained unchanged from that initial act. There is no reason to abandon this belief since the widespread theory of evolutionary branching of ape and human from a common ancestor is not supported by the data.


Related reading: Haplogroups of Interest to Biblical Anthropologists; Protruding Jaw a Human Feature; Concerns about BioLogos; The Dispersal of Archaic Humans; Adam Was a Red Man; Millions of Years Between Genesis 4:1 and Genesis 4:17; Mining Blood; Facts About Human Origins; Biblical Anthropology and the Question of Common Ancestry; A Scientific Timeline of Genesis; When is the Evidence Sufficient?

The Dispersal of Archaic Humans

As more human fossils are being found and studied, it is becoming apparent that archaic humans were widely dispersed more than 50,000 years ago. A recent report in Nature contained this map showing the location of Middle Pleistocene fossils in Northern Spain (shown in yellow), Denisovan finds (blue), and Late Pleistocene Neanderthal finds (red). Ancient DNA has been recovered from fossils at these sites.

Dr Juan-Luis Arsuaga teamed up with Max Planck scientists, who recently developed novel techniques for retrieving and sequencing highly degraded ancient DNA.

The team applied the new techniques to hominin remains from the Sima de los Huesos site to sequence their mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) and then compared the genome with that of Neandertals, Denisovans, present-day humans, and apes.

The results show that the Sima de los Huesos humans lived about 400,000 years ago and shared a common 700,000 year ancestor with Denisovans, a human species that lived in a vast range from Siberia to Southeast Asia at the same time as Neanderthals.

“The fact that the mtDNA of the Sima de los Huesos hominin shares a common ancestor with Denisovan rather than Neanderthal mtDNAs is unexpected since its skeletal remains carry Neanderthal-derived features,” said Dr Matthias Meyer, the lead author of a paper published online in Nature.

Read more here.

Other archaic humans lived in Africa near Lake Chad, Lake Turkana, Lake Baringo, and in Southern Africa. Paleoanthropologist John Hawks has written (here) about the Lake Turkana-Omo region, "Ancient people were using this area throughout, leaving stone artifacts. It is amazing walking along the exposures, noting the stones that are the marks of ancient human activity. These early modern humans were making fundamentally the same kinds of artifacts that we find across western Eurasia, made by the earliest Neandertals, and across most of the African continent at the same time. There were regional differences in the pattern of toolmaking, but there was a broad technological commonality. This was the cultural background of our ancestors."

 

A. afarensis used polished bone tools, butchered animals for food, and controlled fire. Some of the earliest evidence of controlled use of fire by humans was found at Swartkrans. Other sites that indicate fire use include Chesowanja near Lake Baringo, Koobi Fora, and Olorgesailie in Kenya.

Using bones found at Pinnacle Point Cave in South Africa, archaeologist Corey O’Driscoll identified projectile impact marks which are between 91,000 and 98,000 years old, the oldest direct evidence for the use of projectile weapons.

Pinnacle Point cave

Human occupation of Pinnacle Point began about 162,000 years ago. The oldest level reveals a fairly sophisticated stone technology in which silcrete stone was heat-treated. Silcrete is a fine-grained stone brought from the South African coast. This is the oldest known example of such technology.

Large pieces of red ochre have been found at Pinnacle Point and at other sites in southern Africa. The pieces were either ground or scraped to produce a pigment for painting the body and for use in burials. The burial of rulers in red ochre was a universal practice among Late Stone Age peoples.

Related reading: Many Groups of Archaic Humans; Early Hominids in the Balkins by Nena Galanidou; Migrations Out of Africa; Denisovan Finds Create a Stir; Facts About Human Origins; The Rising Star Expedition Recovers Hundreds of Fossils; Africa is Archaeologically Rich

Rising Star Expedition Recovers Hundreds of Fossils

Amazing team work to recover hundreds of human fossils is described by caver Rick Hunter, a member of Lee Berger’s team in the Rising Star cave system in South Africa. Hunter guides and supports the scientists, "standing sentry in the caverns, and on the long journey from daylight into the caves, through winding passages, a belly-crawl tunnel, up a jagged rock-climb, and down the final 12-meter vertical crack that leads to the fossil chamber below." Read Hunter's reflection in the National Geographic report The Journey into Darkness.

Lee Berger holding his most famous fossil find, a crania of Australopithecus sebida.
This fossil was found in the vicinity of the Rising Star system of caves.

Here is an excerpt from John Hawks' What We Know and Don’t Know So Far:


After a week of running the operation, the advance scientists have fallen into a rhythm of approximately half-day shifts, staged into and out of the cave on a rotation. The first cavers go in around 7:15am, the last come out after 4:00pm. Getting into this cave requires several experienced cavers in place to assist the advance scientists entering and leaving the advance chamber. Some serve shifts inside the cave at key locations where they can support the scientists. Others are on hand at the cave entrance to run supplies in and fossils out. And the science team and command team are aboveground coordinating action and cataloguing and conserving the fossils.

We saw the incredible teamwork in action on Friday evening, as more than a dozen of the cavers and advance team carefully brought out a large skull fragment. Two scientists and two cavers staged it carefully up the Chute, seven handed it down Dragon’s Back, three more brought it through the Post Box — at the end with one scientist pulling our expert caver Rick Hunter through by the legs. All of this without so much as tipping the box containing the fossil.

Related reading:  Science in Progress: The Rising Star Expedition in South Africa;  A Geologist on the Rising Star Expedition

Adam and Eve: "The Blood" and "The Birther"

Alice C. Linsley


I find it ironic that people insist on reading Genesis 1-3 as history and and yet ignore the historicity of Genesis 4-11. In this section we find data that is verified by the sciences, especially kinship analysis, DNA studies, migration studies, climate studies, archaeology and linguistics. Were we to pursue the picture of Abraham's ancestors presented in Genesis 4-11 we would better understand the Nilo-Saharan context of the Genesis 1-3 accounts. Only when we put this material in its proper cultural context will we be able to reconcile science and Scripture.

Genesis is first and foremost about Christ and the Edenic Promise (Gen. 3:15). The rulers listed in the Genesis king lists are Christ's historical ancestors, the people to whom God gave the promise that the Woman's Seed would crush the head of the serpent and restore paradise.

The first created people appeared on earth suddenly and unheralded about 3.6 million years ago in Africa. This is where the oldest human fossils have been found and this is the point of origin of the genetic types and of modern languages.

Genesis tells us that Abraham's ancestors came from Kush and that Eden spanned from two rivers in East Africa to the Tigris-Euphrates in Mesopotamia. So the biblical account of Adam and Eve as first parents must come from Africa. In fact, the remembrance of ancestral first parents has many parallels in African folklore.

Adam is derived from Ha-dam - the Blood, and is a very early term for human being. Eve is from Ha-Va - the Birther. Among archaic peoples blood was the primal element that represents humans, and the V represents a woman giving birth. The V is a variant of the solar symbol Y, indicating one who has been overshadowed by the Creator for a special purpose. The Angel Gabriel explained to Mary that she would be overshadowed and conceive. All these words are related: hay = “living being”(Hebrew); iya = mother (Hebrew); ka ayi = mother (Dravidian); aye = life (Hausa/Hahm), and eyi = gave birth (Hausa/Hahm).

The Biblical account of first parents was preserved by Abraham's ancestors, the founders of the Horite ruler-priest lines. They are the ancestral rulers from whom Jesus descended through his mother Mary. This explains why Eve gave birth and declared "Kaniti" - ruler!

Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain, and said, "I have gotten/gained (qa-nithi) a man with the help of the Lord." Genesis 4:1, The Hebrew Study Bible

The human knew Havva his wife, she became pregnant and bore Kayin. She said: Kaniti (Qanithi)/ I have gotten a man, as has YHWH. Genesis 4:1, The Schocken Bible, Vol. 1

Qany(ty) or Qan-itti comes from Nilo-Saharan languages like Oromo and ancient Egyptian. These languages share many phonemes with ancient Akkadian, the language of Nimrod's kingdom. The Akkadian itti, as in itti šarrim, means "with the king" or "for the king." It is attached to the names of royalty. Even today the Oromo of Ethiopia and Somalia attach itti to names: Kaartuumitti, Finfinneetti and Dimashqitti. That itti is associated with Nilotic rulers is evident in the name of the great Egyptian queen Nefertitti.

The Church Fathers read the Adam and Eve story as historical because Adam and Eve in biblical parlance are the original first parents. Now the question is "first parents" of all humans or of the people who gave us Genesis? (Likewise, universal flood or extensive regional flood?) This story belongs to those who gave us Genesis, and to understand it we must understand their cultural context, which was Nilo-Saharan.

Analysis of the king lists of Genesis 4 and 5 shows that Kain and Seth married the daughters of a ruler named Enoch (Anoch/Hanock), so the Bible itself makes it clear that there were other people. Enoch is an African word that means "one who ascends" or "one who is royal heir." This indicates that at the time of Kain and Seth there were already ruling houses or dynasties. They lived during the time of the 4th Dynasty, when Menkaure, Khafre and Khufu were building the Great Pyramids (c. 2601 – c. 2515 BC). This fits the chronology of the Genesis Kings.

Related reading:  Questions Students Ask About Genesis; Answers to Questions about Adam and Eve; Are Adam and Eve Real?; The Biblical Meaning of Eve; St. John Chrysostom on Eve's Sin; Elder Joseph on Adam and Eve

Dmanisi Finds Call for Radical Re-think of Human Speciation

Shown right: Skull 5, archaic human face dates to 1.8 million years
Credit: Guram Bumbiashvili, Georgian National Museum

Skull 5, from a partially excavated site at Dmanisi, Georgia, is the world’s first complete adult skull found from the Early Pleistocene period, according to the study’s authors. The skull’s cranium and jaw bone were found five years apart, about six feet from each other, but researchers are confident they came from the same individual. The skull has a mosaic of both primitive and more evolved features, such as a small braincase and long face, not previously seen together in the fossil record.

Researchers found additional remains associated with Skull 5 that suggest the individual had a stature and limb-to-body proportions within the range of modern humans. The researchers believe that Skull 5, based on its massive size, was likely a male. Their analysis also found that the individual had suffered a fractured cheekbone in life as well as arthritis......

The latest skull to appear from the rocks at Dmanisi

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013

Photograph courtesy Georgian National Museum

As excavations at Dmanisi continue, researchers expect to find more fossils — and perhaps more conclusive proof that normal variation within a single Homo species has been misinterpreted as species diversity. It might be time to rewrite the evolutionary history books.

Read it all here.

I have maintained consistently that a small brain, such as found with the Australopithecus afarensis, does not indicate lack of the complex reasoning characteristic of humans.

Related reading: The Origins of the Dmanisi Skull; Questioning the Common Ancestry Hypothesis; Theories of Change and Constancy; Does the Binary Feature Signal Greater Complexity?; Was Lucy Human?

Did Humans Evolve from a Chimp-Pig Hybrid?

Alice C. Linsley


The oldest fully human archaic fossils date to about 4 million years and were found in East Africa and Cameroon. The Australopithecus anamensis tibia indicates bipedalism. Australopithecines possess anatomical traits of the pelvis, femur and spinal column that facilitate bipedal locomotion. Their brains were small because they were proportional to their bodies. The size of their brains does not mean that they were more like apes than humans. These humans were anatomically small, but there are people living today in parts of Africa who resemble Lucy and her kin.

Mary Leakey suspected that these were archaic humans after her work in Ethiopia. She certainly had reason to think so after her 1979 discoveries in Tanzania. That was the year that Mary discovered the earliest known footprints of hominids, animals and birds at Laetoli. The footprints were preserved about 3.6 million years ago under falling ash from the nearby Sadiman volcano. The raised arch and rounded heel of the footprints showed that these creatures walked as humans today.

Unfortunately, Lucy and her kin were given the name "Australopithicus" (meaning southern ape) by Donald C. Johanson, though Mary Leakey would have called the finds Homo, as she thought they were. She expressed her regret that "the Laetoli fellow is now doomed to be called Australopithecus afarensis," a name contrary to the evidence that Lucy and her people walked upright, had oppositional thumbs, short fingers, human dentition, controlled fire, shared their food, and used flints to scrap, saw and chop.

The physical evidence suggests that humans appeared suddenly and unheralded on the Earth around 5 million years ago in Africa.

Dr. Eugene McCarthy is a geneticist who studies hybridization in animals. He curates a biological information website called Macroevolution.net. McCarthy believes that human origins can be explained by hybridization between pigs and chimpanzees. Read more here.

If you believe that all living organisms emerged from a common ancestor, there is no obstacle to hypothesizing a chimp-pig origin for humans.

Related reading: A Closer Look at the Chimp-Pig Hypothesis; Evolution Basics: Species Trees, Gene Trees and Incomplete Lineage Sorting; Does the Binary Feature Signal Greater Complexity?

African Projectiles 90,000 Years Old

QUEENSLAND, AUSTRALIA—Archaeologist Corey O’Driscoll has developed a method of determining if wounds on bones were made by spears thrown from a distance. Indirect evidence from examining stone point, suggests that humans living in Africa began hurling weapons as early as 500,000 years ago, but this evidence is often disputed. To solve this problem, O’Driscoll and a colleague knapped flint spear and arrow points modeled after Middle Stone Age technology from Africa. They then threw the replica spears and fired the replica arrows at lamb and cow carcasses, defleshed the bones, and compared the marks on the bones with a reference collection of butchered animal bones. O’Driscoll found that the butchering marks and the projectile impact marks have clear differences when viewed with a microscope, including traces of stone left in the projectile point wounds. He and Jessica Thompson of the University of Queensland then examined three animal bones from Pinnacle Point Cave in South Africa. Using the new diagnostic criteria, they identified projectile impact marks on all three bones, two of which are between 91,000 and 98,000 years old—the oldest direct evidence for the use of projectile weapons.

From here.


Related reading:  Facts About Human Origins; Meat Consumption 3 Million Years Ago; Earliest Archaeological Evidence of Persistent Hominin Carnivory; Implications of Artifacts and Bones on Ancient Human Butchery Practices

Evangelicals Surrender Too Much Ground to Darwin

As the battle between Darwinism and the Bible rages, some evangelicals have backed away from maintaining that Adam and Eve were real, historical individuals created in the way Genesis 2 relates:

“… the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature. … So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the LORD God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man.”

In a just-published article from the Westminster Theological Journal, Westminster Theological Seminary professor Vern Poythress brilliantly explains why such a surrender is wrong biblically and scientifically. Poythress, with both a Th.D. and a Harvard Ph.D. in mathematics, is well-positioned to write about both theology and evolutionary theory. He has published 13 books, including Redeeming Science and Redeeming Sociology, and numerous scholarly articles. We post this new one with the author’s and WTJ’s permission.— Marvin Olasky, World Magazine (May, 2013)

Read Vern Poythress's article here.


Related reading: Between Biblical Literalism and Biblical Illiteracy; YEC Dogma is NOT Biblical; Facts About Human Origins; DNA Research Confirms Kushite Migration of Genesis 10; Contradicting Evolutionary Theory; Is Genesis Really About Human Origins?

The Battle Over Genesis

According to a recent Gallup Poll, only 15% of Americans think evolution happens as a natural process. The other 85% thinks evolution does not occur or that it is supernaturally directed by God (theistic evolution). The success of Young-Earth Creationism is evident in that as many as 47% of those polled believe that the world is less than 10,000 years old.

In a 2001 Gallup Poll, over 28-32% subscribed to Evolution and 48-57% subscribed to Creationism. No distinction was made between Old-Earth Creationism and Young-Earth Creationism.

In the most recent poll, 46% of Americans believe in the creationist view that God created humans in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years. The prevalence of this creationist view of the origin of humans is essentially unchanged from 30 years ago, when Gallup first asked the question. About a third of Americans believe that humans evolved, but with God's guidance; 15% say humans evolved, but that God had no part in the process.

Gallup reports here that:

Most Americans believe in God, and about 85% have a religious identity. It is not surprising as a result to find that about 8 in 10 Americans hold a view of human origins that involves actions by God -- that he either created humans as depicted in the book of Genesis, or guided a process of evolution. What no doubt continues to surprise many scientists is that 4 out of 10 Americans believe in the first of these explanations.


These views have been generally stable over the last 28 years. Acceptance of the creationist viewpoint has decreased slightly over time, with a concomitant rise in acceptance of a secular evolution perspective. But these shifts have not been large, and the basic structure of beliefs about human beings' origins is generally the same as it was in the early 1980s.


Americans' attitudes about almost anything can and often do have political consequences. Views on the origins of humans are no exception. Debates and clashes over which explanations for human origins should be included in school textbooks have persisted for decades. With 40% of Americans continuing to hold to an anti-evolutionary belief about the origin of humans, it is highly likely that these types of debates will continue.


Every student should read The Evolution of Darwinian Evolution.



Why Just Genesis Matters



It appears that the creation-evolution conversation has reached a stalemate. Young-Earth Creationism may be declining among some Evangelicals, especially those influenced by the BioLogos crowd. However, Evangelicals and Fundamentalists alike tend to think that evolution is the only alternative to literalism, and that is not true. An anthropological approach to Genesis acknowledges Earth's great age and the remote origins of humanity without accepting the Darwinian theory of human origins, for which there is no substantial evidence. Biblical Anthropology, as scientific study of the text, requires setting aside both ideological templates in order to determine the meaning in cultural context. This is a labor to which I am fully committed.

It is also a fruitful approach to conversation with teenagers.  Today’s teens think empirically. They are intelligent. They want to know the How and Why. Simply telling them that the Bible is God’s Word and that it is infallible and true, is not enough. If the Bible is true it should align with the data. If Noah experienced a catastrophic flood, there should be physical evidence of that in the region where Noah lived. If the descendants of Noah spread out over the earth, there should be DNA evidence of that dispersion. Such evidence does exist and yet few are providing the next generation with this information. Teens are going to college environments which are increasingly hostile to Christianity and they are going ill-equipped to defend the veracity of the Bible. As the Gallup Polls show, the conversation about Genesis is stuck in the mid-1980s.

As Genesis is the foundation of the whole of the Bible, it is not surprising that it should stir conflict and confusion. I hope that Just Genesis will help readers break out of the stalemate and move forward with bold faith that the whole of the Bible speaks reliable truth that can be confirmed and will continue to be confirmed.


Related reading: YEC Dogma is NOT Biblical;  Biblical Anthropologists Discuss Darwin; Getting the Facts About Human Origins; Theories of Creation: An Overview; Between Biblical Literalism and Biblical Illiteracy; Objections to the Fundamentalist Reading of Genesis 1-5

Migrations Out of Africa

Alice C. Linsley


I have discussed the evidence of molecular genetics in Haplogroups of Interest to Biblical Anthropologists.

Genesis 10 speaks of the migration of the Kushites into Mesopotamia. This is one of the later migrations out of Africa, between about 3500 and 1500 B.C. The Kushites represent a highly organized people, consisting of numerous clans and castes. Their rulers controlled the major water systems and founded early mining industries along the Nile and in southern Israel. Nimrod (Gen. 10:8-12) was a Kushite kingdom builder. He and his brother Ramah were the sons of Kush.

Amenhotep III ruled between about 1382 and 1350 B.C. (about 600 years after Abraham's son Jok-tan). His name means "peace of Amen" and indicates a date when Amen, a name for God favored over the name Set, which was favored in the Delta. It was during the 18th dynasty that the title 'King's Son of Kush' was first used. The earlier known Kushite ruler was called K-ash-ta which means The Throne of Kush.

Penelope Aubin has written, "According to I. Hofmann (and several other scholars starting with F. Cailliaud in 1822), similarities in art may attest to significant cultural contacts between the Indian subcontinent and ancient Kush. In addition, there are very clear resemblances between the Egyptian numeral system, particularly the Hieratic, and the oldest Indian forms. Resemblances in script strengthen the hypothesis of contacts with the Nile Valley."


Earlier Migrations out of Africa

Evolutionists maintain that "modern" humans originated in Africa about 200,000 years ago, reaching full behavioral modernity around 50,000 years ago.  The genetic root of modern humans is mtDNA Haplogroup L.

DNA studies are helping to piece together a clearer picture of archaic populations, their migrations and the mixing of archaic peoples. Of particular interest is the migration of Haplogroup C, which traces lineage by the Y-chromosome.

Onges of Andaman and Nicobar Islands
The Onges and Jarawas (Harwas) belong to Y-DNA Haplotype D, subtype of Haplogroup C

The negrito Andaman and Nicobar Islanders belong to M130 (Haplogroup C) designated by Spencer Wells, who leads the Genographic Project. This lineage of Nilotic peoples migrated between 70,000 and 50,000 years ago from Africa and Arabia, traveling along the coastlines and eventually crossing the sea. They moved eastwards to India, Japan and Australia.

The indigenous Orang Asli (aboriginal peoples) populations in the Malay Peninsula such as the Negritos (Jahai and Kensui) and Proto-Malays (Temuan) are associated with the first wave of human migration from Africa. It is believed that they may be descended from the Hoabinhians, as their mtDNA variation shows strong evidence for indigenous origins within Malay Peninsula, with time depth of ∼60,000 years ago. However, their origin and the route of their migration to Asia is still a matter of great speculation.

The 20,000 year old human skeletons found at Lake Mungo in New South Wales are may be descendants of the early Nilotic peoples who were seafaring.  Both groups buried their rulers in red ochre, derived from hematite, Fe2O3. The earliest known use of red ochre (300,000 years) is at the site of GnJh-03 in the Kapthurin Formation of East Africa, and at Twin Rivers in Zambia. Prominent persons were buried in red ochre for at least 40,000 years.

Haplogroup C migration

The Onges and Jarawas belong to Haplotype D which is also common in Tibet and Japan. The Ainu aboriginal people of Japan are in haplotype D (Y-chromosome) and haplogroup X (mitochondrial chromosome).  The Ainu have a red skin tone similar to Abraham's Horite (Edom = red) people. This explains why the Hebrew and Japanese alphabets are similar.

The Ainu/Annu also migrated westward and settled in Greenland, Labrador and the eastern coastline of Canada. The Ainu share a common female ancestors and are classified in mtDNA haplogroup X. The heaviest concentration of mtDNA haplogroup X is found among the descendants of the Annu living in Eastern Canada. They say that their ancestors crossed to the New World from Wales (which explains the absence of haplo X in Siberia).  This is supported by the discovery of red ochre burial in the Upper Paleolithic in Wales.

The genetic sequences of haplogroup X diverged from haplogroup N which originated in the Nile. Haplogroup X diverged further about 30,000 years ago with two sub-groups X1 and X2 now identified. Overall haplogroup X accounts for about 2% of the population of Europe, the Near East, and North Africa.

Sub-group X1 is restricted to North and East Africa, and also the Near East. Sub-group X2 appears to have undergone population expansion and dispersal after the last glacial maximum, between 21,000 and 15,000 years ago. Sub-group X1 is more strongly present in the Near East, the Caucasus, and Mediterranean Europe. There are concentrations of sub-group X2 in Georgia (8%), the Orkney Islands (7%) and amongst the Druze (27%), most of whom live in Galilee and have a red skin tone similar to the tone of the red Nubians and the Edomites/Horites of Genesis 36.

Red and black Nubian captives
(Detail from Ippolito Rosellini's drawing from the 1828 Franco-Tuscan expedition to Egypt)

Related reading:  Scientific Verification of the Genesis 10 Dispersion; The Nilotic Origins of the Ainu; Mining Blood; A Kindling of Ancient Memory; Abraham's Annu Ancestors; Sub-Saharan DNA of Modern Jews; 58,000 Year South African Color and Glue Factory; Denisovans

Denisovan Finds Create a Stir

Who were the Denisovans? That is the focus of a fascinating Science Magazine feature and the buzz among molecular geneticists.

The Denisova hominin represents an archaic human species living in the Altai Mountains of southern Siberia at least 41,000 years ago. This was an ice-age population.

The results of the complete genome sequence recovered from a finger bone of a female in southern Siberia have been released here.

The growth plates were not fused, indicating that this was a young child. She lived between 30,000 and 80,000 years ago. A comparative analysis of the genome with those of modern humans indicates that this lineage survives in the genes of some inhabitants of Papua New Guinea and islands northeast of Australia. These small populations share one-twentieth of their DNA with the Denisovan population.

The Denisova mtDNA studied indicates a common female ancestor for Neanderthal humans and modern humans. 

Biological anthropologist Maria Mednikova of the Russian Academy of Science has said, “It remains unknown what the Denisovan looked like or how he behaved.”

A finger bone of a young girl (found 2008) and a tooth (2000) were discovered in the Denisova Cave in Siberia.

However, the new discovery of a Denisovan toe bone suggests that African, Asian and European populations were interbreeding. This is likely the genetic seedbed of the later Afro-Asiatics.

The molar tooth and the finger bone mtDNA sequences were very similar, indicating that both individuals belonged to the same population.

The precise age of the Denisovan material remains uncertain but corresponds to early migrations out of Africa.

The DNA analysis further indicates that the Denisovan population was the result of an early migration out of Africa. The ancestors of some Papuans and the Denisovans migrated, probably from the Nile region, between 100,000 and 70,000 years ago.


Related reading:  Complete Denisovan genome offers glimpse of ancient variation; Fossil genome reveals ancestral link; Genome of Mysterious Extinct Human

Genesis and Molecular Genealogy

There are five scenarios to explain the current distribution of human populations. They can be seen in the figures below.

Source: http://arslanmb.org/ArmenianDNAProject/screenshot-38.jpg

Explanation of Molecular Genealogy Models

1. Recent out of Africa: Single Origin Population model
In this model, humans are a young species that underwent a bottleneck, and Eurasians are descended from a group of Africans that migrated out of Africa. This model has been criticized for its inability to explain deep divergence in autosomal DNA (atDNA). Autosomal DNA is a term used in genetic genealogy to describe DNA which is inherited from the autosomal chromosomes.  Each set of autosome is received from your mother and your father.  Their atDNA was received from their parents and their grandparents, these becoming more disjointed with each generation since most people no longer marry close kin.  Within endogamous groups such as Abraham's Horite people, the disjunction is considerably less, and depending on the mating structure, may be preserved quite well.

In this model, the African Eve, traced by mitochondrial DNA, lived 170,000 years ago while the African Adam, traced by Y-chromosome DNA, is believed to have lived 100,000 years ago. 

The Y-chromosone determines gender and is passed virtually unchanged from father to son. The mutation rate is very slow so the Y-chromosone can be used to trace lineage back many generations. 

Mitochrondrial DNA (mtDNA) passes from mother to daughter from generation to generation with very little change and is therefore a rich source of information for those studying deep ancestry. The Horites married only Horite women, so Horite ancestry can be traced by mitochondrial DNA. As Horite rulers married half-sisters and patrilineal cousins or nieces, there would be considerabe genetic stability. This stability was valued because the Horites expected God's Son to be born of their ruler-priest caste which practiced endogamy.

Mitochondrial Eve’s line will not die out because mitochondrial DNA is passed down to both male and female offspring. On the other hand, Y-Chromosomal Adam's line will not be the same at any point in history due to the fact that male lines can die out. When this occurs, a more recent ancestor becomes the new “Adam.” The most recent common male ancestor is believed to have lived 100,000 year ago.


2. Recent out of Africa: Multiple Archaic Populations model
This model is advocated by those who believe that modern humans evolved from ancestors common to modern humans and other archaic humans (hominins), some of whom became extinct.

Dienekes Pontikos holds this view but mainains that the mating structure of the African population indicates isolated long-standing subpopulations.  In this view, Eurasians are Afro-Asiatics who descend from one of these African subpopulations. The variants that have deep origins are presumed to have evolved separately in different African subpopulations and entered the modern gene pool after unstructured mating (panmictic) became more common.

Anthropological and archaeological discoveries support the recent Out-of-Africa view for modern humans, but don't support the view of separated archaic humans who became extinct. This view lacks physical evidence that the theorized extinct hominids were unlike modern humans.  This has been shown to be false by paleontologist Jeremy DeSilva and others.

DeSilva compared the ankle joint, the tibia and the talus fossils of human ancestors between 4.12 million to 1.53 million years old, he discovered that all of the ankle joints resembled those of modern humans rather than those of apes. Chimpanzees flex their ankles 45 degrees from normal resting position. This makes it possible for apes to climb trees with great ease. While walking, humans flex their ankles a maximum of 20 degrees. The human ankle bones are quite distinct from those of apes. Read about DeSilva’s research here.

Further, the discovery of a complete fourth metatarsal of A. afarensis at Hadar that shows the deep, flat base and tarsal facets that "imply that its midfoot had no ape-like midtarsal break. These features show that the A. afarensis foot was functionally like that of modern humans." (Carol Ward, William H. Kimbel, Donald C. Johanson, Feb. 2011) Read the report here.

Multi-Regional: Recent Admixture model
This view agrees on the recent African origin of modern humans, but maintains a place for long isolated pre-existing Eurasian populations who contributed some of their mtDNA to modern humans. Multiregionalism posits that the descendants of  H. erectus evolved into Neandertals, Denisovans, and modern humans in different regions. Populations coming from Africa mingled with the other groups and modern humans emerged.

This model presumes two variants with deep common ancestry stemming from the separated Eurasian and African strains. This model has found support by analysis of the Neandertal genome. However, recent studies have revealed that only 2–3% of the genome of non-Africans might come from Neanderthals.  Further, some believe that Neandertal introgression into Eurasians can be explained by the Multiple Archaic Populations in Africa model.


Multi-Regional: Long Standing Admixture model

In this view Africa is the point of origin of human Y chromosomes and mtDNA and separation took place about 150,000 years ago. Modern humans are descended from populations from around the world between which there has been gene flow. This model explains divergence, but does not offer an explanation for the African origin of the uniparental markers, the evidence for the appearance of anatomical modernity in East Africa and the evidence for less genetic variation in Eurasia with increasing distance from East Africa. 


Ancestral Bottleneck model
This view is proposed by Blum and Jakobsson, who speculate a bottleneck 150,000 years ago in an ancestral structured population. This model combines elements of the Single Origin Population model and the Multiple Archaic Populations model. It hypothesizes a single origin model for extant humans and allows for the possibility of structure in Africa prior to the bottleneck.  The breakdown of structured mating is set before the bottleneck. 

Blum and Jakobsson write, "Through the analysis of a public DNA sequence database, we find, similar to previous estimates, that the common ancestors of autosomal and X-linked genes are indeed very old, living, on average, respectively 1,500,000 and 1,000,000 years ago. However, contrary to previous conclusions, we find that these deep gene genealogies are consistent with the Out-of-Africa scenario provided that the ancestral effective population size was approximately 14,000 individuals. We show that an ancient bottleneck in the Middle Pleistocene, possibly arising from an ancestral structured population, can reconcile the contradictory findings from the mitochondrion on the one hand, with the autosomes and the X-chromosome on the other hand."                 

In other words, they support the view that the earliest human populations were in Africa and had a mating structure that preserved a genetic identity until about 130,000 years ago. The hand axe is the most common artefact of these early East African and "Old World" peoples.


Which of these views aligns with Genesis or does Genesis suggest yet another possible model?

What do you think?