Jim Bell wrote:
"I based my conclusion re: most hominids being excluded as ancestors on the
experts cited in the Times article, who say this new evidence deals a
tremendous blow to the "multi-regional" hypothesis.
While your cone diagram looks good, I don't think it deals with the data,
which limits the range of possible ancestors to a discrete and insular area.
So far, we don't have any evidence of "coning" in the region where "Adam and
Eve" cavorted."
**endquote**
Stephen Jones wrote:
"If its true, a great deal. It would show that homo sapiens is
uniquely very, very recent, as the Bible indicates he is. "150,000"
years is a geological instant. It would also show there is a major
discontinuity between ape and man, as Christianity has always
maintained. This would be a blow to Darwinian theories of human
evolution."
**endquote**
What struck me while thinking about this problem this weekend, was that as
far as Christianity is concerned the Y-chromosome and Mitochondrial studies
do not logically support the existence of Adam and Eve. According to the
Scripture, all men are descended from Noah prior to Adam and yet none of us
mentioned this important little fact. As to the Mitochondria, (assuming that
conventional wisdom is correct and it is passed on from mother to offspring),
the Eve theory simply marks the time when the three wives of Noah's son's had
a common ancestor. We have no idea how many generations back that might have
been. It might have only been one generation back if they were sisters
Thus once again, I would contend that it is extremely important for
Christianity to have an explanation of the flood which fits the data.
The work with the Y-chromosome supports work with the MHC gene complex which
would have humans arising around 400,000 years ago. Given the assumptions of
constant replacement rate, the 270k and 400 k years deduced by these two
methods and the 200 k years from mitochondria are relatively consistent.
These 'nucleotide dating methods' are not as accurate as radioactive decay.
glenn
T