How old is man (as we know him)? In God of the Gods I discussed the Eve Study which studied mitochondrial DNA which can only be passed by mothers to their offspring and it traced our DNA back to between 140,000 – 290,000 years ago to a common ancestral line, an African Eve[iv] in southeastern Africa. Does this mean that she was the original “mother of us all”? No, we could be much older. What it means is that she is the female that had the gene that survived as was passed down to us that we could trace back to. Keep in mind that we are talking Evolution now. Let’s say there were three females back then and one of them is African Eve. The all have children so they all pass along their Mitochondrial DNA. The child of one of them dies in early childhood. End of that DNA line. The children of African Eve and her counterpart grow up and have children. African Eve also has more children that grow up and have children. The other mother never has another child so only her one child can pass along her DNA. African Eve and her children and her children’s children continue to multiply over the years and spread their gene each time. The child of the other woman has children too but because there was only one of her those descendants are quickly outnumbered by African Eve’s descendants. African Eve’s descendants being the more populous simply spread the gene farther and faster. Eventually the other line simply comes to an end leaving us with only Eve’s descendants spreading their genes down the line and that gives us only African Eve’s DNA that we can trace back to. It doesn’t mean she was the only female back then or the original female, she is just the one who had the DNA line that survived to our time.
I also talked about Scientific Adam[v] which traces a gene mutation that all males in the world have that links us back to around 60,000 years ago to the African Rift Valley. Since then newer evidence has been discovered that takes the common ancestor of man back even farther, a lot farther. The DNA of a man named Albert Perry, who is now deceased, was tested and found not to have the common Y chromosome link associated with all males. Scientists had to go back almost 340,000 years to find a common link between his Y chromosome and other males.[vi] This suggests that there may have been another species of humans that went extinct but not before interbreeding with what we have come to call Modern Man. We’ll discuss this in more detail later on but the take away from this is that it potentially pushes back the age of humankind even farther, about 50,000 years earlier than African Eve.
So what we have is a major dilemma between the Bible as the literal Word of God, which is the basis for the 3 major religions of the world, Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, and what science tells us. My intent is to provide facts and evidence (and yes some of it may be circumstantial) that there have been earlier civilizations of man than those we know of and that our history isn’t exactly what we believe it to be. That this contradicts the Biblical age of Creation is unavoidable but it’s not meant as an attack on the Bible itself. I do however need to point out that other than the Bible based religions that many religions and cultures from around the world do in fact allow for a history much older than the Bible and in line with scientific findings. That being said, keep in mind that any dates older than 4004 B.C. puts the artifact, civilization, etc. being discussed as prior to Biblical Creation.
If you absolutely can’t open yourself up to that possibility then you may as well stop reading now because all I’m going to do from here on out is upset you. If on the other hand you are open to facts supported by science and physical evidence you should find this informative, educational, and eye opening. Let’s get started.
Based off of the information above we have a potential minimum-maximum timeframe that man has been on Earth. At a minimum we have been around 6,017 years or since 4004 B.C. and at a maximum, 140,000-290,000 or 136,000-286,000 B.C. I’m going to split the difference on the maximum and go with approximately 200,000 years for when Modern Man (basically indistinguishable from you and me) appears. I know I brought up the Y chromosome for males going back to 340,000 years but for now I’m just going with the African Eve date range as it’s been studied more and is a more accepted/validated date range.
Click Follow to receive emails when this author adds content on Bublish
Comment on this Bubble
Your comment and a link to this bubble will also appear in your Facebook feed.