Friday, January 5, 2018

Table of Nations, Tower of Babel & the Genome

"Ann Gibbons’ latest article in Science talks about a new genome from a human skeleton found in an Ethiopian cave. Dated by radiocarbon to be 4,500 years old, the genome shows unexpected mixing of African stock with Europeans. Gibbons writes about the surprising findings:
Africa is the birthplace of our species and the source of ancient migrations that spanned the globe. But it has missed out on a revolution in understanding human origins: the study of ancient DNA….

Until now. A paper published online this week in Science reveals the first prehistoric genome from Africa: that of Mota, a hunter-gatherer man who lived 4500 years ago in the highlands of Ethiopia…. And when compared with the genomes of living Africans, it implies something startling. Africa is usually seen as a source of outward migrations, but the genomes suggest a major migration into Africa by farmers from the Middle East, possibly about 3500 years ago. These farmers’ DNA reached deep into the continent, spreading even to groups considered isolated, such as the Khoisan of South Africa and the pygmies of the Congo.
 
Did evolutionary anthropologists expect this? They believe early man evolved much earlier and moved “out of Africa” into Europe and Asia many tens of thousands of years ago.

The Table of Nations in Genesis 10 is the most detailed, credible and verifiable account of human migrations in any historical written record. Recorded by Moses around 1440 BC, it most probably includes records known to Moses from his education in Egypt and earlier sources accessible to him. 
In this amazing record (which flows seamlessly into the time of Abraham, where secular history provides independent corroboration), *the sons of Ham migrated to Africa and the far east.  *The sons of Japheth migrated to Europe and India, forming the Indo-European cultures with their shared languages.  *The sons of Shem stayed primarily in the middle east.

Individual names of the three sons of Noah and their offspring can be traced through extra-Biblical records to places like Egypt, Greece, Ethiopia, Crete, and even as far as China. There’s no reason to reject the Genesis 10 record except for the evolutionary appetite for long ages.

After the Flood, Noah’s descendants were building a magnificent Tower of Babel within a few centuries (100 to 500 years, as estimates go). The languages were not arbitrary, but intelligently designed by God, who had a purpose for driving the nations to scatter and repopulate the earth. Then people groups with their common languages scattered across the globe within a few centuries" CMI
Therefore is the name of it called Babel;
because the LORD did there confound the language of all the earth:
and from thence did the LORD scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.
Genesis 11:9