"The Tower of Babel .....like
the Creation and Flood accounts, there are only a couple of verses that
apply to our model of genetics. But, like the others, these verses are
as profound as they are simple.
“Now the whole earth had one language and one speech.” Gen 11:1“And they said, ‘Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower whose top is in the heavens; let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth.’” Gen 11:4
It sounds like they were in a homogenous culture, but
what do people in that situation do? Would you expect them to mix
freely?
out and getting separated from one another and intentionally did the opposite! However, this was against the express command of God, who had ordered them to spread out (to populate the earth). So, He took matters into His own hands.
“’Come, let Us go down and confuse their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.’ So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they ceased building the city.” Gen 11:7–8
There are tremendous implications that come from the Babel account.
---- It explains the amazing cultural connectivity of ancient
peoples—like pyramid building, common flood legends, and ancient,
non-Christian genealogies that link people back to biblical figures
(e.g., many of the royal houses of pagan northern Europe go back to
Japheth, the son of Noah).
From a Biblical perspective, the current human
population easily fits
into the standard model of population growth
using very conservative parameters.
In fact, starting with 6 people and doubling the population every 150
years more than accounts for the current human population (a growth rate
of less than 0.5% per year!). Population size would have increased
quickly given the rate at which the post-Flood population reestablished
agriculture, animal husbandry, industry and civilization.
Q: So we must ask
the question, “Why are there so few people in the world today?”
A: The
answer is that the world is young and we have not been here many
thousands of years.
Q: When did the dispersion occur?
A: Our best clue about the timing of the event comes from Genesis 10:25.
In referencing the 5th generation descendent of Shem, a man named
Peleg, it says, “in his days the earth was divided.”
Q: To what is this
referring?
A: ....this passage is referring to the division
of people at Babel.
Japheth. If we assume about the same number of daughters, Noah had on the order of 30 grandchildren. At that rate of growth, there would have been about 150 children in Salah’s generation, about 750 in Eber’s generation, and about 3,750 in Peleg’s generation. Of course, these generations overlap, etc., so let’s say there were between 1,000 and 10,000 people alive at the time of Babel. This fits nicely with the available data. It is a high rate of growth, but wars and disease had yet to start taking their toll.
There is one more verse in this section that we need to discuss:
“These were the families of the sons of Noah, according to their generations, in their nations; and from these the nations were divided on the earth after the flood.” Gen 10:32
---At Babel, God did
not separate the nations according to language. ---He used language to
separate them according to paternal (male) ancestry!
---This has monumental
significance and is the key to understanding human genetic history.
---Paternal sorting would lead to specific Y chromosome lineages in
different geographical locations. Since males and females from the three
main families should have been freely intermixing prior to this, it
also leads to a mixing of the mitochondrial lines.
*It is as if God put
all the people into a giant spreadsheet and hit a button called “Sort
According to Father.” He then took that list and used it to divide up
and separate the nations.
We already saw that Y chromosomes have little variation among 
them.
We now add the fact that this little bit of variation is almost always
geographically specific. That is, after the nations were separated
according to Y chromosome, mutations occurred in the various lines.
Since the lines were sent to specific geographical areas, the mutations
are geographically specific. The current distribution of Y chromosome
lines is a tremendous confirmation of the Biblical model.
already learned that there are three main lineages of mtDNA. We now add the fact that these three lineages are more or less randomly distributed across the world. Also, the various mutations within each of the three main families of mtDNA are geographically specific as well.
---In other words, as the three mixed mitochondrial lines were carried
along with the Y chromosome dispersal, each line in each area began to
pick up new mutations, just like we would predict." CMI
