by Brian Thomas, M.S. *

When research biologist Dr. Nathaniel Jeanson plotted hundreds of human mitchondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequences onto a tree diagram, the project revealed an obvious pattern: The mtDNA stemmed from three central “trunks” or nodes instead of just one. Three trends in Jeanson’s data suggest that the wives of Noah’s sons Shem, Ham, and Japheth best explain this finding.

Mothers pass mtDNA to every new

generation. It comes from the mother’s egg cell and contains 16,569 chemical base pairs—either adenine-thymine or guanine-cytosine—organized to encode vital information, like words in an instruction manual. Sometimes a DNA copying error, known as a mutation, leaves a different base in place of the original. Several empirical studies reveal that about one human mtDNA mutation occurs every six generations.1 When a mother’s egg cell mtDNA mutates in one place, the child conceived from that egg cell—plus, if the child is female, later descendants—inherits that difference. This leaves a genetic trail that can lead back to mtDNA ancestry.

Jeanson first downloaded mtDNA sequences taken from all major people groups. He then used standard software that arranges the most similar sequences closest together. The result is a tree-like diagram depicting lines of ancestry.

Jeanson’s data show that the human mtDNA tree has three nodes. Thus, everyone alive today carries one of three unique ancestral maternal sequences. This fits Genesis’ claim that all humans who exist today descended from one of the wives of Noah’s sons.

We find the second trend in the number of DNA differences between the three central nodes. At today’s mtDNA mutation rate, two to eight nucleotide differences would have accumulated in the nine generations between Adam and Noah. And the distance between the three central nodes also shows eight DNA differences.2

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