Discussion about scientific issues as they relate to God and Christianity including archaeology, origins of life, the universe, intelligent design, evolution, etc.
I was reading on wikipedia about human migration across the earth, which I find an interesting part of human history
This is a map of human migration over time plotted according to how old DNA samples place humans in those areas, and thus inferring how early humanity arrived in those areas. However, theres one thing that comes to mind when reading this. If this is an account of human migration since the genesis of humanity, where does Noah and the Great Flood fit in? There doesn't seem to be an instance where all of humanity is wiped out and followed by all of humanity originating from that area like you would expect if there was an event destroying all but Noah and his family. Global or local, the story seems to imply that all of humanity at the time was wiped out.
Is the chart accepted by paleontologists way off? Is humanity's origination in Africa according this graph stemming from Noah and his family following the flood? Does believing in Biblical history require one to reject paleontology? Why doesn't science seem to show of any bottleneck in the spread of humanity?
I am committed to belief in God, as the most morally demanding, psychologically enriching, intellectually satisfying and imaginatively fruitful hypothesis about the ultimate nature of reality known to me - Keith Ward
The evidence used to put together these maps/timelines for human migration patterns over our history pretty conclusively rejects any kind of young-Earth beliefs about humanity's history. Obviously these kinds of genetic and archaeological studies seem to show not only an African genesis of humanity but also a very long and complex series of migrations, not just one single migration event. The idea that the human race could not only perform these migrations, but also diversify and gain unique racial genetic markers in the process in just a handful of generations is beyond absurd in a scientific frame of mind.
So on one hand, yes, if by "biblical history" you are referring to young-Earth beliefs, you pretty much have to throw all this out the window and pretend it doesn't exist. Of course, lots of biblical interpretations also believe in an old Earth, so those kinds of beliefs would probably be much more accommodating to this scientific view of human migration over many thousands of years.
Oh no, not necessarily young earth beliefs, I shed those a long time ago.
I definitely believe in an old earth, mainly my concern here is that evidence doesn't really show any point where modern humans "bottlenecked" or went nearly extinct save for a single family, whether its in the last 5,000 years or the last 170,000. Even a local flood interpretation claims that all of humanity at the time went extinct. Unless I'm wrong and a lot of local flood-ers only claim that a flood destroyed humanity in the mesopatamian region and not on the whole planet.
I am committed to belief in God, as the most morally demanding, psychologically enriching, intellectually satisfying and imaginatively fruitful hypothesis about the ultimate nature of reality known to me - Keith Ward
Some do believe it was only a portion of humanity. But myself, coming from the belief that a severe Glacial Lake Outburst Flood killed all but Noah's family, doesn't see a problem with your diagram. Can you clarify where the issue is? I imagine the event was something like 100,000 years ago, and humanity (after the Tower of Babel) started to migrate around the globe. The diagram seems like a reasonable migration plan.
