Noah’s ark or a shot in the dark?

If only for a few days, it did seem as if science and faith had reached an unexpected entente and concurrence when it was reported that humankind may have indeed descended from a single pair — Adam and Eve, some might claim — some 200 millennia ago.

An evolutionary biologist and a geneticist averred in a study published in the Human Evolution journal that near-identical mitochondrial DNA within species (including our own) suggest a purge in genetic diversity caused by a “bottleneck” 100,000 to 200,000 years ago, perhaps due to a planet-wide catastrophic event.

Thus, they posit, populations may have narrowed to a “founding pair”, alluding to a Noah’s Ark sort of situation. Given that great floods find mention in several ancient faiths, it was not surprising that their suggestion found instant resonance.


Unfortunately, killjoy fellow-scientists made haste to clarify there was no such global disaster at the given time, nor any spike in extinction rates. They added that as mitochondrial DNA is only found in females of species, its results cannot be conclusive.

Besides, genomic data can only approximate sizes of past populations, so while numbers may wax and wane, it cannot be concluded that once upon a time, we were down to two. But, then, it cannot be conclusively ruled out either. So, religion and science can still slug it out.