[Avodah] Mitochondrial DNA and the Mabul

[Lisa Liel]

On 9/21/2012 11:31 AM, Arie Folger wrote:
> However, there is another kind of evidence that would very much
> question the human discontinuity except for family Noach. Brian Sykes,
> the geneticists who reportedly developed this kind of genetic
> analysis, has studied the mitochondrial DNA of contemporary people. By
> correlating know rates of mutations to the differences between
> populations, one can make a fairly solid educated guess as to how
> related different people are.
I'm not sure I buy that.  It assumes that the known rate of mutations 
has remained constant.  That's a premise that needs to be established in 
order for any conclusions drawn from it to be sound.  And it can't be.  
The uniformitarian assumption has given rise to a number of scientific 
"truths" that are both unproven and *unprovable*.  Short of time travel, 
we have no way to determine whether atmospheric carbon was the same 3000 
years ago as it is today, which makes carbon dating unsound.  Short of 
time travel, we have no way to determine whether rates of mutations were 
different in the past, which makes mitochondrial dating unsound.

That's frustrating for scientists.  A man named John Dayton once threw 
out this scientific heresy: " It's better to be roughly right than 
precisely wrong."  It was a heresy because the culture of science (as 
opposed to science itself) demands precision.  It demands that we be 
able to answer questions.  And "we don't know and can't know" is not an 
acceptable answer.  So assumptions are made.  But sometimes those 
assumptions are untestable.  As in our case.

> As mitochondrial DNA is inherited from
> the mother only (similar analyses with Y chromosome sequencing
> confirms his findings on the paternal side), it implies that one can
> guess when people had their last common great great n^x grandmother.

Assuming a constant rate of mutation.  Which is not a reasonable 
assumption.  It's more of a WAG.

> The number of genetic foremothers is irrelevant here for our purposes,
> but it is relevant that this analysis argues, using hard scientific
> facts, that there is human genetic continuity for much more than since
> the Mabul, and too much diversity for it to have developed only since
> then.

Our DNA has a tremendous amount of information that we understand to be 
"junk DNA".  We don't know what it does.  We don't know if it once did 
something and no longer does.  We don't know if it's done multiple 
things throughout history.  It's a gaping hole in our knowledge.  To 
draw conclusions of this sort about our DNA when we still know so little 
about so much of it is irresponsible.  Junk science to match the junk DNA.


On 9/21/2012 1:16 PM, Micha Berger wrote:
> I think it's worth checking out the dating of mtEve
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrial_Eve#Implications_of_dating_and_placement_of_Eve>
> and of Y Chromosomal Adam
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y-chromosomal_Adam#Time_frame>.
> We're talking 142,000 yrs since Y-Adam, and 150-200,000 yrs since mtEve.

> All of which assumes things about mutation rates etc... that need not
> have been true before the mabul.

Or after it, for that matter.

Lisa