Biblical Adam and Eve buried by the National Genome Project
Today I received my ancestral DNA profile from the National Geographic Genome Project. Six weeks ago I did a simple buccal swab for DNA and submitted it to the project. I have good news and bad news. My Y chromosome results identify me as a member of the halo R1b group, a lineage defined by a genetic marker called M343. This halo group is the final destination of a genetic journey that began about 60,000 years ago with the ancient chromosome marker and called 168 originating in East Africa.
It seems that my personal DNA, which makes me who I am today, managed to cross the southern Red Sea around 60,000 years ago in the Yemen area. This was a bit easier than it is today, as an ice age locked up much of the planet’s water and crossing was much easier than it is today. Stretching north as Marker 89 through the Arabian Peninsula, “I” migrated through Iran and Iraq into Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and into the Pamir Knot area, a confluence of four mountains in the eastern Himalayas. . dragging Marker 9 with me.
It was here that someone said to go south to India, but my ancestors said, “no, we’ll go north” to the Asian steppes about 40,000 years ago. After another 5,000 years, my DNA had to make a decision. Someone said in the steppes said “we’re heading east”, and they became the Siberians who crossed the Bering Strait and became the first Americans. The Navajo are the direct descendants of these Siberian ice experts. That was my only chance to become one of the True People.
My DNA, however, headed West as Marker 173 through modern Russia and crept into Europe as Marker 343 35,000-30,000 years ago as Cro-Magnons heading into what is now Western Europe. It was here that my DNA led to the Neanderthals who had survived just fine like us in Europe for the past 200,000 years. They left Africa long before I did in the form of Homo Erectus and adapted in Europe to the harsh environment of the Ice Age. They had little self-awareness and are not our direct descendants. No human has yet been found in Europe with any remnants of Neanderthal DNA. In 200,000 years they never changed their stone tools and life seemed to be in the moment without vision, insight or the awareness we have today. My DNA was smarter in the form of Cro-Magnon, the people responsible for the intriguing cave paintings in the Lascaux cave in southern France. My DNA led their DNA to southern Spain, where they went extinct perhaps as little as 18,000 years ago.
Eventually, with Europe warming and glacial ice retreating north, my DNA ancestors moved to Britain and Ireland. Evidently they were there for most of what we know as civilized history, yes, sure, finally making the leap across the Atlantic in the late 1800s and settling in Rochester, New York. It was here that I learned that he did not have a trace of DNA, but was instead a direct descendant of the lost tribe of Zebulon, being one of the truly true people, the Dutch. After all, if you’re not Dutch, you’re not much… 🙂
It is not a joke. Yes, I am Dutch, but my DNA never traveled from North Africa to Israel. When my DNA arrived in Iraq, it never looked back and went east and not west with our dear father Abraham. It seems my DNA insisted on a much harder way to get to Europe over a period of 35,000 years without going through Israel entirely. I suppose we could conclude that if “I” was never there, and I am Dutch, then I will have to abandon the idea that I am one of the descendants of the Lost Tribes of Israel. I actually did it a long time ago.
In fact, my DNA tells me that I am a black African Saudi Iranian Iranian Eurasian who made the decision to head north from the Himalayas into the steppes of Asia, and then west bypassing the Middle East and slipping into Europe long ago. 30,000 years after 30,000 years journey to become me 55 years ago.
Gotta love science. Goodbye bad theology. Goodbye exclusivism and false prophecies. Goodbye to the idea that Sem, Cam and Jafet brought us the White, Black and Yellow races. Our skin changed color as we moved north, where we no longer needed the massive darkening protection of melanin and needed to literally lighten in order to get enough sunlight to make vitamin D for our bones. Someone tell the clan that they all started out as a small, incredibly tough tribe of “black” men and women who needed to get out of Africa on the world’s most amazing journey, over 60,000 years ago. And goodbye to a mother 6000 years since literal Adam and Eve were not our first literal parents. The implications are startling and worrying for fundamentalists.
We are all one after all.