Thursday 8 January 2009

Noah's daughters

Let's say that all eight people on the Ark were unrelated. That means that each of them could have carried 2 different alleles for each gene or a total of 16 alleles for the entire population. Since the human genome encompasses up to 59 different alleles for some genes, where did the other 43 alleles come from?

We have three choices:

1) There were more than 30 people on the Ark (and therefore the bible is fallible)

2) The flood didn't cover the entire world and at least 22 other humans survived (and therefore, again, the bible is fallible)

3) 43 different alleles evolved after the flood.


(very slightly paraphrased from http://holysmoke.org/cretins/ark.htm)

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