There is a current craze for people to discover more about their heritage by DNA testing. Typically, these tests reveal ancestry by detecting mutations in nuclear DNA.
One American family had this test done for themselves. Not surprisingly to them, results confirmed that the parents were of European descent; their adoptive daughter and son from China were East Asian.
Yet there is more. We all have another small set of genes in our mitochondria (energy factory organelles in each cell) which are passed down directly from the mother without mixing in different male lineages. As a result, its mutations are fewer and easier to track, revealing our maternal family tree. This is mitochondrial DNA.
Researchers have discovered nearly thirty maternal lines through analysis of mitochondrial DNA. To their surprise, these thirty are all traced back to three branches–identified as “Mom1,” “Mom2,” and “Mom3”!
Based on the Bible, this is exactly what we would expect if we descended from the three moms on the ark several thousand years ago. These moms were the wives of Noah’s sons, from whom “the whole earth was populated” (Genesis 9:19).
With a broad brush, native Africans are all descended from Mom3; Europeans and a few East Asians from Mom1; and most other Asians from Mom2. (Original North and South Americans resulted from the migration by descendants of Moms 1 and 2.)
To these parents’ astonishment, when the results of the mitochondrial testing came back, the European parents and their two Chinese adopted children were each from separate maternal lines, but the same Mom1 branch. They realized that the difference between the two parents and their two Chinese children was no greater than the difference between the parents themselves!
Across the globe, 99.9% of human DNA is the same. As the Apostle Paul said, “He made from one blood…” (Acts 17:26) all mankind to be a single family. God’s Word is the truth that unites us.
Source: Answers Magazine, March-April, 2018 (Vol. 13, No. 2), pp. 64-70.
