Scientists have proven ALL of humanity can be traced back to ONE human ancestral mother and father, (and that humanity cannot be traced back any earlier)
The call these the Mitochondrial Eve and the Y Chromosomal Adam,
No, no, no.
It means all men can be traced back to a single man, the Y-chromosome Adam and all women can be traced back to a single woman, the mitochondrial Eve. That is quite different. Why? Because it has been estimated that a mitochondrial Eve probably lived around 150,000 years ago and a Y-chromosomal Adam about 275,000 years ago…and these can change. I don’t just mean that the way of estimating who it was and when they lived can change. I mean if the identity could be ascertained with 100% certainty, it is possible for the identity of the actual person to change.
Consider a woman named Betsy who has 2 daughters and 2 sons who each have two daughters and two sons who each in turn have two daughters and 2 sons. Her four children gave her sixteen grandchildren who turned around and had a total of 64 great grandchildren for her. Although 32 of those great grandchildren are female, only 8 of the 32 girls are females who can pass on Betsy’s mitochondrial DNA. Likewise, the Y-chromosome from Betsy’s husband, Bob, would only be carried by 8 of their great
grandsons.
Let’s say that none of those 8 females who carry Betsy’s mitochondria have
female issue. In that case,
Betsy’s mitochondrial line dies, even though she has
lots of living descendants. The Y-lines of Bob’s contemporaries, meanwhile, might all fail to carry an unbroken male line all the way down through history. If Bob becomes the most recent man who has contributed his Y-chromosome to every man alive, Bob becomes the Y-chromosome Adam. Let’s say these all came through two of his grandsons, though, let’s call them Luke and John, and over time Luke’s line no longer has any males that can trace an unbroken line back to Luke (and therefore to Bob) through the male line alone. If that happened, John would be the Y-chromosome Adam, not Bob, because
every male with Bob’s Y-chromosome got it via John and the Y-chromosome Adam is the most recent male ancestor to have contributed a Y-chromosome to all living men.
Therefore, because males and females have different survival rates, it is easy to see how the mitochondrial Eve and the Y-chromosome Adam might not have lived anywhere near each other in either time or history. Bob and Betsy had lots of children together and a big family, but Betsy’s mitochondrial line could die while Bob’s Y-chromosome line was still going strong.
It is similar to a surname dying out even though the family still has lots of descendants.
This is very different than being the human couple through whom came the first rebellion from a state of moral awareness of divine law. First of all, the line isn’t carried just on the male or female line. Secondly, the Fall isn’t kicked forward if someone–like, say, Noah–were to be the most recent relative shared by all humanity. Even if that were to happen, the Fall is still on the moral and spiritual Adam and Eve.
