How long has mankind been on this Earth?

What does genetic science tell us?

Dr. Jeffrey P. Thompkins is with The Institute for Creation Research.

According to his biography, he  “earned a master’s degree in plant science in 1990 from the University of Idaho, where he performed research in plant hormones.  He received his Ph.D. in genetics from Clemson University in 1996. While at Clemson, he worked as a research technician in a plant breeding/genetics program, with a research focus in the area of quantitative and physiological genetics in soybean.

After receiving his Ph.D., he worked at a genomics institute and became a faculty member in the Department of Genetics and Biochemistry at Clemson.

He had become a Christian as an undergraduate at Washington State University in 1982, with a goal to eventually work as a scientist and author in the creation science field.

In 2009, Dr. Tomkins joined the Institute for Creation Research as Research Associate. He was appointed Director of Life Sciences in 2016 and Director of Research in 2020.

He is the primary author of The Design and Complexity of the Cell and a contributor to Guide to Creation Basics and Creation Basics & Beyond.

In a report published in 2019, Tomkins said the Bible teaches that the global Flood in Genesis occurred about 4,500 years ago. Then the earth was repopulated by Noah and his three sons. According to Biblical genealogies, man was created by God about 6,000 years ago.

Secularist scientists say man evolved from some ape-like creature between 100,000 to 200,000 years ago. Even some “creation scientists” hold to the details of that theory.

Thompkins wrote, “So we should find genetic signatures of this timeline in human DNA.”

That’s not the case, according to a recent study using extensive newly available high quality DNA sequence data for the human Y-chromosome that spectacularly confirms the earlier research and solidifies the Bible’s history of modern human origins.

Humanity began 6,000 years ago with Adam and Eve. But there was a genetic bottleneck 4,500 years ago when the DNA from Noah’s three sons and their wives was used to repopulate the earth. Thompkins wrote, “To help resolve the controversy, two scientists, one a molecular biologist and the other a statistician, downloaded newly available DNA sequence for the Y-chromosome that was more comprehensive and covered much longer contiguous DNA regions that had not existed previously.”

 The Y-chromosome is particularly useful in studying human pedigrees and mutations because it has no chromosomal counterpart in the human genome with which to exchange genetic information in a process called recombination. When sperm and egg cells are formed in a person, the 22 autosome pairs (one derived from the father and one from the mother) will exchange DNA segments with each other.

Because this does not occur with the Y-chromosome, it is more genetically stable and thus very useful in genetic clock studies.

Tompkins wrote, “In this current study, the authors note that if humans have actually been around for several hundred thousand years or more, they should have accumulated 8 to 59 times the amount of mutations that we currently observe in Y-chromosome DNA sequence.

However, the researchers in this current study empirically demonstrate that we only observe about 4,500 years of mutation accumulation in the paternal ancestry contained in the record of the human Y chromosome.”

Nathaniel Jeanson, who has a PhD in cell and developmental biology from Harvard University, was the lead scientist in this study.

Jeanson wrote, “This study now adds an independent line of evidence to the genetic case for young-earth creation. Previous studies looking at DNA inherited through females reflected the recent origin of humanity at creation and then through Noah’s son’s wives at the Flood. This new study now shows that DNA inherited through males reflects the same timescale.”

Even Richard Dawkins, perhaps the most famous atheist in the world, admits that mankind sprang from one man and one woman.

Jeanson wote, “I’m anxious to see how the evolutionists try to dismiss this second, independent line of genetic evidence for the young-earth timescale.

Not only do they have to explain why the data contradict evolution, they have to also explain why the data are such a tight match with the predictions of Biblical creation. And they have to do it both for DNA inherited through females, and now also for DNA inherited through males.

“Indeed, these new results are, not only a sound dismissal of evolutionary speculation, but a huge confirmation for the recent origins of mankind as revealed in the literal history of the Bible given in Genesis.”

Look around. Someone designed this world. It is way too complex to have happened by chance. The answer is the God of the Bible is the Creator. He gave us the story of the origin of man and the chronology of human history in the Old Testament. God can’t lie.

And the more we know about genuine science, the more confirmation we have that the Bible is the Word of God.