Scientists say ‘Eve’ data might show recent origin

There has been much debate on the evidence from mitochondrial DNA pointing to a ‘mother of all’.
Evolutionists have hastened to point out that they do not mean that she was the only woman alive,
just that these hypothetical other women made no contribution to our mitochondrial DNA.

Creationists have countered that the evidence is nonetheless exactly consistent with a real, literal
Eve, also that it at least confirms the essential genetic relatedness of all modern humans, as
descended from one small original population.

However, evolutionists have said that the genetic evidence shows she lived some 70,000 to 800,000
years ago, thus excluding the biblical explanation. One of the assumptions used in arriving at such
dates is the rate at which this mitochondrial DNA mutates.

However, recent research on living people indicates that these mutation rates may in fact be about
20 times higher. This means, according to a recent scientific paper, that Eve could have ‘lived about
6,500 years ago—a figure clearly incompatible with current [evolutionary] theories of human
origins’.

Trends in Ecology and Evolution 12(11):422–423, November 1997.

Recent assertions that Neandertals were a different species were also made on the basis of
mitochondrial DNA; this discovery makes those claims seem shaky, too.