A 1987 article in the journal Nature suggested the existence of a single ancient woman from whom all modern humans inherited mitochondrial genetic material. Three scientists (Rebecca Cann, Mark Stoneking, and Allan C. Wilson) announced that they had “proven” that all modern human beings can trace their ancestry back to a single woman who lived 200,000 years ago in Africa. This one woman was nicknamed “Eve”

Almost immediately, evolutionists, aware of the way in which the mitochondrial Eve discovery could be seen to have vindicated the Bible, began to counter the scientific discovery by saying that their ‘Eve’ lived far too long ago to be the biblical Eve.

Evolutionists have guessed at when their mitochondrial Eve lived via the idea of the 'molecular clock'—i.e., that there is a more or less fixed rate of mutational substitutions per year in any population.

However, a number of recent studies on living populations have indeed come up with results which indicate a much higher rate of mutation in human mtDNA.

Studies today go still further about Eve’s date, and say that using the new clock, she would be a mere 6000 years old. A team of scientists recently stated that evolutionary studies led them to expect about one mutation in 600 generations ... they were “stunned” to find 10 base-pair changes, which gave them a rate of one mutation every 40 generations.

Of course, evolutionists have tried to evade the force of these results by countering that the high mutation rate only occurs in certain stretches of DNA called ‘hot spots’ and/or that the high (observed) rate causes back mutations which ‘erase’ the effects of this high rate. Therefore, conveniently, the rate is assumed to be high over a short time span, but effectively low over a long time span.

However, this is special pleading to get out of a difficulty, and the burden of proof is on evolutionists to sustain the vast ages for ‘Eve’ in the face of these documented, modern-day mutation rates.

These are indeed encouraging results. In summary:

• The mitochondrial Eve findings are in line with biblically-based expectations; while not proving the biblical Eve, they are consistent with her reality, and were not predicted by evolutionary theory.
   
• The dates assigned to mitochondrial Eve were said by evolutionists to rule out the biblical Eve. But these dates were based upon ‘molecular clock’ assumptions, which were calibrated by evolutionary beliefs about when certain evolutionary events occurred, supposedly millions of years ago.
   
• When these assumed rates were checked out against the real world, preliminary results indicate that the mitochondrial ‘molecular clock’ is ticking at a much faster rate than evolutionists believed possible. If correct, it means that mitochondrial Eve lived 6,000 to 6,500 years ago, right in the ballpark for the true ‘mother of all living’ (Genesis 3:20).

To read more details and learn about this important topic we invite you to visit: http://en.wikipedia.org:80/wiki/Mitochondrial_Eve. The "Wikipedia" article has a decidedly "World View" slant to it's contents, but it does provide you with an excellent starting point to investigate further on your own.

Joseph R. Chambers