What Happened at Babel?

According to Dr. Robert W. Carter, in

Adam, Eve and Noah vs Modern Genetics

see: http://creation.com/noah-and-genetics

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The Tower of Babel and genetics

The Tower of Babel has been a favorite bedtime story for generations. But is it more than a fairy tale? Could it be possible that there is evidence to back up this tale of rebellion and judgment? Like the Creation and Flood accounts, there are only a couple of verses that apply to our model of genetics. But, like the others, these verses are as profound as they are simple.

“Now the whole earth had one language and one speech.” Gen 11:1

“And they said, ‘Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower whose top is in the heavens; let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth.’” Gen 11:4

It sounds like they were in a homogenous culture, but what do people in that situation do? Would you expect them to mix freely? Were language or cultural barriers present that would have prevented the sons of Shem from marrying the daughters of Japheth? Would the daughters of Ham be expected to marry freely with the sons of any of the three men? Note in Gen 11:4 that they knew about the potential for spreading out and getting separated from one another and intentionally did the opposite! However, this was against the express command of God, who had ordered them to spread out (to populate the earth). So, He took matters into His own hands.

“’Come, let Us go down and confuse their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.’ So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they ceased building the city.” Gen 11:7–8

There are tremendous implications that come from the Babel account. First it explains the amazing cultural connectivity of ancient peoples—like pyramid building, common flood legends, and ancient, non-Christian genealogies that link people back to biblical figures (e.g., many of the royal houses of pagan northern Europe go back to Japheth, the son of Noah⁹ ).

The dramatic rise in world population over the past several decades is a well known fact. From a biblical perspective, the current human population easily fits into the standard model of population growth using very conservative parameters.¹⁰ In fact, starting with 6 people and doubling the population every 150 years more than accounts for the current human population (a growth rate of less than 0.5% per year!). Population size would have increased quickly given the rate at which the post-Flood population reestablished agriculture, animal husbandry, industry and civilization. So we must ask the question, “Why are there so few people in the world today?” The answer is that the world is young and we have not been here many thousands of years.

When did the dispersion occur? Our best clue about the timing of the event comes from Genesis 10:25. In referencing the 5th generation descendent of Shem, a man named Peleg, it says, “in his days the earth was divided.” To what is this referring? Many people believe this is referring to a division of the landmasses (plate tectonics). This may be true, but it would require a huge amount of geologic activity after the Flood, and this would have occurred in historical times with no record of the events. The interpretation I favor is that this passage is referring to the division of people at Babel. Just a few verses after the Peleg reference, the section is summed up with another reference to the division at Babel. This fits both the context and the science. In context, Peleg was closely associated with Babel.

How large was the population at the time? We would expect rapid population growth, but we cannot know exactly. There are 16 named sons born to the three brothers, Shem, Ham and Japheth. If we assume about the same number of daughters, Noah had on the order of 30 grandchildren. At that rate of growth, there would have been about 150 children in Salah’s generation, about 750 in Eber’s generation, and about 3,750 in Peleg’s generation. Of course, these generations overlap, etc., so let’s say there were between 1,000 and 10,000 people alive at the time of Babel. This fits nicely with the available data. It is a high rate of growth, but wars and disease had yet to start taking their toll.

There is one more verse in this section that we need to discuss:

“These were the families of the sons of Noah, according to their generations, in their nations; and from these the nations were divided on the earth after the flood.” Gen 10:32

At Babel, God did not separate the nations according to language. He used language to separate them according to paternal (male) ancestry! This has monumental significance and is the key to understanding human genetic history.

Do you see the implication in this simple verse? At Babel, God did not separate the nations according to language. He used language to separate them according to paternal (male) ancestry! This has monumental significance and is the key to understanding human genetic history. Paternal sorting would lead to specific Y chromosome lineages in different geographical locations. Since males and females from the three main families should have been freely intermixing prior to this, it also leads to a mixing of the mitochondrial lines. It is as if God put all the people into a giant spreadsheet and hit a button called “Sort According to Father.” He then took that list and used it to divide up and separate the nations.

We already saw that Y chromosomes have little variation among them. We now add the fact that this little bit of variation is almost always geographically specific. That is, after the nations were separated according to Y chromosome, mutations occurred in the various lines. Since the lines were sent to specific geographical areas, the mutations are geographically specific. The current distribution of Y chromosome lines is a tremendous confirmation of the biblical model.

Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) adds another confirmation. We have already learned that there are three main lineages of mtDNA. We now add the fact that these three lineages are more or less randomly distributed across the world. Also, the various mutations within each of the three main families of mtDNA are geographically specific as well.¹¹ In other words, as the three mixed mitochondrial lines were carried along with the Y chromosome dispersal, each line in each area began to pick up new mutations, just like we would predict.