Do we all come from one man?

[Mal !]

Q. All mankind descended from Adam, or in fact Noah's family. How did they change so radically into completely different colour and appearances? How did they travel from the Middle East to places like China, Iceland and Australia in a relatively short time?

[ApologiaPhoenix]

Q. All mankind descended from Adam, or in fact Noah's family. How did they change so radically into completely different colour and appearances? How did they travel from the Middle East to places like China, Iceland and Australia in a relatively short time?

Hiya Mal. Thanks for your question.

First off, I'm OEC, so I don't believe that it was a short amount of time. In fact, I'd say they could have had tens of thousands of years to make that journey as the genealogies of Genesis are not complete, nor are they meant to be. Harrison has info on this in his work "Old Testament Times."

As for the changes, I would say these are simply facets of microevolution. This is no damage to the Christian faith as we all know microevolution happens. Darwin's finches did have changes amongst themselves, yet all were finches.

Thus, give humans more time than YEC does and allow for some changes unlike the view that Darwin faced, I think it was Linnaeus that he was refuting who said that species are fixed, and there really is no problem.

Hope this helps!

[Mal !]

Yes thanks Nick,
I have to write a reply to this question in a Christian magazine, so i passed the buck lol. I'm YEC, but recognise that the earth could be older than 6000 years because of the possible gaps in genealogies, but not millions of years.

I"m sure that at the Tower of Babel when God changed the languages, the gene pools were isolated by the languages and physical difference became exaggerated. We know that people did travel and explore, so it need not have taken them very long to spread out over the earth.

Thanks again for your reply.