I thought I would add my view on Swamidass. This was precipitated by a recent email discussion between me and Dick Fischer, who originally proposed a view like Swamidass’s So, here it is:
What about Genealogical Adam?
Josh Swamidass has proposed that Adam is our ancestor but we don’t necessarily have any genetic contribution from Adam. That is normal genealogy. We all have lots of ancestors with whom we are not genetically descended from. It just turned out we didn’t get any of their DNA. But I find Swamidass’ view to be incredibly dangerous, raising the problem that some people alive today might not have the image of God because they are not descended from this 12,000 year old Adam. Swamidass says:
Adam might be placed in the Gulf Oasis at 12,000 years ago,78 while keeping all the essential details of the model fixed. Placing him this far back would make universal ancestry even more certain. Only a population that is genealogically isolated for thousands of years would prevent universal ancestors, and ** genealogical isolation of this type is unobservable .* Consequently, it is likely in this model, under plausible assumptions, that we could all have descended from a particular couple. Of course, whether this possibility is important theologically cannot be answered by science."Josh Swamidass, “The overlooked science of Genealogical Ancestry,” PSCF, 70:1(2018), p. 32
First, I find Swamidass’s article in the PSCF to be well, cowardly. I have never put this kind of statement in any article I have ever written.
**"In this article, I neither disclose, defend, nor assert my personal beliefs. Josh Swamidass, "The overlooked science of Genealogical Ancestry," PSCF, 70:1(2018), p.20
He protects himself from criticism by basically saying the ideas presented here are not mine. What a crock! Man up and accept responsibility for what one writes and publishes.
The problem with this is that there have been some populations that have been cut off from the rest of humanity and genetically isolated for a long time. Groups like the Khoisan, the Tahitians, the Tasmanians and the Highlanders of New Guinea. These populations couldn’t have received a Eurasian/African ancestor, descended from this ‘Adam’ because there was no travel, say to Tasmania from 12,000 BC to the 1700s when Tasman’s expedition found them. Being descended from Adam is equally unobservable–His theory becomes an act of faith and support for his idea is equally an act of faith. This is the ultimate view that the image of God makes zero difference to the behavior of a hominid Native American who were knapping the best stone tools in the world, worshipping their gods, fishing, hunting etc and who didn’t do anything different after a Eurasian came to give them all the image of God. Archaeologically ridiculous. This view would imply that modern Native Americans were not image carriers until their Eurasian conquerors came to give them this gift. Put in these terms, the view becomes, well, as bad as the view some YECs have about the abilities of various sons of Noah. And the later views are called racist.
Yes Swamidass has a model that shows it is possible to get a descendant of Adam around the world. A model is not reality and should NEVER be confused with reality. A model assumes that populations are in communication. If they are not in communication, no matter how many models one has, the model doesn’t match reality–no descendant got there. The coronavirus doctors had a model of the disease that said 200,000 would die. Turns out that model is wrong as well. Models are not reality. They only represent what might be IF the assumptions of the model are met.
*The claims that isolation is unobservable. It isn’t. Genes from the Middle East should exist in every single population under his model. For more isolated populations, they would be later inclusions into the human family, and because of that, there would not be time for these genes to be lost to the population. Populations like the one below show no signs of interbreeding with the rest of the world.
" Many of the tribes of South America show strong signs of genetic drift, an indication that their populations have bred in isolation for many thousands of years. Ruiz-Linares estimates from a DNA signature found in two tribes, the Ticuna of the upper Amazon and the Wayuu, on the north coast of Colombia, that they have been genetically isolated for some 7,000 to 8,000 years. " Nicholas Wade, Before the Dawn, (New York: The Penguin Press, 2006), p.117-118
This won’t affect Swamidass or his believers at all. To believe that a descendant of his 12,000 year old Adam, raced to the New World across the land bridge and then down to South America in 4000 years, is equivalent to believing kangaroos got off the ark and hopped to Australia quickly. The whole theory is based on his belief that this had to happen but not upon evidence.
He claims isolation is unobservable. But so is descent from his Adam unobservable! He has no evidence for his view and claims the reason his opponents are wrong is that isolation upon which they depend is unobservable. As shown above, isolation isn’t unobservable. Here are more cases of isolation.
" It seems that the Keppel islanders were more or less isolated for some 5000 years. A small population of about eighty-five people exploited their limited territory of 20 square kilometres, including about 38 kilometres of coastline: there would have been about two people to each kilometre of coast, a similar population density to that found among other coastal groups, such as the Bentinck islanders or the Anbara of Arnhem Land. Over the centuries the language and physical characteristics of the Keppel Island people changed as a result of evolution in a small, isolated community, and their material culture became almost as simple and limited in range as that of the Tasmanian Aborigines " ~ Josephine Flood, "The Archeology of the Dreamtime, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), p. 191
" The Keppel Islands now lie 13 kilometres from the mainland, but the journey to the island could be made in two legs: 4.5 kilometres to Pelican Island and then 8.5 kilometres to South Keppel. The islanders were rather isolated because of this distance from the mainland, and the effects of isolation can be seen in their language, physical appearance and material culture. Their language was unintelligible to the mainlanders, and they spoke so quickly that mainland Aborigines said they ‘yabbered like crows’. Physically, the Keppel islanders were also distinctive. The skulls studied show a high percentage of ‘auditory exostoses’, that is, bony, protruding growths in the region of the ear, which may be the result of inbreeding through isolation.
"Keppel Islander’s material culture was also different from that of the mainland. They had no boomerangs, shields or ground-edge axes, and only one type of club, but they possessed other items apparently absent from the adjacent coast such as necklaces made of shell and of ‘bits of red toadstool’, fish-hooks (made of coconut or turtle shell) and stone drills for manufacturing the hooks. " ~ Josephine Flood, "The Archeology of the Dreamtime, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), p. 190-191
Even today North Sentinel Island people are totally isolated from the outside world because of their behavior.
" But the war-like Sentinelese of the tiny North Sentinel Island have fiercely resisted any contact with the outside world.
An attempt to meet them in April 1974 ended when the Sentinelese showered an approaching boat with arrows and butchered a pig left behind by scientists. Lalji Singh, director of India’s Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, said yesterday: "The Sentinelese are the only pre-Neolithic tribe left in the world where no contact has been made. You have to reach them by boat but it is risky because you can’t run away by boat. And you can’t take other tribespeople to explain to them because they speak an entirely different language. " The Guardian, May 12, 2001, page 18
Do they not have the image of God? To make that claim is utterly anti-christian.Do they really need Eurasians to interbreed with them in order to gain the image of God? REALLY?
But the Tasmanians experienced the second longest isolation–and it started at the time Swamidass claims his Adam lived. and ended in 1642
" Tasmanian history is thus a study of human isolation unprecedented except in science fiction-namely, complete isolation from all other humans for 12,000 years. " Jared Diamond, “The Evolution of Guns and Germs,” in Evolution: Society, Science and the Universe, ed by A. C. Fabian, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 60
So Tasmanians didn’t have the image of God until after 1642 when they mated with their European conquerors? Yeah, that is an appealing position to take.
Further, this same thing goes for the New Guinea Highlands, which were isolated from the rest of the world until 1930.
" Other anthropological peculiarities of Oceania include features like the extraordinarily rich linguistic diversity especially of New Guinea with about 1,000 often very distinct languages, the independent and early development of agriculture in the highlands of New Guinea about 10,000 years ago, or the long-term isolation of the entire region from the outside world, which lasted as long as until the 1930s for most of the interior of New Guinea. " Manfred Kayser, “The Human Genetic History of Oceania: Near and Remote Views of Dispersal” Current Biology Volume 20, Issue 4, 23 February 2010, Pages R194-R201 The Human Genetic History of Oceania: Near and Remote Views of Dispersal - ScienceDirect
Papua New Guinea highlands were first populated about 50,000 years ago. source so they might have been isolated as long as 30,000 years or more until 1930. MtDNA says lineages have been separated for that long:
" Most lineages in Australia and New Guinea do not show a relationship indicative of co-colonization or gene flow, but two clades on branch 1, both of three sequences, contain sequences from both Australia and New Guinea (Fig. 2, marked “1c” and “1d”). These groups of sequences last shared common ancestors approximately 46,000+/-9000 (“1c”) and 31,000+/-8000 (“1d”) years ago. Interestingly, in both cases the New Guinean sequences derive from individuals sampled from the highland areas . " Max Ingman and Ulf Gyllensten, " Mitochondrial Genome Variation and Evolutionary History of Australian and New Guinean Aborigines, Genome Research, 2003, https://genome.cshlp.org/content/13/7/1600.full.pdf?pagewanted=all
To conclude, there is no doubt that this data will make no difference to belief in Swamidass’ theory (which really is the same as one proposed by Dick Fischer years ago), but the Swamidiss model is so full of holes that one can only compare it to swiss cheese