Back to Eve: Literally [~6,500 years]

And Adam called his wife's name Eve; because she was the mother of all living.
Genesis 3:20

"Scientists Sanford and Carter have also conducted independent study into human mtDNA variation in which they statistically analyzed over 800 different sequences, and reconstructed a very close approximation of Eve’s original mitochondrial genome.

They found that “the average human being is only about 22 mutations removed from the Eve sequence although some individuals are as much as 100 mutations removed from Eve”.

The most recent empirical estimate of the mutation rate in human mitochondria is about 0.5 per generation.
Based on this rate, even for the most mutated mitochondrial sequences, Sanford and Carter determined that “it would only require 200 generations (less than 6,000 years) to accumulate 100 mutations”.

Surprisingly, evolutionists were actually the first to note these Biblically supportive time frames.
Buried within a secular research paper in 1997, the same trends recently observed regarding human mtDNA mutation rates were first reported, but received little attention in the evolutionary community.
The authors of the paper state: “Using our empirical rate to calibrate the mtDNA molecular clock would result in an age of the mtDNA MRCA [most recent common ancestor or the first human woman] of only ~6,500 years.”

One year later, another secular researcher remarked about this study stating: “Regardless of the cause, evolutionists are most concerned about the effect of a faster mutation rate. For example, researchers have calculated that ‘mitochondrial Eve’—the woman whose mtDNA was ancestral to that in all living people—lived 100,000 to 200,000 years ago in Africa. Using the new clock, she would be a mere 6000 years old.”

The article continues to note that the new findings of faster mutation rates that point to mitochondrial Eve about 6,000 years ago, have even contributed to the development of new mtDNA research guidelines used in forensic investigations adopted by the FBI.

Now, over 17 years later, and using even more mtDNA data, Jeanson, Carter, and Sanford are spectacularly confirming this previous unheralded discovery."
CMI