Sorry Ha Ha, the historical record is replete with global folklore that all point to a global flood; even the experts in the field of dendrochronology recognize that it is notoriously unreliable, and radiocarbon dating is often calibrated using dendrochronology; moreover, radiocarbon dating does not take into account what the C14 to C12 ratio would have been before a global flood (for instance, what would the C14 to C12 ratio have been if the organic matter buried under the earth, estimated to be 175 times as large as the organic matter in our current biosphere, was deposited there by a global flood?); and finally, the paper Wiley posted acknowledges that there are serious problems with the mtDNA clock. Indeed, the authors of the paper Wiley cited as evidence against the Noahitic flood admit that previous dating estimates using mtDNA were too old by up to four fold! But the Evos are also encountering other problems with the mtDNA clock. For instance, scientists have discovered that mtDNA mutates at a rate up to 20 times faster than previously thought. Thus, according to the faster mtDNA mutation rates, the date of our most recent common ancestor (MRCA) would have to be reduced from 133,000 years ago to around 6,500 years ago! Of course, the Evos can’t have that, as the following makes clear:
“The rate and pattern of sequence substitutions in the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) control region (CR) is of central importance to studies of human evolution and to forensic identity testing. Here, we report a direct measurement of the intergenerational substitution rate in the human CR. We compared DNA sequences of two CR hypervariable segments from close maternal relatives, from 134 independent mtDNA lineages spanning 327 generational events. Ten substitutions were observed, resulting in an empirical rate of 1/33 generations, or 2.5/site/Myr. This is roughly twenty-fold higher than estimates derived from phylogenetic analyses. This disparity cannot be accounted for simply by substitutions at mutational hot spots, suggesting additional factors that produce the discrepancy between very near-term and long-term apparent rates of sequence divergence. The data also indicate that extremely rapid segregation of CR sequence variants between generations is common in humans, with a very small mtDNA bottleneck. These results have implications for forensic applications and studies of human evolution.
The observed substitution rate reported here is very high compared to rates inferred from evolutionary studies. A wide range of CR substitution rates have been derived from phylogenetic studies, spanning roughly 0.025-0.26/site/Myr, including confidence intervals. A study yielding one of the faster estimates gave the substitution rate of the CR hypervariable regions as 0.118 +- 0.031/site/Myr. Assuming a generation time of 20 years, this corresponds to ~1/600 generations and an age for the mtDNA MRCA of 133,000 y.a. Thus, our observation of the substitution rate, 2.5/site/Myr, is roughly 20-fold higher than would be predicted from phylogenetic analyses. Using our empirical rate to calibrate the mtDNA molecular clock would result in an age of the mtDNA MRCA of only ~6,500 y.a., clearly incompatible with the known age of modern humans. Even acknowledging that the MRCA of mtDNA may be younger than the MRCA of modern humans, it remains implausible to explain the known geographic distribution of mtDNA sequence variation by human migration that occurred only in the last ~6,500 years.”
See #431. I think I feel some more chortling coming on! LOL