Modern genetics has produced a result that sits remarkably close to the opening chapters of Genesis.

Studies of mitochondrial DNA — inherited only from the mother — trace every living person back to a single common maternal ancestor. Researchers named her Mitochondrial Eve. The parallel work on the Y chromosome, passed only from father to son, traces every living man back to a single common paternal ancestor, named Y-chromosomal Adam.

Every human being alive descends from one woman on the maternal line and one man on the paternal line.

The second finding is arguably more striking. Human genetic diversity is unexpectedly low — far lower than a species of eight billion individuals should exhibit. Compare humans to almost any other widespread species and we are strikingly uniform. Two people from opposite sides of the planet are genetically closer than two chimpanzees from neighbouring forests.

The explanation geneticists give for this is a population bottleneck — an event in which the human population was reduced to a very small group, from which everyone since has descended. When a population passes through a narrow point like that, the genetic variation carried forward is limited to whatever those few individuals happened to possess. Everything else is lost permanently.

That is what our genome looks like. A species that came through a bottleneck and repopulated from a handful of survivors.

It is worth noting what that description matches. Flood accounts preserved across ancient cultures worldwide describe exactly this: humanity reduced to a small family group, and the earth repopulated from them. The genetic record and those historical accounts are pointing at the same event.

There is a third alignment, in the chemistry. The human body is built from oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium and phosphorus — and these are the same elements found in the earth's crust. We are made of the ground we walk on.

Genesis 2:7 records that the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground.

One maternal ancestor. One paternal ancestor. A population bottleneck consistent with a global flood. And a body composed of the same elements as the dust of the earth.

The DNA double helix. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.