Question one:

Where do all the different races and skin colours come from, surely Adam & Eve were of just one race?

Michael's response...

The first question in there is what race were Adam & Eve, it's very unlikey they were white...

There has recently been a massive Human Genome Project which looked to trace our ancestry to different continents. What they actually found was that there is no such thing as race. If you go back in time you find that we’re all descended from either one woman or just a small group of women who lived in Africa. That means the chances are Eve was black (although we’re not entirely sure).

What is even more interesting is that scientists were surprised to find genetic variation in every human being is much less than we thought it was. We are over 99% the same as each other – so less than a one percent variation which accounts for our different eye shape, colour of hair and nose shape etc.  The rest of our genetic make up is the same.

On this same topic, people often ask ‘who did the first human beings marry?’ We understand that genetically it’s not a good idea for brothers and sisters to marry but if there was just a small group, how else did the population grow? And how did it not all go horribly wrong?

There is a command in the Bible not to interbreed and this comes just before the population hit seven generations. This is because for the first six generations it was possible for brothers and sisters to marry and have children without difficulties. After the seventh generation there would have been problems which is why we don’t allow interbreeding today.