Evolution and the Single-Pair Bottleneck

• A. C. Skow

  Author

The flood narrative in Genesis records that most terrestrial animals boarded the ark as single breeding pairs, with a smaller set of clean animals boarding in sevens. Read literally, this places nearly every living terrestrial lineage through a founding event of one diploid pair roughly 4,500 years ago, followed by dispersal from a single region, the mountains of Ararat in the Middle East, in what is now Turkey. This paper evaluates that scenario against two well established bodies of population genetics: the genetics of small and inbred populations, and the theory of founder effects during range expansion. An effective size of about two produces severe and predictable consequences, rising inbreeding, loss of genetic variation, and a risk of mutational meltdown. A single geographic origin further predicts a radial decline of genetic diversity away from the point of release and a nested, serial founder structure centered on the mountains of Ararat. The observed distribution of terrestrial diversity does not show this pattern; it shows deep, geographically structured radiations and coalescence times that greatly exceed a few thousand years. I close by stating two falsifiable challenges that a literal ark model must meet: to demonstrate the founder effect and inbreeding signatures of a recent single pair bottleneck, and to demonstrate the expected radiation outward from the region where the ark is said to have come to rest.

1. A. C. Skow

   Andrew Skow is an independent researcher specializing in molecular nanotechnology, genetics, and cryopreservation. His research interests center on the intersection of molecular science and emerging biomedical technologies, particularly approaches that may improve the preservation, protection, and restoration of complex biological systems.

   Skow’s work explores how advances in nanotechnology and molecular engineering can be applied to challenges in genetics, tissue preservation, organ banking, and long term biological storage. His research is particularly focused on the potential for nanoscale technologies to overcome limitations in conventional cryopreservation and contribute to the development of more effective methods for preserving viable cells, tissues, and organs.

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