Noah’s Ark (2 of 2)

(Continued from yesterday)

4. What language did Noah speak then?
• Gen 11:1 Now the whole earth used the same language and the same words.
• Gen 11:6-7 The LORD said, “Behold, they are one people, and they all have the same language. And this is what they began to do, and now nothing which they purpose to do will be impossible for them. Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, so that they will not understand one another’s speech.”
The Bible did not say. We only know that the whole earth used the same language until the tower of Babel. When man became proud and want to be independent of God, He confused their language so they will not understand each other. Presumably the first language is close to Middle Eastern languages derived from it, but we just can’t be sure.

5. How did man change skin color?
Some feel simplistically that Shem was brown-skinned, Ham was dark-skinned, and Japheth was fair-skinned. But skin color is actually determined by the amount of the pigment melanin in the skin, which in turn is controlled by genes. Genes come in pairs of pairs. Let’s use the letters A, a, B, b to code the genes that produce melanin, with capital letters A, B representing dominant genes (dark color), and small letters a, b recessive genes (light color). A person carrying AABB genes (all dominant) will have very dark skin, while a person carrying aabb genes (all recessive) will have very light skin.

During reproduction one pair is contributed by each parent. If a person with AABB mates with a person with aabb and they produce a child, their offspring would have AaBb genes for medium or brown skin. If two people with AaBb genes got married and reproduced, their children’s genes could have different A, a, B, b combinations for a range of skin colors. So although all people came from Noah’s three sons, they could have a wide diversity of skin colors.