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Question: Where did the different races come from?
Answer: The entire human race originated with Eve. Acts 17:26 says, "And He made from one, every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times, and the boundaries of their habitation."
It's interesting that this has been proven through analysis of mitochondrial DNA.
Allan Wilson and Mark Stoneking of the University of California at Berkeley and Rebecca Cann of the University of Hawaii conducted research in 1987 which indicates that all people living today came from one woman. They collected mitochondrial DNA, which is only passed down through the mother, from 147 women representing five broad geographical regions around the world. The researchers concluded that the entire human race came from one woman.
However, this still doesn't answer the question about the different races. After the world was destroyed through the flood, the world's population started over again through Noah's family. No, the different races did not come from Shem, Ham, and Japheth either. God changed the races at the Tower of Babel.
Genesis 11:1 tells us the whole earth spoke the same language at that time. God supernaturally confused the languages at the tower of Babel and scattered them to different geographic regions around the earth. "Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of the whole earth; and from there the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of the whole earth" (Gen. 11:9). Before the modern days of rapid travel, we know that different races were located in various parts of the world.
Since the different languages began at the tower of Babel, how did the people with the same languages find each other? It is not unreasonable to assume that when God miraculously changed their speech, He also changed their races at the same time. The people grouped together according to their appearances and languages, and then migrated to their various countries.
Of course, this is only speculation because the Bible is silent when it comes to the origin of races. However, we do know that everyone on earth descended from one woman, the various races had to come into being sometime after the flood, the various languages had their origin at the Tower of Babel, and the different people-groups were scattered over the earth after God changed the languages.
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