Who Are The Two Forgotten Tribes?

The New York Times has an article from Nicholas Wade, reporting the geographic origins for our species:

Locations for the Garden of Eden have been offered many times before, but seldom in the somewhat inhospitable borderland where Angola and Namibia meet.

A new genetic survey of people in Africa, the largest of its kind, suggests, however, that the region in southwest Africa seems, on the present evidence, to be the origin of modern humans. The authors have also identified some 14 ancestral populations.

This is amazingly captivating information. As a Baha’i, I continue to find the scientific evidence on the origins of the human family to be astounding. The more we learn about the scientific story of how we came to be, the more the scientific facts line up (more-or-less) with the deep folklore of our cultures.

I’m just making the wild PERSONAL connection between the researchers’ claim of 14 separate populations that set out across the globe, and the similarity to the history of the twelve tribes of Israel. No, I don’t intend to connect the 14 populations and the 12 tribes literally, just symbolically.

But isn’t it interesting how the numbers are so similar? Why not five ancestral populaitons? Or 57 ancestral populations? This is the part that fascinates me.