Universal descent, or at least the beginnings of it, but not sole descent. The two verses from this section most often used to indicate sole descent are, in my view, poorly translated and mis-interpreted. I figure that you agree with me on this issue, but to make it plain I’d like to talk about those two verses a bit…
In chapter nine, verse nineteen the King James Version reads “of these was the whole earth overspread.” This is speaking of the descendants of the three sons of Noah. Some versions say that of these three was the whole earth “populated.” Both of those are terrible translations of the Hebrew word na-pe-sah (Strong’s 5310 root of naphats ). Naphats means “sunder, scatter, dash in pieces, or disperse.”
Some versions do translate it “dispersed”, which is at least within the allowable meaning of the root word. It does not mean populating or peopling. There are other words which could have been used and have been used to describe populating the land. “Filling” could have been used, as it is used so other many other places in Genesis to describe population growth. That this word, or any of the others, was not used here demonstrates that these verses are not describing a situation where Noah’s family comprises 100% of the population on earth.
Rather I think the text indicates, both here and as we read on in Genesis, that the descendants of Noah became the natural nobility of the surrounding peoples. They had all of the advantages mentioned previously concerning the sons of Adam, but were less likely to be so completely entangled in sin. Whereas the prior Adamic peoples were mostly dominated by surrounding tribes, the descendants of Noah behaved more wisely.
As they lived their lives it would only be natural that they accumulated servants and hangers-on. Abraham, as a private citizen, was so powerful that the King of Gerar felt compelled to establish a peace treaty with him. Isaac grew even more powerful, so that the leaders of Gerar asked him to depart because his household was stronger than all of them put together!
You may recall that Abraham was able to raise three hundred and eighteen fighting men on short notice, almost all from his own household. These were not his sons or his family, that is just how many people attached themselves to him. These were not unmotivated slaves. These men enthusiastically identified with the house of Abraham. They defeated the armies of several city states! In the same way Esau gathered four hundred men with him for the showdown with Jacob.
If this was the drawing power of Abraham, and of Isaac, and even of Esau, imagine the force of attraction the nearer descendants of Noah had on the primitives around them. By the time of Abraham, the knowledge of how to farm and the domestication of livestock were more widely disseminated. Not so in the day of these people. Can you imagine being a Hunter-Gatherer coming into contact with people who had herds of “prey” animals willingly following along with them? People who, instead of foraging for berries, made all manner of fruits and vegetables rise up out of the ground wherever they lived.
For those who met the near descendants of Noah this must have seemed like an impartation of sacred knowledge which produced a better life. Perhaps something thing like this happened earlier when the sons of Adam made contact with nearby peoples. The ancient inhabitants of Sumer said that they had been taught civilization “by the gods”.
An accurate description of this situation would be to say, as it does in the King James translation of verse 10:32, “by these were the nations divided.” This is not to say that every person in all of those nations was a direct descendant of the patriarch which formed that nation. Rather, the peoples were divided up into nations by these men. These men became the founders of those nations in the sense that their households- those of their blood and otherwise- were forged into those nations.