Posted on 01/14/2020 7:22:36 AM PST by Quality_Not_Quantity
Today it's a desert. Two hundred thousand years ago, perhaps it was home.
The San people of southern Africa carry one of the oldest maternal DNA lineages on Earth. Now, researchers think they know the precise place our earliest maternal ancestor called home. (Image credit: Shutterstock) Two hundred thousand years ago, the earliest shared ancestors of every living human on Earth rested their feet at a verdant oasis in the middle of Africa's Kalahari Desert.
Here, in a patchwork of now-extinct lakes, forests and grasslands known as the Makgadikgadi paleowetland, our greatest grandmothers and -grandfathers hunted, gathered and raised families for tens of thousands of years. Eventually, as Earth's climate changed, shifts in rainfall opened up fertile new paths through the desert. For the first time, our distant relatives had the chance to explore the unknown, putting behind them what a team of researchers now calls "the ancestral homeland of all humans alive today."
That's the story, anyway, told by a new paper published today (Oct. 18) in the journal Nature.
By studying the genomes of more than 1,200 indigenous Africans living in the southern part of the continent today, the team pieced together a history of one of the oldest DNA lineages on Earth: a collection of genes called L0, which is passed down maternally through mitochondria and has survived remarkably unchanged in some populations for hundreds of thousands of years. By tracking where and when the L0 lineage first split into the slightly different sublineages still seen in some indigenous African populations today, the researchers believe they have pinpointed precisely where the first carriers of L0 lived and thrived for thousands of years.
(Excerpt) Read more at -livescience-com.cdn.ampproject.org ...
Decades ago I learned about trouble on the coastlines — there was beach erosion to talk about and also issues of subsidence that were worth noting.
Now those things are mostly ignored. The oceans are rising now. Rapidly. Climate Change is causing trouble on the coastlines.
They found Wakanda!
Wow! Next thing you know, they will be able to trace life all the way back to where life began from non-life. /sarc
Okay, I’m claiming my AFRICAN ANCESTRY RIGHT NOW!...................
How did that happen?
Honest question: every child of every mother has mitochondrial DNA. Every human being alive now has it, and its all ancient otherwise there has been cross breeding with some new species. Is this new species Neanderthal, and if so what is the putative age of Neanderthal mitochondrial DNA? Or, were those African women so appealing and so fecund that there is no Neanderthal mitochondrial DNA remaining? This all sounds so political to me rather than scientific, favoring all the favored groups and continents, so pardon me for being skeptical.
Man invented fire, of course, and all that smoke did it. Obviously.
But that Garden of Eden thing us all just stupid myth.
What is even more interesting is that in the past, warmer climates meant a burst and expansion of living things. It is only this current warming that is considered to be harmful to life.
The politics controlling science also troubles me. When it comes to genetic ancestral research & mapping, I dont put much faith even in the raw data.
interesting. The San people have an oriental cast to them.
Eden was most likely in Israel; so that the creation, redemption, and final gathering in rebellion, are all centered there.
Lots of stuff happened in gardens there...
Like to see her family tree on Ancestry. /s
Thanks Quality_Not_Quantity.
The San people of southern Africa carry one of the oldest maternal DNA lineages on Earth.
An interesting claim, since it is impossible to know this.
From my understanding, Africans have a DNA marker that is unique to them, not found in any other race.
So if we all came from Africa, why doesn’t everyone on Earth have that same marker?
My theory is that modern human existence began elsewhere and migrated to Africa. Perhaps to escape the encroaching ice ages or some other natural disaster.
I figured this was about some meteorite that bore a space egg.
My People! We are all Neanderthalers now!
That's what I like about FR - people who have a different perspective on events. Thanks!
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