Posted on 07/01/2006 4:12:22 PM PDT by blam
Roots of Human Family Tree Are Shallow
Roots of the Human Family Tree Are Remarkably Shallow - All Alive Today Share 1 Common Ancestor
By MATT CRENSON AP National Writer
Jul 1, 2006 (AP)— Whoever it was probably lived a few thousand years ago, somewhere in East Asia Taiwan, Malaysia and Siberia all are likely locations. He or she did nothing more remarkable than be born, live, have children and die.
Yet this was the ancestor of every person now living on Earth the last person in history whose family tree branches out to touch all 6.5 billion people on the planet today.
That means everybody on Earth descends from somebody who was around as recently as the reign of Tutankhamen, maybe even during the Golden Age of ancient Greece. There's even a chance that our last shared ancestor lived at the time of Christ.
"It's a mathematical certainty that that person existed," said Steve Olson, whose 2002 book "Mapping Human History" traces the history of the species since its origins in Africa more than 100,000 years ago.
It is human nature to wonder about our ancestors who they were, where they lived, what they were like. People trace their genealogy, collect antiques and visit historical sites hoping to capture just a glimpse of those who came before, to locate themselves in the sweep of history and position themselves in the web of human existence.
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
GGG Ping.
are they talking about Wilt Chamberlain?
Oh, no! We are all the result of sibling matings!
Which may explain some of the obvious genetic defects that show up so often....
Kind of flies in the face of the 250KYA tools found near london a couple weeks ago...
Several good candidates- and they're all female, since it's the mitochondrial DNA we're talking about IIRC.
-Eve (or the various "first humans" talked about in the legends of most religions and tribes)
-Mrs. Noah
-The survivors of the last supervolcano eruption 70,000 years ago
:-)
...one common ancestor?....so did this remarkable being divide spontaneously like an amoeba or what?
And how would that person, born only about 3000 years ago, manage to relate to, say, isolated jungle tribes or any other similar group which could claim genetic isolation over mllenia? The claim that the most recent common ancestor is that recent sounds implausible.
Actually what they're talking about is the apparent evidence that the human race went through a genetic "bottleneck" about 70k years ago. Apparently we went from a thriving species to a small band of survivors.
No it wouldn't, actually. Not even remotely so even in the very slightest. That doesn't mean it's accurate (see my post above) but your reply is nonetheless unadulterated nonsense.
The writer said -- "Yet this was the ancestor of every person now living on Earth the last person in history whose family tree branches out to touch all 6.5 billion people on the planet today."
Anyone who has read the Bible knows who the person was.
Try Genesis 7:11-13
11 In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened.
12 And the rain was on the earth forty days and forty nights.
13 On the very same day Noah and Noah's sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, and Noah's wife and the three wives of his sons with them, entered the ark--
That was my great-great-great [...] grandpa...
Regards,
Star Traveler
One common ancestor? Hmmm. Sounds familiar. Where have I read that before?
HIs name was either Adam or Noah, according to whether or not any humans actually survived the flood other than in the ark.
The isolated groups that you referenced are "grandfathered in",so as to say. :)
It says there may be 250 of them even though the 2001 census found only 39. Don't you think a post-tsumani census might be called for?
Where does Lucy fit in the picture?
"Lucy" was found in 1974 near Hadar in Ethiopia. Her skeleton has provided a wealth of information about the ancestral line of human beings, some of it quite surprising.
Scientists estimate that A. afarensis lived from approximately 4 million years ago (or earlier) to around 2.7 millions years ago.
http://www.wsu.edu/gened/learn-modules/top_longfor/timeline/afarensis/afarensis-a.html
Darwin commented that all species came from a single mated pair of its kind where pairing was a requisite to reproduction.
A bit nutcasey, this post (original article). It'll soon get replaced with other--probably errant--philosophies.
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