...Eve Arden?
Posted on 04/26/2003 7:36:03 PM PDT by blam
Study: 'Eve' Came From East Africa
By Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News
April 24, 2003 — "African Eve," the female ancestor of all humans, likely hailed from East Africa, according to a recent study.
If the current analysis is correct, East Africa probably served as the cradle of humanity many thousands of years ago.
Sarah Tishkoff, lead author of the paper and an assistant professor of biology at the University of Maryland, explained that the term African Eve "…refers to an ancestral mitochondrial DNA genome.
"All genomes today are descended from one person, but she lived in a larger population. By chance, her neighbor's mtDNA genomes 'died out' and never made it into the modern gene pool."
Mitochondrial DNA is inherited unchanged from the mother only, allowing researchers to trace unadulterated DNA back hundreds of thousands of years.
For the Eve study, blood samples were taken from over 1,000 ethnically and linguistically diverse populations in Tanzania. Tishkoff and her colleagues focused on the mtDNA from a subset of 500 that represented remote populations, many of which have never been studied before.
Tishkoff presents the findings on Thursday at a meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropology.
The oldest DNA lineages show the greatest diversity. When the Tanzanian test subset was compared with existing genetic data, Tanzania and other East African countries, such as Kenya and Ethiopia, displayed the most diversity, and are therefore likely the oldest mtDNA in Africa.
While Tishkoff and her team were unable to narrow Eve's origins down to a single population, possible candidates include the Burunge and Iraqw, who probably migrated from Ethiopia to Tanzania within the last 5,000 years; the Maasai and Datog, who are thought to have originated in southern Sudan; and two very ancient Tanzanian populations, the Sandawe and Hadza.
"The Sandawe and Hadza live about 150 km (93.21 miles) apart, but they look very different," Tishkoff told Discovery News. "The Hadza are dark skinned and the Sandawe are light skinned, for instance. They both practice hunting and gathering and are thought to be descendants of very ancestral populations from that region."
The two populations speak using a click language. A South African group, the !Kung san, also speak with a click language and previously were thought to be one of Africa's oldest populations.
Because genetic studies reveal the !Kung san and Sandawe share a common ancestor from 37,000 years ago, Tishkoff and her team now believe the !Kung san may have originated in East Africa and later migrated southward.
Alison Brooks, professor of anthropology at George Washington University, thinks the East Africa Eve theory is "definitely a possibility."
Brooks found some of the earliest evidence for modern human behavior — finely crafted barbed bones that were used for fishing — in Eastern Zaire. She told Discovery News that long-distance trade networks, microlithic technology (small, interlocking tools), and the presence of an animal- and plant-rich environment all suggest East Africa was the origination point for modern human development.
Brooks said, "From Ethiopia into Tanzania and Zambia, we see evidence for a large human population that was culturally complex very early on, even by the Middle Stone Age (200,000-30,000 years ago)."
Your other suggestions for the origin are definitely in the running, IMO.
Ancient Aussie
11:43 09 January 01
A man who died about 60,000 years ago in Australia could force a rethink of our theory of human origins.
Researchers in Australia have accomplished the extremely difficult feat of extracting DNA from his skeleton and were astonished to find the sequence is unique, matching nothing seen before.
The DNA is the oldest ever recovered from human remains. It shows that while the man is completely anatomically modern, he came from a genetic lineage that is now extinct. This finding challenges the prevailing theory that all modern humans are descended from a group of people who migrated from Africa around 100,000 years ago.
"It's remarkable - totally unpredicted," says anthropologist Alan Mann of the University of Pennsylvania.
Alan Thorne of the Australian National University in Canberra, who led the new research, says: "A simplistic 'Out Of Africa' model is no longer tenable."
But not all experts agree. "The genetic evidence is equivocal," says Colin Groves, of the ANU. "The African origin model stands or falls by the fossil evidence. In my opinion, it stands."
The new research contradicts a recent study of mitochondrial DNA, which supported the Out of Africa theory (New Scientist online, 6 December 2000).
Family trees
The remains of Mungo Man were found on the shores of Lake Mungo in south-eastern Australia in 1974.
In 1995, a team led by Thorne began an attempt to extract genetic material from the remains. Gregory Adcock and his colleagues at CSIRO Plant Industry managed to replicate and sequence a single gene from Mungo Man's mitochondria. The small genome of these cell powerhouses is passed down the female line.
Simon Easteal, an evolutionary geneticist at ANU, then set about analysing the sequence and comparing it with sequences of the same gene from nine other early Australians - ranging in age from 8,000 to 15,000 years - as well as 3,453 contemporary people from around the world, chimpanzees, bonobos and two European Neanderthals.
According to Easteal's evolutionary tree, the line that led to the most recent common ancestor of contemporary people, includes the ancient Australians but excludes Mungo Man.
"We can say with a high degree of confidence that modern people arrived in Australia before the new lineage [of the most recent common ancestor] arrived," Easteal says.
Those aren't the ones I was thinking about.
Again?
LOL
OR! As I believe, modern humans could have developed numerous times/places from a common source. This could account for the three distinct races of today. Imagine three (maybe more) isolated groups of modern humans (related by a common ancestor) and over the milliniums there was continuous, slow but continuous interchange of genes. That's called the 'multi-regional' theory.
...Eve Arden?
Nothing racist going on here.
There's a clear record of at least 50,000-60,000 years of continuous human habitation in Australia, and recent discoveries (as yet relatively unexamined) tend to push that frontier back much further than that. This is a continent that's almost untouched archaeologically and paleontologically. I'm not pre-judging, just wondering.
But would that explain how Mungo Man has mtDNA that matches no one else? Could it be these "species" developed independently without that common ancestor? Could it also be that there was parallel development in other parts of the world, albeit independent development?
Yes, that too absent any cross pollination.
I'm jealous. But I'm in total agreement with you regarding preconceived notions and political correctness. We have made fascinating discoveries over the past few decades and undoubtedly we will make more.
Viewing them objectively is essential.
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