Posted on 08/05/2013 8:55:32 AM PDT by marshmallow
New research published in Science shows that our most recent common female and male ancestors could have been alive at the same time.
Thousands of years ago, somewhere in Africa, lived a man who – probably – had no idea that he, among all the other men in his group, would go on to become humankind’s most recent common male ancestor. Scientists would call him “Adam.”
Now, a new paper published in the journal Science significantly narrows the time during which Adam could have lived – about 120,000 to 156,000 years ago – putting him in about the same time period as humankind’s most recent common female ancestor, often dubbed “Eve." The research revises previous findings that dated Adam within a much longer period.
And the findings also ease recent doubts that the Y chromosome can reliably trace ancient lineage, renewing confidence that tracing and dating lineage using mutations in the Y chromosome could be critical in answering some of the vexing questions about how and where the first humans originated.
“We’ve shown that we can do this kind of dating, and that the Y chromosome is a really powerful tool,” says Brenna Henn, a genetics researcher at SUNY Stony Brook. “Now that we can use the Y chromosome in this manner, we can go back and look into other big questions, like exactly where in Africa did humans originate?”
“The ultimate goal is to understand when and where there was a modern human population,” she says.
Dr. Henn and colleagues analyzed the Y chromosome from 69 men from nine globally divergent regions, including Namibia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Gabon, Algeria, Pakistan, Cambodia, Siberia, and Mexico. The Y chromosome, which in human males is one chromosome of the 23 pairs that form the genome, is a useful means through which.......
(Excerpt) Read more at csmonitor.com ...
Even Obama would cut across the street, if he saw that guy coming down the sidewalk.
Probably not consciously, but this was the motivation:
“how can I further deface the image of God?”
Not sure why I’m wasting my time but...
Individuals do not evolve. Populations are the basis of evolution. There was no “magic moment” where an ape gave birth to a human. There was a population of apes which became separated, at least in the sense of breeding, from another similar population of apes. One of these populations gradually developed characteristcs that were more and more human-like. Modern humans descend from that population. There would have been a large number of members of this population at the time when they became recognizably human.
In case you think there’s no evidence for such things, refer to the talkorigin.org faq’s. There are pictures of fossils on there of hominids that are neither clearly ape-like nor clearly human-like. They have asked prominent creationists whether these were apes or humans. All responded to the question, but the responses differed depending on which creationist was asked. Now, if an organism must either be clearly an ape or clearly a human, how can there be disagreement about whether it’s an ape or a human? There certainly were populations of organisms such as I’ve described, where human-like characteristics began to appear in an ape-like species.
Wait.... what?
Haven't we been told enough that mankind could not have come from a single ancestor because there wasn't enough genetic diversity?
No, its Adam.
Noah was his descendant, therefore Adam is our earliest common ancestor.
There were 4 men including Noah on the Ark three of which were Noah’s sons. These son’s would each have 1/2 of genes from Mom and 1/2 genes from Noah.
The descendants after the flood from Noah’s children would contain 1/2 of his genes and 1/2 of mom’s genes.
I’m not aware if Noah or wife had children after the flood.
Noah’s 3 children came with 3 wives, so their children would have been distinctly different from their cousins. There were about 9 generations between Adam and Noah, so the gene mix of the wives could have been very different by Noah’s generation.
In summary, the descendants of Noah children would have had three distinct sets of genes from which the nations flowed. Noah is not likely the common denominator.
They weren’t apes. They were sort-of human, or even fully human and interfertile with whatever we consider was “human” at the time. What they weren’t were our earliest direct ancestors. Man#1’s brothers, cousins, etc.
This study says nothing about who was human or an ape. Or a lizard or a chicken for that matter.
That's a whole lot of inbreeding to perpetuate those genes, which is generally not a desirable thing within isolated populations.
Romans 1:22
II Corinthians 10:12
Proverbs 26:4
...
Matthew 7:6
All populations are inbred if you go back far enough. Consider, if all humans are not inbred, then you and I must have 4 distinct parents, 8 distinct grandparents, 16 distinct great-grandparents and so on. This leads to rather large numbers fairly quickly.
Assume an average breeding age of about 30 years (I realize that this is probably too high since life expectancies tend to about 30 years if you go back far enough, but it makes the math simple and lowering that age just lowers the time periods I am discussing). Then each succeding generation would represent the population needed to sustain us as completely non-inbred, and this number would double each time you go back 30 years. Thus, 30 years ago, there would have to have been 4 distinct people in the population to serve as our parents, 60 years ago, there would have had to be 8 distinct people to serve as our grandparents, etc.
Now, using those assumptions, at a time 960 years ago, there would have to have been roughly 8.6 billion people alive to serve as our distinct set of ancestors. That’s more people than are currently alive, and nobody has ever given population estimates that suggest that the world’s population has declined in the last millenium, so I would suggest that this renders it impossible that we aren’t inbred to some degree. (Going back even farther makes the point even more definitive; you hit 10 billion at 990 years, 100 billion at 1080 years, and 1 trillion at 1170 years.)
True enough, Raycpa. I’m not suggesting that Noah’s lineages would all have survived. I’m just suggesting that anyone prior to Noah could not have been the genetic Adam.
Bingo.
It seems that your Biblical verses are pretty much meant to say “shut up, read the Bible, and quit trying to figure out how the universe works.” Sorry, but I reject that notion. Where would we be without the contributions of those such as Copernicus, Galileo, Newton and others who were Christians, but did not just “shut up and read the Bible”? I find it insulting to believe that God gave us the intelligence and curiosity to explore the universe, but intended for us to not use them. You can certainly do what you wish, that’s what freedom is about. For myself, however, I will continue to follow where the evidence leads and try to figure out how the universe works.
Sorry, I did not evolve from apes.
You are certainly free to believe that. A mountainous volume of scientific evidence suggests otherwise.
Just food for thought: if I create a machine and that machine creates a whole bunch of robots, would you argue with me if I told the robots that I was their creator? Would you really insist that it was the machine that created the robots?
Religion has gone down this road in the past. (See Galileo) It doesn’t have to be true that science and religion are in opposition.
I just checked....
My Mom and Dad were contemporaries.
How do I get this info posted under “News”?
Definitely true.
The Bible is not a work of science or technology.
The Bible does not explain the manner in which God works, but it is clear that God uses the mechanisms of the universe he created to manifest his will.
We can understand at least some of those mechanisms, and we should do so. This is a virtuous and worshipful endeavor.
At least Adam didn’t have to listen to a bunch of nosey relatives asking him “is that the best you could do?”
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