'Mitochondrial Eve': Mother of All Humans Lived 200,000 Years Ago

ScienceDaily staff ^ | August 17, 2010 | materials provided by Rice U

[SunkenCiv]

• Human populations are tightly interwoven The most recent common ancestor of all humanity lived just a few thousand years ago, according to a computer model of our family tree. Researchers have calculated that the mystery person, from whom everyone alive today is directly descended, probably lived around 1,500 BC in eastern Asia...

[mountainlion]

I think the first MDA study said something like 6,000 to 30,000 years. OOPS I used 10,000 years and was a decimal off somewhere. Try 20 fold. Calculus was easier, less math.

[SunkenCiv]

This diagram works for most people, but not for folks with Down's Syndrome and a few other conditions. F is for father, M for mother; each of us has up to 64 great-great-great-great-grandcestors; no more than 46 of them has had even one chromosome pair reach you; even with the occasional crossing stream, there's no more than 46, and with crossing streams, could be less.

For those who don't know, this doesn't mean the other 18 (and all of their ancestors, plus half of the ancestors of the 46) are not your ancestors -- DUH! IOW, just because the chromosomes don't make it through, doesn't mean that Oetzi (for example) has no living descendants.

Grandma had no daughters (that lived); her brother was her only sibling; on her mother's side, I know only of a brother; etc etc...

---

ggggGrand	gggGrand	ggGrand	gGrand	Grand	parents	YOU

[SunkenCiv]

The first ones I believe were something like 50,000 years, which figure was merely chosen first by the dead guy who agitated for using mtDNA. Even in his lifetime he was notorious by the autogoal of referring to morphologists as being limited. His remark that pre-”modern” humans lacked speech, calling them “village idiots”, and pompously and ridiculously claiming that the ability to speak came from the mtDNA. Glad that jackoff died in pain, but I’m kinda mean.

Anyway, the 50K figure was considered kinda outta there even then, far too low; it went up pretty quickly to 70K, then 100K, and has continued to trend upward even using these “tools”. :’D I’ll go not very far into the oncoming lane and predict that these results will wind up nearing 2 million, and that this will happen within ten years.

Most other studies in the 1990s showed that the parsimoniousness of the tree that the low-end Replacement advocates claimed was total hogwash, IOW, they made the conclusion fit the original assumption. One merely needs to choose the data and the assumptions carefully enough, and anyone can sell anything to anyone. ;’)

[SunkenCiv]

The Neandertal Enigma
by James Shreeve

"Allan Wilson had always been described to me in superlatives, such as 'one of the real geniuses in science,' or 'the most arrogant guy I know...' [H]e apologized for putting me off so long and bluntly explained that the reason he had done so was that he did not trust me... 'The anthropological perspective on evolution is no longer valid; it has been overthrown. And yet the science writers who insist on talking to me come drenched in an anthropological perspective, and there is really no point in talking to them... It is paralytic. It prevents you from asking certain questions, and it forces you to ask others. The whole discipline invites you not to investigate.'

...A few months before my visit, Wilson had announced at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science... that the Neandertals were replaced because they could not speak... suggesting that a particular gene for language might have been carried in the mitochondria themselves. Since invading males would have been more likely to mate with resident females than the other way around, the offspring of sexual contact between the two groups would be 'linguistically deaf-mute,' like their Neandertal mothers. Thus disadvantaged, these 'village idiots' would face the same fate as the mothers: extinction. Only the language-endowed African lineage would continue. The language gene idea, and especially the unfortunate term 'village idiots,' elicited hoots of derision from the anti-Eve camp, and gave no joy to Wilson's colleagues." [pp 119-121]

[SunkenCiv]

:’)

[SunkenCiv]

Whoops, the dingbat who posted that diagram (me) neglected to change the text, and/or add the F and M.

[Ted Grant]

I saw this in the new ‘Battlestar Galactica’ tv show.

[Little Bill]

I hope they test to see if they gave us the Little Bill family curse Ulcers, everyone, except me, is on antibiotic’s so they can eat normal food. One bad gene.

[mountainlion]

One merely needs to choose the data and the assumptions carefully enough, and anyone can sell anything to anyone. ;’)

Sounds like global warming,climate change, obamanomics...

That is why I said I would wait for peer review.

[LiteKeeper]

Agreed

[wally_bert]

The ending was such an al-gorish inspired let down. I wouldn’t give up my technolgy and ships to go back to nature. The fools who would give everything up would be begging for it all back after the first famine, ravaging disease, or other disaster.

[PLMerite]

I didn’t get the ending either. I could see if they had acutally been the bad guys and wanted to make atonement or something, but after all that to go down with a whimper.

[SunkenCiv]

It has been peer reviewed.

Received 18 March 2009.
Available online 19 June 2010.

[wally_bert]

It took a couple of seasons for me to watch BSG and actually appreciate it. The ending to me was the biggest letdown of a TV show that I can ever remember.

[SunkenCiv]

:’) They didn’t think it up themselves. ;’)

[SunkenCiv]

Bad, bad gene!

[mountainlion]

It has been peer reviewed

It will be interesting to see what the Conservative review will say.

[Little Bill]

It takes away the good things of life. I made a gumbo today the daughter didn’t touch the Texas Pete and she said something was missing, bad gene be gone.

[Gil4]

RE: “Calculus was easier, less math.”

My son will be happy to know that. His prize for passing the AP Caculus test was Calc II in his first semester as a freshman. Welcome to college, kid.