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Re: Date for Last Common Ancestor?
Susan S. Chin (susansf@netcom.com)
Mon, 12 Aug 1996 05:54:55 GMT
Stephen Barnard (steve@megafauna.com) wrote:
:
: > Susan S. Chin wrote:
: > >
: > > : T&B Schmal wrote:
: > > : >
: > > : > I am interested in bracketing the dates for the last common ancestor of
: > > : > humankind. Would a good guess be somewhere between "Eve" and the
: > > : > appearance of modern man - say, between 200 and 50 Kya? It seems to me
: > > : > that dates outside this range would be impossible.
: > > : >
(woops! I deleted my Eve claims)
: I also have to point out (reluctantly) that you are wrong about the claim that
: "Eve" is actually a population of more than one. We all *do* descend from a
: single female individual, which is trivial to prove. This is precisely why the
: "Eve" hypothesis is so devastating to the "theory of multiple and separate
: evolutionary roots of mankind per geographic regions".
: Steve Barnard
Well, I know that initially when the theory of an Eve came out, that was
the popular understanding, that we all descended from this one female.
But tell me if I'm wrong here, but aren't we getting awfully close to
Creationism here? If there was an "Eve," there must've been a male who
contributed his genes towards creating that first generation of humanity
(this sounds pretty ridiculous to me, but who am I to argue with
science?). We therefore theoretically are also descended from that one
male, but unfortunately his mitochondria is of no use to us. Well, it's
getting late, so maybe it'll make more sense tomorrow.
I did read about my Eve as a population and not an individual
ancestor recently, but don't recall the source.
What are you basing your one ancestral Eve idea?
Susan
--
susansf@netcom.com
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