Adam 340,000 years ago...

Intriguing!

Of course, it is essentially playing with numbers, but it does raise some significant questions...especially since going back that far, by this article's own admission, places it well over 100K years before the first known modern humans! The other part highlighted between the lines is cross species interbreeding...like the reported case of a Neandertal-Modern hybrid child in Portugal some years back. If this pans out, there would be just a bit less stigma attached to the Portugal find!
 
I'm not sure I understand, it kind of feels like a chicken or the egg thing to me. That first human didn't just pop into existence (according to the theory of evolution), he and, the then, population probably all had an even older ancestor in common. I'm saying that we could perhaps carry DNA from a pre-human ancestor?

The whole "first human" thing is a bit tricky also. It's not like: BAM! This guy is human, his parents are not. Evolution works slowly and there will always be 'in-betweens', blurring the lines.

So if someone could dumb-down the article a bit?
 
I hesitate to speak for the authors of the article, all I have to go by is the article and I didn't chase it out any further.

I do know there is a Chromosomal Adam (and a Mitochondrial Eve). Basically it is possible to chase backwards Father to Grandfather to great Grandfather, etc. etc. to a common beginning. This isn't a religious thing, it is a known quantity in dna mapping.

What I understand the article to be saying is that this man and some others from a particular region have additional info in their dna that ties their Chromosomal Adam even further back.

But as far as carrying dna from a pre-human ancestor...everything alive does. We share half of our genes with bananas and nematodes.
 
juantoo3 said:
What I understand the article to be saying is that this man and some others from a particular region have additional info in their dna that ties their Chromosomal Adam even further back.
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haha, I first read "from a particular religion", suuure crazy brain.
 
But it appears the chromosonal Adam and mitocondrial Eve are as fictitious and allegorical as the A&E we all know...

I mean, yes we have these various 'mans' and 'womans' mating and they mixed this and that and had mixed offspring that mated....but they were all from various families and then mated again....so what we are talking about is an imaginary Adam and Eve....not one that ever existed...but a composite....a composite that represents our origins....am I understanding correctly?
 
wil said:
But it appears the chromosonal Adam and mitocondrial Eve are as fictitious and allegorical as the A&E we all know...
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<GASP!> You heretical unbeliever! How DARE you question the dogma of science!

I mean, yes we have these various 'mans' and 'womans' mating and they mixed this and that and had mixed offspring that mated....but they were all from various families and then mated again....so what we are talking about is an imaginary Adam and Eve....not one that ever existed...but a composite....a composite that represents our origins....am I understanding correctly?
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I dunno...the way it was explained to me is that these were "real" people...or you and I and everyone else wouldn't exist. Today we count the population in billions, 200K years ago the population likely stood at well less than 1 million. And by some mathematical models, there is actually a point where the population is 1. Interesting is that Mito Eve and Chromo Adam do not go back to the same point in time...I think Eve is considerably older, although I forget off the top of my head how old. Then you have "bottleneck with founder effect," which really narrows the genepool too.
 
wil said:
But it appears the chromosonal Adam and mitocondrial Eve are as fictitious and allegorical as the A&E we all know...
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No, you've got the wrong end of the stick there.

wil said:
I mean, yes we have these various 'mans' and 'womans' mating and they mixed this and that and had mixed offspring that mated....but they were all from various families and then mated again....
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Yes.

wil said:
so what we are talking about is an imaginary Adam and Eve....not one that ever existed...but a composite....a composite that represents our origins....am I understanding correctly?
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No. Both the 'lines' exist, and have to begin somewhere. CA and ME are the most recent common ancestors of all human beings, or so we thought! Now the CA line has shifted back again!

ME was not the only living human female of her time, nor the first female of the species, but she is the only one among her female peers and contemporaries to produce a direct line to every (as far as we know) living woman in the present day.

Assuming ME had female contemporaries, none of those contemporaries have descendants living now who can trace an unbroken female line. So I think I'm right in saying there might be traces that go back beyond ME, but none that show continuity, or commonality.

ME lived (approx) 200,000 years ago? CA only goes back 140,000 years, so I don't think they ever actually met!

But, for example, we all have a touch of Neanderthal in our DNA — somewhere around a little over 2% on average — but it's there.

DNA research is fascinating stuff. Bodies exhumed from under Stonehenge show that travellers came for Midwinter Festivals from over 700 miles away! And that, strangely, Stonehenge went from the most 'happening place' in the British Isles to 'nowhere, man' in less than 40 years. The Beaker People thing turned up, and they had 'the two Bs'— better beer, and better bling!

Stonehenge was suddenly, like, so yesterday!
 
Ok....let us look our Eve.....she had sex say with say just Adam or Adam and a few others...that really doesn't matter.,...but had a bundle of kids...(now the biblical just had a couple of boys) But who do these kids have sex with?? Ok each other....Mom and Dad......

this is the only way we are all gonna have the same great original mother line right??

So now those folks...who they gonna have babies with...more cousins, siblings and parents...

It'll take what 4, 5 generations before we aren't having babies with second cousins?

And if that was our norm before, what exactly is gonna stop it in 5 generations??
 
wil said:
Ok....let us look our Eve.....she had sex say with say just Adam or Adam and a few others...that really doesn't matter.,...but had a bundle of kids...(now the biblical just had a couple of boys) But who do these kids have sex with?? Ok each other....Mom and Dad......

this is the only way we are all gonna have the same great original mother line right??

So now those folks...who they gonna have babies with...more cousins, siblings and parents...

It'll take what 4, 5 generations before we aren't having babies with second cousins?

And if that was our norm before, what exactly is gonna stop it in 5 generations??
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LOL...that's why when it's typically presented "they" pull up short and say there were "a few hundred" people, to avoid these kinds of questions...but that wouldn't even make sense if you think about it because the typical familial band likely was composed of perhaps 20 individuals or so on average.

"They" struggle with just how much like our animal cousins they want us to view our ancestors, but interbreeding was likely very common...even into Egyptian times. What is more amazing to me is breeding outside the tribe, particularly with another species.
 
we gonna have a few hundred people from the same mom?? great...and still who are they making babies with

whether you want to talk genesis or science and you want to talk about 1 adam and 1 eve you are gonna talk a lot of incest in order to get a few generations away and increase the tribe...
 
wil said:
But who do these kids have sex with??
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Thomas said:
ME was not the only living human female of her time, nor the first female of the species, but she is the only one among her female peers and contemporaries to produce a direct line to every (as far as we know) living woman in the present day.
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So I don't think anyone was saying that there where just one family at one point, there where other people at the same 'evolutionary level' as them. But I'm having a hard time grasping the whole 'unbroken line' thingy, what can be broken in a family line?
 
wil said:
we gonna have a few hundred people from the same mom?? great...and still who are they making babies with

whether you want to talk genesis or science and you want to talk about 1 adam and 1 eve you are gonna talk a lot of incest in order to get a few generations away and increase the tribe...
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Even in the Genesis story...Thomas mentioned...when Cain was banished he took a wife from the land of Nod in the East of Eden. In other words, there were people already alive at the time besides the familiar Adam & Eve story. It is important to note though that Cain's genealogy drops from the Biblical narrative at that time, and other than passing allusion his progeny isn't mentioned again.

We have to be careful as well overlaying modern sensibilities onto ancient stories. I am not about to suggest Seth made babies with his mother, there are other options...but it isn't specifically spelled out. Then too, how much of the story is allegorical, as you point out frequently, and now wish to make literal? Still, by the time we get to Noah and the post-flood period, we find Ham is cursed by Noah for sleeping with his mother, later we find Lot's daughters getting him drunk to sleep with him and "carry his seed," and I seem to recall some hullabaloo amongst the sons of Jacob with the oldest getting into some incestuous trouble that toppled him from favor. So incest is hardly unheard of in the Biblical context. Again, keep in mind, that among contemporary Egyptians incest was encouraged to keep the race pure, particularly among the royals. So it is likely that incest was a far more common practice throughout the region than we are comfortable considering today.
 
Yes since our standards have upgraded we refuse to consider what might be biblical....and yes I believe it to be allegory....tis simply a question I have for those that believe it to be literal. (of course my understanding is the rash goes into the details we would rather not know)

I thought it interesting when they were speaking of the potential of life on mars and examining the dirt they indicated that the type of DNA they were looking for was mitochondrial....
 
Well...devil's advocate here...a person that considers the Genesis story as written to be verbatim literal is going to dismiss the whole pre-historical mitochondrial Eve and chromosomal Adam anyway as some kind of satanic witchery or some like ilk.

Of course, most of them of my acquaintance over the years also pretty well gloss over the incestuous parts of Genesis too...probably because it goes against their delicate sensibilities I would guess.
 
wil said:
we gonna have a few hundred people from the same mom??
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No, she wouldn't have to pop that many. All you need is time, and migration.

Say she has five kids, and each of those has five, that's 25 kids. Now say each of them has five, you've got 125 in 3 generations — she might still be around to babysit! In six generations you have 15,625, in another three, you have two million ...

And, historically, we're talking a lot of generations.

wil said:
whether you want to talk genesis or science ...
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I don't think anyone's talking about Scripture, and really I think you're getting into a bit of a twist trying to. I'd forget Genesis altogether. After all, no serious Christian claims that it as 'history' or 'science'.

wil said:
and you want to talk about 1 adam and 1 eve you are gonna talk a lot of incest in order to get a few generations away and increase the tribe...
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No, I think you're looking at it the wrong way.

Mitochondrial Eve lived some 190,000–200,000 years ago, and refers to the most recent common ancestor of all currently living modern humans.

She is the most recent woman from whom all humans descend, on the mother's side.

So what you do is trace your mother line back and it will eventually converge on a single person upon whom all mother lines converge.

This does not mean she was the first homo sapiens female, just the most recent one, who is related to everybody.

Chromosomal Adam is estimated to have lived between 240,000 and 600,000 years ago! That means Adam is older than Eve by at least 40,000 years, maybe 400,000 years!

ME lived within a human community; she was not alone, nor the first of a new species.

But her existence is an accepted fact. The counter argument is for a multiple-origins theory of human evolution: that the human species arose independently and, in evolutionary terms, simultaneously, in distinct and geographically separate populations. There are so many 'fluke' factors involved in evolution, and the odds against it so astronomical, that few subscribe to the multiple-origins theory.

So homo spaiens emerged from within a social group, livings somewhere in Africa. Eve is the most recent ancestor of that group that we're all related to. Latest evidence suggests our Neanderthal neighbours evolved along a different line. They evolved larger eyes than us, science now interprets as a compensation for the low light experience of living way north of the equator. This in turn drove the evolution of the visual cortex of the brain, at the expense of other areas. Sapiens evolved differently, although they interbred with Neanderthal (we all have about 2% Neanderthal DNA).

Red hair, or blue eyes, are evolutionary mutations. Blue eyes are another East Africa development, but the spread of blue eyes in the population is weighted against the odds. Science believes that this occurred because blue eyes were onsidered more attractive...
 
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