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Author Topic:   All Human Beings Are Descendants of Adam
Wounded King
Member
Posts: 4149
From: Cincinnati, Ohio, USA
Joined: 04-09-2003


Message 31 of 118 (606528)
02-26-2011 4:11 AM
Reply to: Message 29 by NoNukes
02-25-2011 10:44 PM


She is instead our most recent common ancestor.
No, she isn't, she is our most recent matrilineal common ancestor, thats a pretty important distinction to bear in mind. The actual most recent common ancestor is probably much more recent, possibly only a few thousand years ago (Rhode et al., 2004; Lachance, 2009).
TTFN,
WK

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Dr Jack
Member
Posts: 3514
From: Immigrant in the land of Deutsch
Joined: 07-14-2003
Member Rating: 8.7


Message 32 of 118 (606529)
02-26-2011 5:43 AM
Reply to: Message 28 by NoNukes
02-25-2011 10:31 PM


NoNukes writes:
You are overstating the uniqueness of ME. ME is merely the most recently born ancestor of all of us.
No she's not! She's not even the most recent female common ancestor. She's the most recent common ancestor if you trace exclusively down the female line.
(And, by-the-by, it's likely that even that's not strictly true because while mitochondria is inherited from the mother in >99.99% of cases, it's quite probably that in a few cases in the last 200 thousand years there have been people who inherited mitochondria from their father).

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Europa
Member (Idle past 4685 days)
Posts: 68
Joined: 06-05-2010


Message 33 of 118 (606535)
02-26-2011 9:59 AM
Reply to: Message 16 by jar
02-25-2011 9:40 AM


jar
Almost anything is possible, but it is very, very, very unlikely that Y-Adam and M-Eve lived at the same time.
Fine.
My point is, if we go further up the line, there will be another person who will be the great, great, great, ...... great, grandfather of YcA
No?

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 Message 16 by jar, posted 02-25-2011 9:40 AM jar has replied

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Europa
Member (Idle past 4685 days)
Posts: 68
Joined: 06-05-2010


Message 34 of 118 (606536)
02-26-2011 10:01 AM
Reply to: Message 20 by Dr Jack
02-25-2011 9:55 AM


Mr Jack
No, not really; I mean the calibration could be better, and we could collect more data but what we have is well supported.
One thing that would indicate that our methods are fundamentally flawed is if YcA and ME came out as living at the same time or if YcA lived before ME.
In that case, are you saying that we cannot trace the mitichondrial DNA or the Y-chromosome any further up?

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Europa
Member (Idle past 4685 days)
Posts: 68
Joined: 06-05-2010


Message 35 of 118 (606538)
02-26-2011 10:06 AM
Reply to: Message 22 by Dr Jack
02-25-2011 9:59 AM


Mr J
At most we could share a ME who isn't human. In theory we could trace that ME right back to the dawnings of sexual reproduction but the odds against that are so high as to mean it's practically certain not to be the case.
Why not?
We may not be able to trace upto where sexual reproduction began.
But we might be able to trace more accurately upto the point where we became human?
The present ME may not necessarily be this point. Thats my view.

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Europa
Member (Idle past 4685 days)
Posts: 68
Joined: 06-05-2010


Message 36 of 118 (606539)
02-26-2011 10:10 AM
Reply to: Message 23 by nwr
02-25-2011 10:05 AM


The Theory of Evolution does not contradict that statement. The evidence of evolution does contradict it.
What if Adam is a hypothetical human being and not the Biblical Adam?

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Europa
Member (Idle past 4685 days)
Posts: 68
Joined: 06-05-2010


Message 37 of 118 (606540)
02-26-2011 10:19 AM
Reply to: Message 26 by Dr Adequate
02-25-2011 9:06 PM


Dr A '
Mitochondrial Eve is by definition our most recent common ancestor in the female line. There can only be one of those.
I disagree.
ME is our most recent common ancestor. But depending on our methodology, we might be able to detect another ancestor who is our most recent common ancestor. This will in principle give us two MEs.
No?

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jar
Member (Idle past 393 days)
Posts: 34026
From: Texas!!
Joined: 04-20-2004


Message 38 of 118 (606541)
02-26-2011 10:26 AM
Reply to: Message 33 by Europa
02-26-2011 9:59 AM


Europa writes:
jar
Almost anything is possible, but it is very, very, very unlikely that Y-Adam and M-Eve lived at the same time.
Fine.
My point is, if we go further up the line, there will be another person who will be the great, great, great, ...... great, grandfather of YcA
No?
There will be fathers and likely brothers and uncles and best friends and barely knows and heard of thems. There were sisters and aunts and cousins and kissin cousins and third cousins twice removed.
It's really unlikely there was a first Adam, a first Eve or even a first human.

Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

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NoNukes
Inactive Member


Message 39 of 118 (606542)
02-26-2011 10:41 AM
Reply to: Message 37 by Europa
02-26-2011 10:19 AM


No,
Dr. A is correct. Mitochondrial Eve is found by tracing up only through the female line. (My correction left this point out). However, using the female line only is fairly arbitrary and other women are related to us just as strongly as ME.
Let's also understand that we didn't really find ME, just an estimate of the time in which she would have lived. There is really no way to find the actual person nearly 170k years ago. No actual tracing has been done, so 'tracing further up' is meaningless.
Edited by NoNukes, : Add a little

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Phage0070
Inactive Member


Message 40 of 118 (606658)
02-27-2011 3:10 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by Europa
02-25-2011 2:56 AM


Europa writes:
I may be wrong but my understanding of evolution does not contradict the statement: "All human beings are descendants of Adam."
On the contrary, it certainly does contradict such a statement.
The Mitochondrial Eve concept refers to the single human woman through which all living humans today descend through their mother. Conversely there is a Y-chromosomal Adam which is tracing all living humans to a single male heir through their father.
The complication is that those two, ME and MA, lived thousands of years apart from each other. In fact MA lived roughly 110,000 years later than ME. What this means is that humans prior to the birth of MA must have been born of a descendant of ME and some other male which may or may not have been an ancestor of the eventual MA. Its guaranteed that "All human beings are descendants of MA," is false.
Now you might be arguing that we should simply define ME's partner as being "Adam", but that leaves the 110,000 year gap with all those human males that are not descended from "Adam" until MA is finally established.
Or you might argue that once MA is established beside a long descendant of ME that couple should be defined as "Adam" and "Eve". But that still doesn't work because for your statement to be true all previous generations leading up to that must be redefined as being something other than human, a distinction serving no purpose other than to validate your statement.
So no, your statement "All human beings are descendants of Adam," is completely contradicted by evolution and our biological knowledge.

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 Message 51 by Europa, posted 02-28-2011 12:42 PM Phage0070 has replied

  
Wounded King
Member
Posts: 4149
From: Cincinnati, Ohio, USA
Joined: 04-09-2003


Message 41 of 118 (606730)
02-28-2011 4:28 AM
Reply to: Message 40 by Phage0070
02-27-2011 3:10 PM


I may be wrong but my understanding of evolution does not contradict the statement: "All human beings are descendants of Adam."
You could be right if you said "all of the current human population", going back a few thousand years you reach a point where a high proportion of the entire human population are all common ancestors of the current population. For humans of European ancestry this has been calculated to be as recent as 800AD, but for the whole of humanity it would be earlier though most models suggest dates between 150BC and 800AD. This isn't based on genetic data but simply on mathematical population models.
There might well have been someone around at that time, amidst the thousands of contemporaneous common ancestors, who was called Adam and of whom we are all descendants.
TTFN,
WK
*ABE* Oops, I replied to Phage0070 by mistake instead of Europa.
Edited by Wounded King, : No reason given.

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Replies to this message:
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NoNukes
Inactive Member


Message 42 of 118 (606765)
02-28-2011 10:09 AM
Reply to: Message 30 by bluescat48
02-26-2011 1:31 AM


bluescat writes:
Except that mitochondrial eve lived at least 70000 years before the so called biblical eve would have lived.
That's based on dates according to some hyper literal of Genesis. Surely that is not what this thread is about.

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Dr Jack
Member
Posts: 3514
From: Immigrant in the land of Deutsch
Joined: 07-14-2003
Member Rating: 8.7


Message 43 of 118 (606770)
02-28-2011 10:26 AM
Reply to: Message 30 by bluescat48
02-26-2011 1:31 AM


bluescat48 writes:
Except that mitochondrial eve lived at least 70000 years before the so called biblical eve would have lived.
And, if the mtEve date was ~6000 years ago, that would also disprove the Genesis account because she should post-date the flood, rather than being the garden of Eden Eve.

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Phage0070
Inactive Member


Message 44 of 118 (606771)
02-28-2011 10:29 AM
Reply to: Message 41 by Wounded King
02-28-2011 4:28 AM


Wounded King writes:
You could be right if you said "all of the current human population", going back a few thousand years you reach a point where a high proportion of the entire human population are all common ancestors of the current population.
But you still don't get ancestry from a single male-female pairing, and the population models are bunk. Its irrelevant what could possibly happen if humans did nothing but have sex, make babies, never died of anything but old age, and had no resource limitations.
Especially when our biological and archaeological facts support humans coming out of Africa up to 200,000 years ago.

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Replies to this message:
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NoNukes
Inactive Member


Message 45 of 118 (606779)
02-28-2011 11:00 AM
Reply to: Message 43 by Dr Jack
02-28-2011 10:26 AM


Not a problem
Mr. Jack writes:
And, if the mtEve date was ~6000 years ago, that would also disprove the Genesis account because she should post-date the flood, rather than being the garden of Eden Eve.
Not so. As long as more than one woman survived the flood, it is not necessary for mitochondrial Eve to be a post-flood woman.

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Replies to this message:
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