Human Origins: Let's Talk Mitochondrial Eve

Look at it this way:You are decended from your mother. You are also decended from your grandmother. You are also decended from your great grandmother. Etc.Let's say that you are a red head. That your mother is a red head. That her mother is a red head.We can say that you are decended from your grandmother, and that that is where you get your red hair. However, we can just as easily say that you are also decended from your great great great grandmother.The fact that your grandmother is closer in line than your great great great grandmother doesn't mean that you are not decended from both.In this case - the "red hair" is the mDNA we can trace back to M-Eve. However, that doesn't mean that Eve's mother is not also a relative. Nor does it mean that Eve's great great great grandmother is not also a relative.

You are either smoking crack or can not read well.OP: Me: That is a DIRECT answer. Just becuase you are decended from your grandmother does not mean that you are not ALSO decended from an earlier woman as well.As for the rest of it, if you like I'll answer it here: Just like I posted in another thread with Randman just this morning, this sort of a question holds a HUGE assumption. It's assuming that evolution is multiregional and gradual. I have seen evidence for neither.H.E.spread out of Africa and spread across Asia, reaching as far as some islands in the Indonesian chain. It also spread into Europe.During that time there were still H.E. populations in Africa.There was climate change - specifically an Ice Age. While the glaciers were not in Africa, the African climate changed along with the rest of the world.A group of H.E., likely seperated from other major populations by an ecological barrier (desert, etc.) evolved into H.S. This group breached the barrier and began a process of replacement, out competing the H.E. populations it came across.However, not all the H.E. populations which had left Africa had remained exactly as is. When H.S. reached Europe, they found that the H.E. populations there had evolved into a species better able to handle the glacial environment - Neandertals.When they reached Eastern Asia they found Peking Man and Java Man.It just happened that H.S. out of Africa (our mDNA forebearers) happen to be better suited for ALL environments thanks to our more advanced tools and more complex social structures.That pretty much answers that question -Now, class, let's move on to Herepton's other quotes: Unrefutable! Herepton has hit it on the nose! That's why Homo Habilus had jet planes, Homo Erectus had Steam Trains and we're left today with rudamentary rock tools. So sad. I agree again! Especially the part about you living in the "Land of Confusion". Those puppets were out of sight! So, since 1500 years is your +/- on this thing. Why isn't the world 4500 years old? Or for that matter, why wasn't the world Created in 1348? Noticed you completely skipped that thread.

Herepton,You are unworthy of debate. Like so many other religious extremists, your agenda of pushing the Jewish faith down everyone's throat is clouding your ability to even read.I'm simply going to take your comments to the admins and ask that they remove you.{I must assume you, as of posting your message, had not read the previous message. - Adminnemooseus}This message has been edited by Adminnemooseus, 12-30-2005 03:06 PM

Hey Faith,Let me see if I can explain the study...The section dna know as the Mdna can be broken down into a string of letters based on the proteins in the string. For simplicity, rather than: gattaggacaacatgat.... I'm going to use a simple binary number sequence that's 10 digits long:Starting with: 0000000000Now, we know that MDna is not subject to change through the normal sexual mixing pot that gives us most of the rest of the DNA. Most of the time if your mom has 0000000000, then you will also have 0000000000However, rarely changes creep up. Somewhere back in time some 000000000000 mother gave birth to a daughter which had 0000100000(keep in mind, we're actually talking about a much longer, much more complicated code).If we tested people living today, we could say that everyone who had a "1" in the 5th position was descended from that daughter, and that those that didn't have the "1" were descended from a much earlier woman.Now more time passes and the 0000000000 people produce another child, this time 0010000000. And the 0000100000 people produce and additional child 0000100001.A cross section of the population shows that we have 4 groups. And we certain groups broke off from one another because they are more similiar.0000000000 lead to both 0010000000 and 0000100000
0000100000 lead to 0000100001
but we know that 0010000000 is not a forefather of 0000100001 because they dont have similarities.That's the basic concept behind this, and from it we could look at something like: 0100101001 and figure out which chain it belongs in.Now in the real study, the codes have 4 variable and are much longer. Further, it not be just a single digit that changed, but a whole sequence.But hopefully that gives you an idea about how they were able to determine which groups split off from who.As for a time table, because mDNA changes so slowly, we can calculate the average time it would take a string to develop a mutation. If we say, here's a string with 17 mutations from the original, we can say it took roughly 17x (however long the average rate of mutation is) and come up with an idea about how long ago that string split off.Hope that clears stuff up a bit