Why does our mitochondreal eve trace back to 200k and out genetic common ancestor only to 80k?
410567
First lets clarify terms:\n\n'mitochondrial Eve' is our most recent common female ancestor along our matrilineal line ... i.e. if you traced back strictly mother to maternal grandmother etc., she would be the most recent common great-great-...-grandmother of all living humans.\n'Y-chromosomal Adam' is our most recent common male ancestor traced along paternal lines ... tracing back father to paternal grandfather etc., he is the most recent great-great-...-grandfather of all living humans.  (If you have trouble believing that there is such a common great-great-grandfather, see the sources.)\n\nBased on (a) the molecular clock (how fast DNA changes per 1000 years just from random mutations) and (b) how much genetic diversity we find in mitochondria and Y-chromosomes of today's humans; we estimate that mitochondrial Eve lived about 150,000 to 200,000 years ago, but Y-chromosomal Adam lived only about 60,000 to 90,000 years ago.  \n\nSo your question seems to be, why would our most recent genetic ancestor be male rather than female?\n\nThe answer is simple.   Males can make a *lot* more children in their lifetime than females can.   To quote Dawkins, "A male with a large harem finds it easy to become a universal ancestor. A female, since she is less likely to have a large family, needs a lot more generations to achieve the same feat."
424794
There was an interesting documentary on this a few days ago on Discovery Times on cable I watched the other day that explains it to my satisfaction at the time......When Adam and Eve were forged by God and cast out of the Garden of Eden and Cain and Able were born it is theorized there were other tribal humans living outside the Garden of Eden and when the groups intermixed the "Holy" families were born under one bloodline......Those folks were of somewhat African and Middle Eastern ancestry in the countries we know of as today.........And hence the variety of complexions in the human race today as we know it
1099264
you seem to be so smug in your belief of evolution.  there is no proof whatsoever of it happening.  adaptation is different.  bacteria becoming immune to antibodies is adaptation.  humans do this all the time.  the bacteria aren't changing into anything different, they are still bacteria.  \nthere is no evidence in the fossil record either to support your idea.  in fact, all evidence in the fossils says otherwise.  there is no common ancestor of humans and primates.  nowhere.  lucy was an oversized chimp.  neanderthal man is equivalent to modern man in brain capacity, body structure, and everything else, what's the difference?  you can't use the tooth of a pig to create an entire skeleton of a human, that is called fraud (piltdown man).\n\ntry these FACTS: dr. frederick hoyle did a study on the probablility of a single-celled lifeform through means of random process from the beginning of time.  the likelihood of this happening is 1 in 10 to the 40,000 power.  (anything over 1 in 1050 is considered scientifically impossible).  hoyle stated, "evolution is nonsense in the highest degree"\nthe co-discoverer of DNA, francis crick; did a similar study on the chance of one single strand of DNA happening by random chance, but the results came that the chance is so small that it is nonexistant (so close to zero it's actually there)\n\nthe alternative? intelligent design.  all evidence points to a young earth.  if the earth is millions of years old: why hasn't it stopped spinning yet?  it slows down every year?  why hasn't the sahara desert taken over the plant yet?  it's growing by the day?  why have we never seen a single star form?  why hasn't the moon left us yet?  it gets farther and farther away every year?  \n\nother science would ask: why do some heavenly bodies rotate counter-clockwise if they all resulted from the big bang?  (according to the LAW of angular conservation, they should all be spinning the same way)  why isn't there a huge vacuum (present after any explosion); but the universe is instead expanding?  (refer to newton's LAWs of relativity)  why would the population curve put the start of humanity at about 4500 years ago, if we've been around for millions?  why is the oldest tree (also the oldest living organism) only 4500 years old?  \n\nuse evolution to explain morality, emotions, intelligence, abstract thought, love, etc.  you can't.  the only plausible answer is intelligent design.  \n\nanthony flue, once the greatest known and most highly revered atheist; writing over 30 books on the subject is an oxford double-doctorate with numerous other degrees and awards.  now a theist.  the clincher?  intelligent design.  unless you think that you're smarter than this guy (and it doesn't look like it from your grammar, spelling, and theology)  study a bit more before you go bashing theists.  \n\n"when science finally comes to the top of this mountain of truth, it will see that religion has been there all along."
1052261
You are quite correct. This isn't a ground breaking observation or anything, although you did well to think of it on your own.\n\nThis is one of the major problems with hybrid animals and plants because the F1 generation is usually relatively uniform while the F2 generation can produce throwbacks to either or both grandparents. \n\nBecause the chromosomes are randomly assorted it is quite possible to produce an individual that contains little or even no genetic material from one or even two grandparents.
292034
We all had a common ancestor.  It just so happens that apes evolved differently to suit their environment than humans; we didn't evolve from each other, just divergently from our ancestor
363324
There is no proven connection at this time, hence it being a "theory." There are definite similarities, like we share 93% of the same genetic similarities with orangutans.
650039
what a troubling Q: but i agree with that 6k yrs of this planet... the carbon dating is nothing but a paleontological gibberish... the world is not a million or so yrs old... mybe they just need a lil more tyme checking the computations... one million yr wud mean a day or a week in the christian "dating" watdayathink?? (,"}
341693
The mother and child will have *nearly* identical DNA.  There will be a few mutations because mutations are ubiquitous, but 99.99+% of their DNA will be the same.
1097944
According to current theories of macroevolution, humans did not descend from apes, monkeys, or any other species currently in existence.  A large amount of research (genetic comparisons, fossil record, comparative taxonomy, etc.) suggests that humans and modern apes had ancestors in common.  \n\nOf course, we would probably consider those common ancestors to be more like apes than humans.  (Perhaps apes would consider them to be more like us?)  This is not unexpected.  Different members of a species can and do differentiate along different paths.  Some paths are pretty straight: they don't change much over time.  Some paths wind all over the place.  The paths that survive are those that are best adapted to survive in their particular environment.  Humans are so successful as a species because we've developed the capacity to adapt to almost any environment on Earth.  That's evolution!\n\nIf you want to learn more, check out the link below!
859855
Gee I dunno.  Maybe because we're the genetic leftover dregs from every civilization on this planet from 1492 to 1950?  Think about it- every decent nation threw its DNA genetic drift to either the United States or Austraila\n\nThe Chinese culture goes back thousands of years.  The culture of the US goes back maybe 140 years, considering the population density?\n\nYou are stastically correct from the perspective that the United States is the most bloodthirsty nation in history with an average of some 180 conflicts in its 240 year history
472199
Cause according to the bible (which was originally written in Hebrew but mostly read in English these days) - the world is less than 6,000 years old. So, if we had Adam and Eve around 6000 years ago, we should all be their descendants - millions of yours....
83045
"Evolutionary chains" go a long way towards explaining the development of life, including human life, from simpler organisms, but we haven't gotten very far yet in explaining how the mutation and reproduction systems that natural selection requires  got started in the first place.  Some researchers, and by that I mean mainstream ones who fully accept evolution as the fundamental organizing theory of biology, have tried to work around this problem by postulating that the original lifeforms didn't evolve on Earth at all.  However, while this changes the debate somewhat, by allowing far greater timelines for life to evolve, it still begs the question:  OK, if life evolved somewhere else first, how did it get started *there*?  I think we are much better served by looking at whether life could have evolved here, under the conditions of the primitive earth as we know them.
1069896
I agree. I have always had an answer that combines both.  When they( Adam and Eve) were banished from The Garden of Eden (punishment for eating the apple) they were told they would be amongst the lowest  life forms. Why could He not have sent them back as a bacterium, as part of punishment, with his divine plan to go through years (even millions of years) of evolution to finally be back to human form. If he is God, evolution could be part of his Divine Plan.
37891
On the whole, looking at a human pedigree (that's the tree of relationships, or family tree, for a number of people), the number of alleles probably shared decreases as the distance between individuals increases.  For instance, I am descended (supposedly) from Charlemange: I believe I'm the 37-times-great-grandchild of the man, and thus related to millions of other individuals, but the odds are very strong that if Charlemange was our closest common ancestor, we would share only those alleles that are shared by all humans...\nThe question of how closely related two organisms are, based on the similarity of their DNA is actually an interesting one, and is an area of hot activity in biology, I understand.
373493
1. Genetic analysis shows similarities among species reflecting evolutionary origins.\n\nThe main point here is that recent work has shown that the extent of genetic divergence among species is consistent with the expected separation based on the fossil record and morphological evidence. This supports the conclusions drawn from the other evidence.\n\nGenetic analysis often reveals remnants of a gene that is functional in one species but not another (i.e. a mutation occurred that made the gene non-functional, but most of the sequence is still intact). Why would God have created non-functional sequences that are extremely similar to functional genes found in related species?\n\nAlso, non-coding regions of DNA show degrees of similarity that are consistent with the expected degree of evolutionary divergence. I understand how you could argue that God was essentially working form a common genetic template for all species, but why change the non-coding regions? These differences result from mutations that do not affect the phenotype of the species in any way but accumulate over time. Non-coding regions show sequences that are conserved with changes, and the number of changes is consistent with the number of mutations that would be expected to have occurred since the approximate time of existence of most recent common ancestor.\n\n2. Many cellular and biochemical processes are conserved in a variety of species.\n\nThe point here is that virtually all cells utilize similar mechanisms of DNA replication and protein synthesis, share certain respiration pathways, and other biochemical processes. Related species show more similarities. For example, all plants are capable of photosynthesis, and utilize a virtually identical biochemical pathway to accomplish this. If you study cell biology you will find numerous examples of pathways that are common to different types of cells. I'm not going to go into this more here as it requires considerable background in cell biology. However, these biochemical similarities support they theory that all cells share a common ancestor.\n\n3. Vestigial biochemical pathways (for example, pancreatic cells are light-sensitive even though they are located deep inside the body).\n\nThese are similar to vestigial structures at the cellular level. The specific example I mentioned is the light-sensitive behavior of pancreatic cells. Basically, the pancreas is located inside the body and will never be exposed to light. However, pancreatic cells grown in vitro (i.e. in a Petri dish, test tube, etc.) demonstrate light-sensitive activation of biochemical pathways similar to that seen in the cells that form the retina. There is no reason for this behavior unless this pathway is a remnant (i.e. a vestigial pathway) of a pathway present in an ancestral cell that did have come in contact with light.\n\nThere are many other examples of vestigial biochemical pathways. Like vestigial structures, their existence is easily explained by evolution but makes no sense in the context of creationism or "intelligent design."
121908
The short interpretation is that your 100% European figure simply means that of the people in their database 100% of those you match are European. \n\nThat doesn’t mean that there aren’t also millions of African and Asians that you also match with perfectly. In fact it would be astounding if you didn’t.All it means is that those people aren’t on this company’s database. \n\nIt doesn't even mean that you match 100% of European people in their database. You might only match 1 out of the 100 Western Europeans they have tested, but that is the only person that you match, you don't match any of the Asians or Africans that they tested.\n\n  \n\nIt does not mean that 100% of your ancestors were European, nor doe sit mean that you r closest genetic match is in fat a European person. Your closest genetic match could inn fact be an Eskimo for all we know.\n\nThose tests don’t tell you much at all. They are only as meaningful as their probability of returning a correct result. If your test didn’t include a clearly stated probability the it means nothing at all.\n\nThe 100% European figure is not a probability, it’s a match. There is no such thing as “100% European”, it’s a meaningless term. There simply are no European or western European genes or even genetic sequences.  It’s possible, even probable for you to have a 100% match with some black guy living in Kenya. \n\nAll those tests do is match your sample with various other samples that have been collected  from various parts of the world.  It doesn’t actually tell you anything at all about your ancestry, it just tells you what randomly selected person you are most like genetically. They work at best as well as the number of reference samples. Most commercial operators only use a few thousand reference samples in their database. That’s approximately or useless.  \n\nEven the large databases using tens or hundreds of thousands of samples arenb;t anything like 100% reliable. How could they be? People move around a laot and always have. For example most of North Africa is descended from a Vandal sometime in the last 50 generations, and the Vandals were originally form Norway. Makes it kind of ridiculous to talk about a ‘European” genetic type.\n\n\nWhat you need to make these figures meaningful in any way at all is to contact the company and find out:\n\n1)How many people are in there databse.\n2)Where are those people located geographically TODAY\n3)How did they determine the geographic locations of those people’s ancestors?\n4)Have they made attempts to test their database against individuals of known or highly probable ancestry? If so what were the results\n5)What is the probability of their test result returning an incorrect result? What is the statistical confidence for a positive result.\n\nWithout that information the test really tells you nothing at all except that of the people they bothered to sample you matched some Britons most closely.\n\nWhat should you do now? There’s not a great deal you can do. There is some new polymorphism test now that will narrow down your ancestors to an entire continent with 95% probability. But I don’t know who conducts it, or even what you would gain form knowing that your ancestors were 95% likely to have been ‘European’ or “Asian”.
1045546
Geez Man, didn't anyone tell you yet ?\n...The real 'earthlings' were totally annihilated by our ancestors, eons ago - when they first invaded Planet Earth. Among our ancestors, the Men came from Mars, and Women from Venus.\n...We are all the proud descendants, of those brave and holy alien immigrants who came in search of the 'Promised Lands'.