Why do we all descend from one common Male and one common Female?

:bravo::worship:

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There's no physical evidence to prove this.

The mtDNA Eve hypothesis is based upon a prediction done with a computer algorithm built around the observable behavior of mitochondrial DNA. It assumes that mtDNA behaves in a manner that is perfectly predictable over thousands of years and that we have infallible knowledge of the mechanism of mtDNA inheritance and how it alters across species boundaries (when one species is 'transforming' into another). All these things are open to question and are why they can't put an exact date on this alleged phenomena.

As soon as scientific theories start propping up the status quo alarm bells should start ringing.

 

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You think that the whole theory is not religious in origin?

 

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The O.P. title may be; Mitochondrial Eve is not.

 

So you have the skeletal remains of this mysterious woman from whose bones a set of mtDNA can be lifted conforming exactly, in every detail and in perfect sequence to that predicted by the computer algorithm?

 

No, but you're close.

I have her Mitochondria. Which is even better.

I don't know how much you remember from High School Biology class...
But Mitochondria have their own DNA, circular, like a plasmid; have their own ribosomes and they make their own proteins.
Called the power plant of the animal cell, the animal cell and the mitochondria work in unison to survive and function.

But it's that they have DNA that is where Mitochondrial eve comes in.
And you can see, a living cell, within our cells, with it's own DNA is much more accessible and viable than a bag o' bones.

I'm anticipating your next question deals with Genetics and how to trace lineage using DNA...

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That's not what the investigators say. For example:

A total of 2196 complete mitochondrial genomes were used in the final analyses.​

That's not what they say:

The use of genetic data to discern aspects of human prehistory, known as archaeogenetics,1 is becoming increasingly important in unravelling the human past. For phylogeographic analysis, which combines phylogenetic and geographic evidence, the nonrecombining mtDNA and Y chromosome play a pivotal role, albeit most successfully in combination with other lines of evidence within a model-defined framework.2 One important aspect of the phylogeographic approach in both haploid marker systems is the inclusion of a time frame based on the molecular clock, which makes it possible to estimate the age of lineages and often their dispersal times, without the need for an assumed demographic scenario.​

By contrast they say:

A calibration that corrects for the evident time dependency of the mtDNA mutation rate is urgently needed in order to re-establish the credibility of mtDNA in human evolutionary research, and we therefore addressed this need in this study. We first reconstructed the global mtDNA tree by using > 2000 complete mtDNA genomes and assessed the variation of different classes of mutation at different time depths, in order to test the time dependency of the mutation rate. We then recalibrated the mtDNA molecular clock by accounting for the effect of time depth (without any prior assumption on intraspecific calibration points), incorporating the most recent fossil evidence for the time of the Homo-Pan split. We also independently estimated new synonymous mutation and control-region rates for comparison and an internal control. Finally, we reassessed a number of phylogeographic aspects of human evolution in order to cross-check the new chronology.​

What does "exact date" have to do with anything? Given that there are studies that gather best evidence, how is the finding relegated to "alleged phenomena" instead of "best answer"?

They say:

The results mean that disperal-time estimates using mtDNA can be set on a new and more reliable footing. However, they also show that, contrary to the alarmist claims made in recent years, the outcome does not require a wholesale re-evaluation of the chronology of human mtDNA evolution.​

You mean science is propping up genetics? Or what?


citing http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2694979/?tool=pmcentrez

 

Well, actually, he's right when he says it's based on an algorithm: no one has the original mtDNA sequence. Is it too much assumption? Could we not be a little more polyphyletic?

 

Hi GeoffP.

I'm wanting to flush out the underlying objection. These folks don't seem to me to be overstating anything. In fact, I was impressed that they came up with what seems to be a feasible calibration method. I thought they were being balanced when they talked about applying physical evidence within the "modeling framework". Obviously modeling is required. They even go into some depth about all the models for mtDNA mutation profiles and how they addressed that. My thrust here is to find out if there's something newer to discount this, if that was recidivist's reason for discounting it.

You are of course right. It's algorithm based. But from what I gather, it's a very smart model. And with over 2k mtDNA samples to start with, it may have been one of the better sourced models than any of its kind way back in 2009 when they published.

 

We should not confuse the assumption of modern social science, like equality for all as reflecting history. What you see today dates back to the 1960's. But for thousands of years it was not like that.

Many female animals will filter mating and genetic blending based on superficial characteristics such as feathers, color, song. They could breed with more than this narrowed filtered set, since the DNA is compatible over a wider set, but the upper brain becomes the final filter. This is advanced behavior. If a species only depend on the lower brain (one eyed blind) that species is not going anywhere since it has not neural sense of direction.

In modern times, when human males generate random offspring from one night stands, these offspring have a more difficult time. This would be even worse if we did not have a social safety net and PC warm and fuzzy protection. Even now we find the need to enhanced the environment for equality. This is all modern not historical.

Even if you could cross breed, without the modern social safety net and without the modern tolerance, a half breed has it much harder. Do the math and terms of natural selection and environmental pressure.

The least environmental pressure conforms to upper brain standards which selects based on having control within the environment. This gives an advantage to genetic line stemming from two advanced parents.

 

After reading the above paper I think I was unfair in remarking that they (other animules) would have needed a #2 pencil (to give their demographics

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). There was a statement that rodent lineage has been traced back 100-200 generations, something like that.

 

So that's a no then?

 

He's actually based his entire theory on a belief, without any physical evidence of the creature he is claiming exists.

Quite unbelievable.

 

You and I have different sources. Mine says no such thing, just that they figured out how to calibrate the data.

Yours seems to be this Nature article dated 1987.

As for evidence, yeah he was knee deep in it:

It took about five years before I could drink a strawberry margarita, because it looked so much like the placental purification steps for mtDNA preparations. (I used a waring blender to pulverize tissue in the lab). ​

You think mtDNA is not evidence of anything, that whatever geneticists have to say about it should be buried under a rock and forgotten?

What's to believe. Talk about evidence. I assume from your remark you are not a pure black African. In that case you can have your DNA tested to see if you carry the full 3% Neanderthal genome as well. You're not only descended from Africans, you aren't even 100% human (Homo sapiens sapiens). That's right: the only 100% humans on Earth are all black. Hitler was right, there was a pure race, he just had the wrong one in mind.

Is that your gripe? You're not happy with your own DNA? In that case, trying to bury the evidence won't reconfigure your chemistry.

 

If you look at the modern European Union, this was not always the case. Say fifty years ago there was much more nationalism. Although these human cultures could physically interbreed, due to human DNA, the mind would override natural instinct, since the long term implications for the parents and offspring of interbreeding would not be favorable, even if the inner ape find pleasure in the short term.

In the natural world, it would be like comparing to two groups of similar animals one is placed in a favorable (social) environment, like a fertile valley and the other in hostile (social) environment, like the desert. You cannot assume both with fair as well simply because both have the same DNA. Human are not rats or rabbits. What makes humans different is the brain can override instinct, including ape behavior, and conform behavior so it optimizes in the environment. This is similar to controlling the environment.

If you consider Muslim cultures, in the middle east, they have low tolerance for deviation from their philosophical norm. They also want conformity from others who live among them. There is segregation of male and female. This is also designed with cultural purity and human monogamy in mind. If you want ape behavior and genetic diversity you blur the lines between male and female and set up a welfare state, so you can bring water to the desert.

 

I think they're seeing what they want to see, as one can find any pattern in the clouds if one looks for it. It's how the mind deals with fear, especially that of differences in a society obsessed with sweeping them under the carpet and eventually eradicating them.

You mean where I asked for physical evidence? Shouldn't you have assumed I'm actually a scientist? Oh no, wait, you've clearly invested more in this subject than simple scientific curiosity. So much sensitivity on an issue which in any other area of science would have simply been a routine matter of bring forward the empirical evidence to support the hypothesis. In this case there doesn't seem to be any.

Wow, we've already moved on to deciding who is and isn't human. I guess you, as a white liberal, are in a position to do that?

Oh dear, not only have you smashed all records for breaking Godwin's Law, you've exposed the emotional roots of your position. The need for revenge is palpable.

It seems that it is you that is not happy, hence the emotionally laden arguments to compensate for a nature in which you feel you've been unfairly treated.

Let me guess, in your mind Hitler is synonymous with the Devil?

 

@wellwisher

Gawd.

 

Ok so all of the geneticists are wrong because you say so. Any other part of the library you want burned?

Had you said something scientific, sure.

I took a moment to read the study, only because I was interested to hear what new evidence you'd found against it. And you?

You would have to reference the actual work that was done to address the actual empirical evidence that was used, at which time you would notice that what they actually said was not what you say they said.

Reading, you mean. You aren't reading the studies.

Wasn't my choice. Blame it on love. Inter-species, that is. (Sub species actually). Wait, I assumed too much, that your scientific curiosity kept you pinned to the news as this story was making headlines.

You're the one who played the ancestry card. I'm in a position to read, so I did. None of what you said correlated with what the authors* said.

Hitler is synonymous with all things pathological, particularly the Holocaust. The Devil is an emblem of religious mythology exported from Persia sometime after the conquest of Alexander ~300 BCE and before the Jewish uprising against Rome ~70 AD.

And mtDNA is what it is, information, which can be correlated with other mtDNA. Correlation is a subject of probability theory.

So far, you appear to discount genetics and paleontology. Am I to assume you discount probability theory as well? If you like, you can create a typical university curriculum and cross off all the courses you'd like to have them delete. That might cut to the chase.


*
1 Institute of Integrative and Comparative Biology, Faculty of Biological Sciences, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK

2 Laboratorio di Archeo-Antropologia molecolare/DNA antico, Università di Camerino, Camerino 62032, Italy

3 Department of Statistics, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK

4 Leverhulme Centre for Human Evolutionary Studies, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 1QH, UK

5 Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, University of Liverpool, Liverpool L3 5QA, UK

6 Fluxus Technology, Clare, Suffolk CO10 8NN, UK

7 Unidade de Xenética, Instituto de Medicina Legal, and Departamento de Anatomía Patológica y Ciencias Forenses, Facultad de Medicina de la Universidad de Santiago de Compostela, A Coruña, Santiago de Compostela 15782, Galicia, Spain

8 School of Anthropology, University of Oxford, Oxford OX2 6PN, UK
Martin B. Richards: m.b.richards@leeds.ac.uk

Corresponding author ; Email: m.b.richards@leeds.ac.uk

 

I approach this like it is a puzzle to be solved. In others words, how could you begin with a diverse human population, and then alter the situation, so the future gradually shifts to the entire population having only two common ancestors? I am doing this hypothetically to see if it is possible via some scenario.

This would not occur genetically, since the initial diverse population got that way because the genetics has diversify built into it's programming due to natural selection. As such, what you would need is a way to override genetic programming. This could be done with will power and the mind.

For example, it is not natural to eat to the point of being unhealthy and vulnerable to sickness and death. That could not be the goal of long term natural selection since it is self extinguishing. Natural selection reflects long term optimization. The excess eating is done with willpower overriding the genetics.

Relative to the problem of all from two, one simple change that would be useful is the mind shifts away from natural diversify into a form of segregation. This does not eliminate the pull of the DNA, but only represses it. The body stills wants to maintain the diversity (optimized eating) but willpower via cultural tradition says segregation (unhealthy instinct).

Since the genetic based unconscious attraction to diversity still remains, due to long term natural instinct via DNA, the conscious willpower, pushing toward segregation, will need to overcompensate, in a fanatical way.

If you had an advanced family group repressing natural instinct and overcompensating to fight the instinctive urge, there is constant hostility against what is different. Over time we form a singular blood line. This singularity blood line allows the instinct of diversity to return, but in the context of the population uniformity.

Genesis 6:4:

You need to read symbols between the lines. According to traditions there was time when humans were not acting as expected of humans of the day, but appeared to be possessed. They explain this possession via the sons god. This would imply a positive result or in the direction of evolution. I can see the repression of natural instinct, causing sublimations and overcompensations. The symbols say these unique men pass with time. They do not appear later or again since evolution is now iexpressed within the context of one blood line.

From this I would infer the pre humans that represented the diversity were tough, since they had natural instinct on their side; animal rage. But in spite of that the men of renown were even tougher due to smarts. Nature was not about to go down without a fight. But the mind was also up for the battle.

 

You appear to have deteriorated from your notion of "races" refusing to interbreed, to claiming that the nations of last century Europe did not interbreed.

Try this: try to find one actual example of two groups of people, of any kind of grouping (tribe, family, race, language, culture, religion, anything at all), at any time in history or before history, who did not interbreed.

The human sexual behavior we know and love was not invented in 1960.