Hi Walter,
> If every man in the world can trace his father's father's father back to
> this "Adam", then how can there be any different father back there. I
> know for a fact that only had one father and my sister only had one
> mother. Ah, you say, through the paternal grandfather for me and through
> maternal grandmother for sis. But that only works if the former had no
> male children and the later had no female children. Otherwise, they
> could back through the same chain to Adam/Eve.
>
> Where does all the cross breeding fit in?
Both the mitochondria and the Y chromosome are passed on without
recombination (although some people think that recombination in
mitochondria may occur sometimes). For instance, your Y chromosome is
exactly the same as your father's. This facilitates a lot estimates of
coalescence times.
> Something is eluding me. Can someone (say Glenn) help?
>
The wording used in these reports is misleading. The mtDNA Eve and the Y
Chromosome Adam are known as the "most recent common ancestors." They are
not the "ultimate" ancestors. For example, if we take the flood account
"literally", our most recent "Y chromosome Adam" would have been Noah.
>
> Oh, and how can we know that all of the billions on this earth have the
> same mtDNA and XY-DNA anyhow?
By sequencing. And they are different.
Marcio
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Apr 24 2002 - 08:15:40 EDT