>-----Original Message-----
>From: Walter Hicks [mailto:wallyshoes@mindspring.com]
>Sent: Wednesday, April 24, 2002 3:11 PM
>Sticking with the Y-chromosome: I see how genes in general can swap back
>and forth and how any given gene would have an ancestor back in the past
>somewhere. In the Y-chromosome it is easier to think about, if for no
>other reason than that it passes only from father to son and also the
>time scale seems so short!.
>
>Back some 100K years ago we have one man who has passed his
>chromosome to the entire human race. I wonder about the other humans
>who lived at that time. Certainly there were in the order of 100K men
>who had a different Y-chromosome. What happened to them? Apparently
>their descendents all died off. Would I expect that to be true? Heck no!
>--- unless they were genetically inferior. It seems really weird for
>that to have happened simply as a matter of course. In 100K years with
>an generally expanding population, I would expect the human race to have
>Y-chromosomes for many different sets of "Adams" back at that time in
>the not-so-distant-past.
Walter, no one can claim that all of the descendants of all those non-Adam's
died off. All it means is that those lineages all lead eventually to
daughters. Similarly with mtDNA Eve. All the lineages of the other women
eventually lead to sons. But that says nothing about the nuclear chromosome
genes which may be passed on down to future generations through their
daughters or sons respectively.
Shreve illustrates this:
"Let's say you are an anthropologist sometime in the
future,' he told me over dessert. 'You go to West Chicago and
find fifteen hundred families living there, all named Gablinski
and all descended from immigrags from Gdansk. It will look like
these thousands of Gablinskis were the descendants of a single
Gablinski couple who came over from Poland. Through hard work
they succeeded, becoming more numerous through the generations
and eventualoly replacing all their neighbors. But what if there
had been not just the Gablinskis who came to West Chicago, but
thousands of Poles with thousands of different names? Every time
one of these families had a generation without sons, you'd lose a
family name, right? Eventually, you'd come down to just one name
left: Gablinski! If you buy the Out of Gdansk theory like the
people who jump on the Out of Africa bandwagon, you'll assume
that ;they all came from that one original couple. But you'll be
making a mistake.
"Wolpoff's analogy is not just hypothetical. John Avise, a
geneticist at the University of Georgia who also works on mtDNA,
has pointed to the case of Pitcairn Island in the South Pacific.
In 1790, six mutineers from H.M.S Bounty arrived on the tiny
island, bringing thriteen Tahitian women with them. Few others
have ever gone there to live. Recently, a population of fifty
people on the island shared only four surnames, and one of these
was that of a whaler who had later settled on Pitcairn. Thus in
only six or seven generations, 50 percent of the six original
surnames had already disappeared. After a few more generations,
only one will remain."~James R. Shreeve, The Neandertal Enigma,
(New York: William Morrow and Co., 1995), p. 77
glenn
see http://www.glenn.morton.btinternet.co.uk/dmd.htm
for lots of creation/evolution information
anthropology/geology/paleontology/theology\
personal stories of struggle
>Walt Hicks <wallyshoes@mindspring.com>
>
>In any consistent theory, there must
>exist true but not provable statements.
>(Godel's Theorem)
>
>You can only find the truth with logic
>If you have already found the truth
>without it. (G.K. Chesterton)
>===================================
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