Re: [asa] Humanity and the Fall: Questions and a Survey

David,

You wrote;
> If you go back far enough, humans have a single ancestor.

Individually, of course, but this isn't the present notion of Homo
sapiens speciation, is it? The current view is not a founder pair but
a founder small population in the 10K range. I have also heard a
recent report of a 2K bottleneck and near extinction event (drought
caused) about 70,000 years through a Scientific American podcast.
Haven't had a chance to follow up on the details.

> A complication on this is that human interbreeding and random loss of
> lineages means that all living humans share relatively recent
> ancestors.
>

I think I read that all human's alive have Attila the Hun as a common
ancestor!

Have you seen http://www.amazon.com/Mapping-Human-History-Common-Origins/dp/0618352104

The Ancestor's Tale by Richard Dawkins also has some nice stuff on
this little twist.

TG

________________
Terry M. Gray, Ph.D.
Computer Support Scientist
Chemistry Department
Colorado State University
Fort Collins, CO 80523
(o) 970-491-7003 (f) 970-491-1801

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Received on Fri May 2 17:24:44 2008