[asa] Mitochondrial Eve and Y-chromosomal Adam

One of our ASA members maintains a blog http://www.idscience.org/ in which the current entry tries out a concordist approach. I don't intend to pursue that here (and will monitor the attitude of those who do!) but I did want to comment on the allusion to mitochondrial Eve and Y-chromosomal Adam. Do I recall correctly that m-Eve is dated to about 60kya and Y-Adam to about 90-kya leaving about a 30kya separation? Have their respective geographical locales been pinpointed? Are they in close proximity?

I also think it is important to reinforce the understanding that evidences for m-Eve and Y-Adam are not at all equivalent to their being the only female/male of the population at the time, just that other lineages died out some time later. But I have a question in this regard. If m-Eve were monogomous, doesn't the fact that her "husband" is not Y-Adam necessitate that there were other males living at that time? And vice versa? How is the minimum population at some time in the past determined?

Randy

To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
"unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.
Received on Wed May 7 15:03:44 2008