Re: [asa] Mitochondrial Eve and Y-chromosomal Adam

Well, a quick correction to my previous post. While reading an embarrassingly bad entry on that blog, I saw that each post is signed by the author, and so I was wrong to claim that the blog is "anonymous."
Entry I was reading: http://www.idscience.org/2008/03/02/a-shocking-result/
 
>>> "Randy Isaac" <randyisaac@comcast.net> 05/07/08 3:00 PM >>>
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

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Received on Wed May 7 15:33:15 2008