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

If you read a concordist book on this such as Fuz Rana's "Who Was Adam," to
his credit, he doesn't claim that m-Eve and Y-Adam prove there was a literal
Adam and Eve. What he says is just that these data are consistent with the
general idea of individual founders. The data discrepancies are
acknowledged but problems with calibration are also noted. The real
problem, though, is the question of minimum population size, which has to do
with the population necessary to account for presently observed genetic
diversity, and isn't answered at all by m-Eve or Y-Adam. If the allelic
diversity isn't addressed, m-Eve and Y-Adam are just red herrings.

On Wed, May 7, 2008 at 3:00 PM, Randy Isaac <randyisaac@comcast.net> wrote:

> 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
>

-- 
David W. Opderbeck
Associate Professor of Law
Seton Hall University Law School
Gibbons Institute of Law, Science & Technology
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