Re: [asa] Two questions...Ayala's article

On Wed, 25 Feb 2009, Preston Garrison wrote:

>> On Wed, 25 Feb 2009, Preston Garrison wrote:
>>
>>>> I don't agree Dick. Any number of studies
>
> the any number seems to be same as the desired number of ancestors (2) :)
>
>>>> have shown that every living person alive today can trace his or her
>>>> ancestry back to a common ancestor who lived only a few thousand years
>>>> ago, though obviously this person was not the only person alive at the
>>>> time, nor will most of us have inherited genes directly from that person.
>>>> See, e.g., Rhode, On the Common Ancestors of All Living Humans
>>>> (<http://tedlab.mit.edu/~dr/Papers/Rohde-MRCA-two.pdf>http://tedlab.mit.edu/~dr/Papers/Rohde-MRCA-two.pdf);
>>>> Chang, Recent Common Ancestors of All Present-Day Individuals
>>>> (<http://www.stat.yale.edu/~jtc5/papers/Ancestors.pdf>http://www.stat.yale.edu/~jtc5/papers/Ancestors.pdf).
>>>> A focus on "bloodlines," I think, is archaic -- that's a scientifically
>>>> meaningless term. A focus on the coalescence of genes, I think, is
>>>> foreign to the Biblical text and unproductive. The focus ought to fall, I
>>>> think, on geneology, which is what the papers referenced above discuss.
>>>>
>>>> David W. Opderbeck
>>>> Associate Professor of Law
>>>> Seton Hall University Law School
>>>> Gibbons Institute of Law, Science & Technology
>>>
>>>
>>> There's really supposed to be a common ancestor in the last few thousand
>>> years for everyone in a remote tribe in the Amazon and for every
>>> Australian aborigine? Is this a statement about how thoroughly the modern
>>> world has penetrated every corner of the planet?
>>>
>>> Again, am I missing something?
>>>
>>
>> I first learned about this several years ago from Glenn Morton on this
>> forum. I haven't taken the time to read the papers, but my impression was
>> that the conclusion was based on the observation that any individual has a
>> lot of ancestors only a few generations back. Likewise most individuals who
>> have descendants have very many after a few generations. Thus even taking
>> into account that not all the ancestors in such a calculation are distinct
>> and that descendants may mate with each other, it was concluded that one
>> did not have to go back to a time when the human population was extremely
>> small to find a common ancestor. Glenn pointed out that this didn't take
>> into account that some populations have apparently been isolated from
>> everyone else until quite recently.
>
>
> I have to go with Glenn on this. It just seems unreasonable to insist that no
> population anywhere, no matter how small, has remained isolated the whole
> time.
>
> But, the essential point seems to me to be, so what? What is the implication
> of a recent common ancestor if most of us don't actually have any DNA from
> that ancestor? What are we supposed to have inherited, a soul?
>
> Again, am I missing something here?
>
> Preston
>

As far as I know, this is just a curiosity. It probably appeals to trivia
fans.

Gordon Brown (ASA member)

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Received on Thu Feb 26 13:10:55 2009