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

More likely it was the Spanish Inquisition that drove many Jewish men west
to the Americas.

Dick Fischer, GPA president

Genesis Proclaimed Association

"Finding Harmony in Bible, Science and History"

www.genesisproclaimed.org

-----Original Message-----
From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu] On
Behalf Of cmekve@aol.com
Sent: Thursday, February 26, 2009 12:01 PM
To: asa@calvin.edu
Subject: Re: [asa] Two questions...Ayala's article

Gordon,
As a former Coloradan, you'll appreciate this link. A friend of mine
suggested that pogroms on the Iberian peninsula drove Jews to flee to
Mexico. Eventually some folks made it to the San Luis Valley.

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/san-luis-valley.html

Karl
********************
Karl V. Evans
cmekve@aol.com

-----Original Message-----
From: gordon brown <Gordon.Brown@Colorado.EDU>
To: asa@calvin.edu
Sent: Wed, 25 Feb 2009 9:52 pm
Subject: Re: [asa] Two questions...Ayala's article

On Wed, 25 Feb 2009, Preston Garrison wrote:
 
>> I don't agree Dick. Any number of studies 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.pd
f).
>> 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.
 
Here is a tangentially related question: Knowing that there must have been
not infrequent intermarriage in the past, how many of us might be
descendants of Abraham and not even know it?
 
Gordon Brown (ASA member)
 
To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
"unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.

  _____

A Good Credit Score is 700 or Above. See
<http://pr.atwola.com/promoclk/100126575x1218822736x1201267884/aol?redir=htt
p:%2F%2Fwww.freecreditreport.com%2Fpm%2Fdefault.aspx%3Fsc%3D668072%26hmpgID%
3D62%26bcd%3DfebemailfooterNO62> yours in just 2 easy steps!

To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
"unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.
Received on Thu Feb 26 22:49:36 2009