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The Shallow Roots of the Human Family Tree
An anonymous reader writes to mention an AP story about research discussing the relatively recent origins of every human on earth. Despite the age of our species, every human on earth can trace their ancestry back to someone who may have lived as recently as the Golden Age of Greece (around 500 BC). From the article: "It is human nature to wonder about our ancestors -- who they were, where they lived, what they were like. People trace their genealogy, collect antiques and visit historical sites hoping to capture just a glimpse of those who came before, to locate themselves in the sweep of history and position themselves in the web of human existence. But few people realize just how intricately that web connects them not just to people living on the planet today, but to everyone who ever lived."
Relatively recent origins? You mean, like, everyone on Earth today was born within the last 125 years? Duh!
Oh, you mean ancestry... Yeah, every dates back to the monkey-that-wasn't-a-monkey having babies. Duh.
More recent than that?
OH! Maybe you mean: Everyone is connected by a common ancestor a LOT more recently than people think is possible!
Maybe you just should have said that.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
Makes you wonder why children take the male's family name
A: You live in a patrilineal society.
Not everyone has live or currently does live in such a society. Arguably, matrilinealization is the more intuitive method, becase you can be pretty certain who is the mother of the child.
What?
The fact is, we live in the present, and that's what is important. I couldn't care less if your great-great-grandmother was the queen of spain, or if your grandfather's second cousin's dad was a slave. That needn't have any effect on how I interact with you.
it's a blue bright blue Saturday hey hey
Plan 9 from Bell Labs.
Given the worldwide geographical spread of Homo sapiens it's a believable number. As recently as 75,000 years ago we lost around two thirds of the population in the Lake Toba eruption and there have been a fair few fluctuations since then.
The stuff later in the article is interesting. One question it raises is the effect of the increases in travel will have on the genetic mix. Traditionally the vast majority of the population married someone within a small radius of their initial home. As larger numbers of people move further away there could be some interesting effects.
No it wouldn't. Despite the wealth of information available today, racists will consider people with different color skin or slightly differently shaped eyes to be less than human. There is no rationale behind it whatsoever and having a pedigree to show that say, (for the most common example) a white supremacist and Martin Luther King Jr. share common ancestors 60 or so generations back would not change their attitudes.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Essentially, the article is implying that people in all geographical areas have been in interbreeding contact with peoples of all other geographical areas--within the last 5000 years!
It seems like some kind of feel-good rhetoric (we are all one people). Prove it.
The article says all humans alive today can trace their ancestry to one person who lived between 5000 and 2000 BC. I call bullshit on that one. Have a look at the various places on Earth humans had already migrated to during that time frame, and you'll quickly realize that this theory is flawed somewhere. I suspect that this article has other motives.
By the article's argument, when you go back 40 generations, you have 2^40 ancestors, or 4 quadrillion ancestors. This is clearly impossible. There simply weren't that many people alive then. So how do you explain the discrepency of numbers? Massive global inbreeding. Go back 10 generations, and you'll find that your family tree branches back on itself many times. The "mathematical" proof that everyone's related is not proof at all. There's nothing to indicate truly common ancestry. In fact, the current level of mobility that many people experience is orders of magnitude greater than what most kings experienced even as little as 500 years ago. It's a silly article.
So the daily sectarian massacres in Iraq are just a little brotherly disagreement?
It looks to me like your desire to hate the US government has overridden your capacity for rational thought.
Same here, it seems if ye do try to track them in England, ye can't because so many Americans' ancestors were weirdos who didn't register their babies with the Church of England.
:) Just a thought, I am not a genealogist.
But if they left because of debt (referring to the parent), then maybe you can find records relating to the debt that may point to another source which would have genealogically-useful information? The church is pretty good at keeping records, and so are people who are owed significant amounts of money
m0nstr42.blogspot.com
Every human on Earth can trace our ancestries to someone who lived as recently as the Abraham Lincoln administration. Unless they spent some generations on another planet, or were recently created by an upstart god who got funding for Creation 2.0.
Really, what an insipid take on human descent. The writers might find plenty of inspiration in thinking that every warring religious faction is made of mere cousins. But the real agenda here is to say that our "common ancestors" were Adam and Eve, cryptoreligious "science" that insists the world was created around 6-7000 years ago. Statistical oversimplifications claiming "mathematical certainty" are easy meat for half-bright reporters. But when they don't bother to explain how isolated populations like deep Amazonian tribes factor into the "probability model", it's clear they're looking for data to fit their foregone conclusion. People who first encountered Europeans in the past few dozen years, whose ancestors migrated from Asia probably 30,000 years ago, are the obvious distant relatives to explain, not Palestinians and Jews who have already been experimentally demonstrated.
--
make install -not war
The test is probably real, it's just that there isn't really set "race genes."
That's because "race" is far more of a social phenomenon than a biological phenomenon, and the obsession with defining or determining which race a person belongs to is something that does not stem from anything other than politics and sociology. It is a question that no biologist would ever think to ask, because race is not a useful or interesting biological category. There are two reasons for this.
The first is that few if any racial characteristics show any significant discontinuity in the population at large--the lightest-skinned "black" person is lighter than the darkest-skinned "white" person. Without such discontinuities the idea of race becomes entirely arbitrary, based on a line drawn for purely political purposes.
The second is that insofar as there are relatively-disconnected pools of genes in the human population, they are small and don't last very long because of our aggressive pursuit of exogamy (breeding outside our kin-group). Most primate species practice inbreeding more than outbreeding. In humans it is rather the opposite. In simple terms, most of us are of mixed race. This is especially true of North Americans with regard to mixing of blacks and whites, for well-known reasons.
Anyone who believes that "racial purity" is either possible or desirable is merely proclaiming their ignorance of human biology.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
Yeah, it's BS. Consider the Australian aborigines. Or the people of New Guinea. Or even native Americans. It nonsensical on the face of it.
--MarkusQ
The offspring of an Eskimo-African couple will typically have a stronger set of genes than the offspring of an Eskimo-Eskimo couple, a German-German couple, or a Vietnamese-Vietnamese couple.
This makes no sense.
The offsprings of to compleatly healthy parents can only get a genetic defect by external influences, like virus infections during pregnancy, posions(chemicals) or radiation etc.
If the parents have 100% perfect genes, the children will have as well. No matter how close the parents are related.
Your above conclusion is completely wrong, a mildly genetic defected Vietnamse (lets say red/green colour blind defect on one cromosome, not on both) and a mildly defected Escimo (Inuit) (lets say mongoloism on one chromosome) will have:
25% completely healthy children (neither red/green colour blindness nor mongoloism got transfred but the healthy parts of the paretns chromosome sets)
25% will only have the colour blindness genes from
one
parent but the healthy set of the Escimo (which results in a not colour blind offspring, but he weares the defect)25% will only have
one
chromosoem set defected by mongoloism, but be healthy as the chromosomes from the other parent will fix it25% will have both defects, but the opposing set of the other parent will fix it, so they appear not ill.
Bottom line all offsprings appear healthy but 75% of them wear the defect genes.
OTOH if 2 parents with both a defect on only one chromosome (red/green colour blind) get children it looks like this:
25% are completely healthy, inheriting the non defect copy of the chromosome from each parent
25% have the defect chromosome from the mother, but appear healthy
25% have the defect chromosome from the father, but appear healthy
25% have the defect chromosome from the mother
AND
the defect chromosome from the father and appear illConclusion: interbreeding in a narrow gene pool only has a negative effect if there are defect genes in it (or get added by mutating effects). As long as parents "appear" not ill and only "carry" the defect the defect gene is "thinned" out over several generations
if
only completely healthy (no defect at all) mates come into the bloodline. The idea that 2 mildly defected groups of seperated populations will "heal" their combined offsprings is completely wrong, in fact 25% of them will be more ill than the parents.Contrary to popular beliefe, there is
no
stronger set of genes , either it is defect or it is not, and the way how it is inherited by offsprings is simple combination.angel'o'sphere
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Take a native american in the 1700s. Is he descended from some greek guy 3000 years earlier? I have my doubts -- if I recall my anthropology, the natives came here long before Greece was a major power. If there are any purebred native americans around today, then you'd have to go back a lot more than 3000 years to find an ancestor that he has in common with, say, a bushman in Africa.
I don't think the OP is pretending that Shia-Sunni hostility doesn't exist, but rather that it is abused as a convenient label to slap on all internal Iraqi problems, and that such slapdash analysis ignores the fact that in large number of cases Shi'ites and Sunni live in peace.
I could have done without the "bushco" dig in the OP though. I have little but contempt for Bush and his advisors and honestly think they are the worst leadership this nation has ever had, but name calling lowers the level of the conversation.
It only takes one European crossing the ocean to make Americans start popping out babies with European heritage. Let simmer a few generations and the whole idea becomes plausible.
Note that it could just as easily have been a lone American crossing to Europe.
And now, a PSA from David Lynch.
There is no rationale behind it whatsoever and having a pedigree to show that say, (for the most common example) a white supremacist and Martin Luther King Jr. share common ancestors 60 or so generations back would not change their attitudes.
I agree it won't change their attitude, but given the deplorable fact of extensive inter-breeding between mostly black slaves and mostly-white plantation owners prior to the Civil War, it is extremely likely that a white supremacist in the U.S. South and Martin Luther King Jr. would share a common ancestor a lot less than 60 generations back.
The idea of "racial purity" is a myth for stupid people, and as more knowledge of human genetics and human ancestry accumulates this will become so obvious that even people stupid enough to be racists will have a hard time avoiding it. We will find there is a literal handful of "racially pure" people on the planet, and they will be from isolated tribes who simply lacked the opportunity to practice the vigorous out-breeding that is part of humanity's evolutionary modus operandi.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
I've just completed a bachelor's degree in Biology and a graduate level course in evolutionary genetics and I have never heard of these kinds of statements from any scientific source. In fact, the only place I have heard them from were from people who stress racial purity and--more specifically--white supremacy.
Regardless, what you're saying is ridiculous. Humans are the most prolific mammal on the face of the earth; we're everywhere. We are this way because it is our nature to be both curious and aggressive. You're not giving our ancestors or the human drive for exploration enough credit. Besides, even under your theory, how did the individual ethnic groups arrive in their respective regions were it not for this migration, mmm? (Hint for the uninitiated: the typical answer to this is "God put them there.")
For any human population a certain number of migrants is a given. This inevitably creates geneflow between populations which are otherwise isolated. The result is that human populations are generally homogenous, despite the great geographic distances separating the groups themselves. A very extreme example of this effect is demonstrated with ring species, whose sub-populations are actually infertile with one another (clearly not the case with people) but still maintain a common character (ie. they do not diverge) because of geneflow.
To be certain, there are differences between racial and ethnic groups, but these differences are superficial and do not reflect the genome as a whole. Scientific studies of DNA microsattelites have confirmed this time and time again. In fact, the study in the article is just one of many.
Yes and no. What you're talking about is a homozygous advantage. For many populations this is true--but not for people. Why? Because we aren't necessarily beholden to our environments anymore. If you're less tolerant of the sun, you can wear sunscreen. If you're less tolerant to the heat, you can get air conditioning. Even in the most extreme cases, homozygous advantage doesn't apply. For instance, populations that have lived in the Andes mountains have developed genetic adaptations that allow them to breathe in much lower concentrations of oxygen than normally allowed. And yet, still, most tourists to these mountains are still able to survive (and even enjoy themselves) by supplementing their oxygen.
But if no the environment, what are humans subject to? Their own genes. To some extent this can be compensated for. (I know I for one would probably have died in ages past because of my nearsightedness.) But even with today's technology, genetic defects are often untreatable and sometimes fatal. This is particularly relevant in the case of recessive genetic disorders, where the extreme effects of a homozygous recessive trait can be masked. This creates a situation where heterozygotes are superior, because of a reduced likelihood of genetic disorders. I'm pretty sure this is the scientific basis of the OP's more-simplified statements.
In practice, however, this is often difficult to take advantage of because our assignment of race is completely arbitrary and based upon the phenotype of an individual and not his or her genotype. So, for instance, a black and white couple in Claxton, Georgia (a historic site of genetic samplin
My "common sense" was rebelling as well, until I figured out I used the wrong model of thought. This is not about genetic relatedness. It's about family trees. You may have only inherited a 1/2^40 fraction of your great-[37 more "great"s]-grand-father's genes (which is probably less than a single base pair!). But he's still 100% your ancestor. Genetic inheritance and ancestry are two entirely different concepts.
This also explains the thing about "corners of the gene pool that just don't mix very much". They don't need to for the concept of ancestry. A single migrant is enough to hand down his entire family tree to an entire population, while their DNA is quickly dissolved in the local gene pool.
Offtopic, but I feel it is important to point out that there is a great deal of difference between matrilineal organization and matriarchy. Matriarchy is where the women hold political, social, and/or religious power. In a matriarchy, the women are the primary owners of private property, and make the decisions that affect what the group will do. There are almost no examples of matriarchal societies in human history. That is not to say that a few have not popped up, but they are very rare and far between. On the other hand, a matrilineal society is one in which inheritence (of name, property, clan association, moity association, position, &c.) is passed through the female line. Generally, men are still in charge, but relationships are tracked by way of the female line.
Rhapsody in Numbers
Truganini was the last Tasmanian.
This one really gets Native Tasmanians going. True, there don't seem to be any left of non-mixed descent, but horny white sealers made damned sure the race didn't die out completely. There are still quite a few Tasmanian Aborigines in Tasmania today, and they get really upset when they get told they don't exist.
A good argument for matrilinealism!
Cogito, ergo sig.
"Arguably, matrilinealization is the more intuitive method, becase you can be pretty certain who is the mother of the child."
There's an easy solution. Assume that Mrs. Smith marries Mr. Jones. They take the family name Jones-Smith. Their daughters, upon marrying, drop "Jones" (the father's name). Their sons, upon marrying, drop "Smith" (the mother's name). So if Ms. Jones-Smith marries Mr. Jefferson-Clark, they couple takes the name Jefferson-Smith. A person would then share a name with their father, grandfather, great-grandfather, etc, as well as their mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, etc.
You've described the essence of the traditional naming scheme in Iberia (Spain, Portugal). There's inconsistency about whether the paternal name comes first or last. The upper classes often preserve more than just two names, and sometimes tack on "de" and a place name. Most people just use two family names, though, which probably saves them a lot of writing over a lifetime.
Of course, in most of Europe, family names often only go back a century or two, before which people had just a given name that could be augmented by a profession or place of origin or a descriptive term. Or just "'s son", which is often specific enough in a typical village. In Iceland, they still don't use family names, just patronymics.
I know a number of people from Scandinavia who have a specific last name because their parents or grandparents bought a farm, and they adopted the farm's name (whose origin is often lost to history).
A similar thing was done by the UK's royal family. They adopted the family name Windsor in 1917 to dissociate themselves from their German ancestors. They were at war with Germany, and wanted to sound English. Windsor was, of course, the name of one of their castles. A quick google for "Windsor royal family name" gets nearly 3 million hits, so you can easily read lots of takes on this particular family name.
My favorite name from my family tree is Cameron, which is a simplified spelling of a Scots Gaelic phrase meaning "broken nose". It seems there was this particularly belligerent fellow who was a clan leader, and a lot of his relatives decided to adopt that insult as their name, as a way of thumbing their noses at the taunters.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
The article fails to consider the Australian Aborigines, who crossed into Australia via a land bridge from Asia around 40,000 - 50,000 years ago. It's an interesting mathematical trick, but their result is so obviously empirically false, so I doubt their research even after excluding the Aborigines and other populations known to have been isolated from the rest of the world for many thousands of years. The parent gets the time period for the arrival of Aborigines in Australia correct, but is incorrect in asserting that they walked there over a land bridge. A no time during hominid history would you have been able to walk to Australia. The deep water trench between Bali and Lombock and between Borneo and Sulawesi (the so-called Wallace Line) marks fartherest you could have walked from Asia. Given there's generally been deep water between Timor and the rest of the eastern Indonesia archepelago and between Timor and Australia, the original Aborginies probably had to make three pretty sizeable water-borne leaps at a long before there is any archelogical evidence anywhere that people are using boats. This makes the mere existence of Aborigines in the Australia for that length of time is pretty astounding.
I have always expected that there would be a movement where a man and woman get married and pick a new family name.
;-). They recently renewed their passports, and sent in requests for a name change to their new combined last name. One was accepted (because they are legally married), one was rejected (because US federal law doesn't recognize same-sex marriage). Two different bureaucrats, two different decisions in exactly the same case.
...
I know a number of couples who have done this. Actually, in each case they combined their original names in some clever way to make a combinatin that they liked.
I've heard a number of lawyers explain that in all US states except Louisianna, the laws about names go back to English Common Law, where the rule was that you can use any name you like, as long as it isn't fraudulent. You can't pick a famous name and pretend to be that person, and you can't change your name to escape debts or prosecution. But if your name change (as in a marriage) is published in the official records, that constitutes public notice and you can't be charged with fraud after the change is officially published. They usually say this to explain why there's no legal problem with a woman keeping her original name after marriage. But I've also heard this used to explain why a couple that makes up a new family name and writes it on their marriage registration is fully within their rights, regardless of what ideas others may have on such things. And, historically speaking, neither practice is especially new or unusual in the English-speaking parts of the world.
Funny story: One such couple is two women who recently married here in Massachusetts, where it has been legal for a few years (and so far it hasn't destroyed any mixed-sex marriages that anyone knows of, even if a lot of men think they're both very attractive women
Of course, having a different name on your passport and other ids isn't at all unusual. Newly-married women routinely find themselves in this situation, and it doesn't seriously interfere with travelling. This couple mostly think it's funny. "Guess what those idiots in the passport office just did."
What I'm looking forward to is the fun of watching US law adapt to the slowly-growing Muslim population. I can see a couple going off to Morrocco or Indonesia on vacation and coming home with a new wife in the family. I wouldn't be surprised if this has happened already, but they kept it quiet and didn't try to get official papers changed. But it's just a matter of time, and it'll be fun to follow the outrage and consternation from the bigot crowd, while the lawyers calmly ask what laws have been broken
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Um, what the heck are you talking about? I'm not an expert in transplantation, but I'm familiar enough to know that what you're saying sounds like complete BS: a person's race is neither predictive nor particularly significant compared to all the other important factors. You're talking as if race were more important than blood type, which is pure crazytalk. I don't know what doctors told you this, but it sounds more like you heard what you wanted to hear.
Differences in race are both fairly minor AND have more variance than they do absolute differences. Lactose tolerance is a particularly goofy example, because it's both such a minor difference AND still not as universal as you make it out. Not all Asians are lactose intolerant, and not all people from Wales aren't. There is no medical feature that's both universal to and unique to any "racial" group.
I knew that racism was still a major cultural problem in China, but this takes the cake.
Authors don't understand the pigeonhole principle:
(From the FA): "Keep going back in time, and there are fewer and fewer people available to put on more and more branches of the 6.5 billion family trees of people living today. It is mathematically inevitable that at some point, there will be a person who appears at least once on everybody's tree."
No, not at all. You could have, for example, two completely separate branches of humanity (say one in the Americas and one everywhere else) that never interbred except at the very beginning of the human species. Pigeonhole Principle. The only thing thats mathematically inevitable is that at least two ancestors somewhere is shared. Somewhere. For example, mathematically, a very prolific couple could have been responsible for all X billion people minus a small group living in an uncharted area, whose roots go all the way back to the beginning.
Bad math, shame on the authors for writing it.
maybe some one else mentioned this already and i just missed it but doesnt it seem a bit absurd to anyone else the suggestion that humanity's one common ancestor was around during the golden age of greece? how the hell would said ancestor make it down into australia or the americas fast enough to become the single common ancestor for all of humanity? i'm certain that south america and australia still have blood lines that havent been touched by individuals from outside their continent and those populations were established well before the golden age of greece.
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
Two points to make:
1. No need to get partisan about the Hindu / Muslim thing in this debate. A Muslim might say that Islam shows more respect for women's equality, right to choose her path in life etc as evidenced by its very progressive views on divorce whereas Hindu doctrine requires women to be burned when their husbands die. This is of course an inflammatory gloss over the subtleties of both religions (excuse the pun) but that's my point - let's not go round and round the mulberry bush.
2. I don't agree with your example of the woman being the 'real' power in the house as being an example of matriarchal society. The same is true of most societies. It's apparent in the (western) feminist critique of the western liberal doctrine of the divide between private/public spheres. And if we were to adopt that distinction, it would quickly become apparent that a matriarchal society is one in which women hold power in public spheres. Maybe the Kerelan example suggested by a fellow poster - not familiar enough to judge myself.
Anyway, just my 2 cents.
Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will! - Antonio Gramsci.
>>Although there is no gene/set of genes that determine "race" because it is a social concept, the term is most likely used when a certain combination of genes that is prevalent in a "race" is found in a person.
The point is that there is no gene or set of genes which determines race. Rather there are frequencies of genes which differ by region. In the tropic areas darker skin is more common, this is not to suggest there is a gene or gene set is unique to any group. Certainly there are probably a number of people commonly thought of as white who have a functional gene for skin melanin, just as the other allele is very likely present within other populations.
The point is, within the gene pool the divisions of "race" are artificial. Subsets of genes within a certain range are not a valid basis for anything. This is the reason the test cited by the above post is due to fail, because you can't mark any gene as being restricted to any one "race".
Genetically we are not white, black, asian, mexican, hawaiian, german, dutch, danish, irish, middle eastern, or jewish... we are human. The only time race matters is when people think that race matters.
You can however, very accurately trace lineage with genetics. Given the Y chromosomes of every man on the planet you could track down anybody's family and how related they are to any other man. Given mitochrondrial DNA you could do the same for the maternal line. Given all the genes as a whole and all the junk DNA in them, you could track down anybody and exactly how they fit into global family tree. We could trace down each individual gene to it's source and assemble an amazingly complete ancestor list (nameless ofcourse) in the process.
Genes are very very real, races on the other hand are pretty much nonsense.
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
Article 3 Section 1 -- The following ordinance shall be irrevocable without the consent of the United States and the people of this State:
First: -- Perfect toleration of religious sentiment is guaranteed. No inhabitant of this State shall ever be molested in person or property on account of his or her mode of religious worship; but polygamous or plural marriages are forever prohibited.
Certain local law enforcement may look the other way, however.
The GP's larger argument that objection to bigamy is bigotry is fatally flawed, however, and implicitly accepts the thesis of the "same-sex marriage will lead to people marrying animals" crowd. Over the course of the 20th century, marriage evolved from a property transaction, where ownership of a woman (who could not vote or own property in many places) was transferred from one family to another, into a partnership between two individuals with equal rights under the law. Gender is currently entirely irrelevant to the social and legal purposes of marriage (tax and probate implications, hospital visitation rights, parental rights, right not to testify against one's spouse, etc.). Allowing more than two people to marry, on the other hand throws a wrench into all the modern purposes of marriage (e.g. all members of a criminal conspiracy could marry each other to avoid being testified against).
This is slashdot. You would be equaly corrected (if not flamed, scolded and ridiculed) for making similar mistakes about Star Trek, Tolkien or The Simpsons plots.
^]:wq!^M