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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."
Oh yea, because a statistician and a computer scientist are so infallible to being with, put them together and the result must be absolutely perfect!
That timeline seems absolutely ridiculous.
Funny post!
No idea why it has been modded troll though... I have noticed that a lot of posts have been modded troll recently for no reason. What's up with the moderating system? Isn't meta-moderating supposed to remove problematic moderators?
I'll probably be modded down for this...
"I have always expected that there would be a movement where a man and woman get married and pick a new family name. It just seemed logical to me. Neither party has to take the other's name, and they also get to share a common family name which would symbolise the bond."
I have trouble picturing this. Part of the reason to take the family name is to honor the parents.
"Derp de derp."
"Does that mean one of the couple in the case of a "traditional" marriage (i.e. - one taking the other's name) is being dishonorable to their/their mate's parents?"
In my eyes, no. To me, that's like calling myself a life saver because I haven't killed anybody today. However, I'll concede that others may not agree with me on that. In that case, we could both find people that would agree with either of us.
"It would seem more logical to change the family name altogether (perhaps in such a way to include both family names) if honor was the case."
Erm, sorry man, I'm having trouble wrapping my head around that idea. Maybe I'm just stuck in my ways. I grew up hearing a lot of "my daddy, my daddy's daddy, my daddy's daddy's daddy..." stories. Shedding the family name feels like I'm saying "I don't want to be associated with you, dad."
Maybe I'm just not in tune with enough people to understand where you're coming from, but it is difficult for me to picture an uprising in popularity of what you're suggesting. That and we see women all the time identified along with their maiden name.
"Derp de derp."
Oh, did they discover it AGAIN? They seem to discover a new "ark" every other month. It always turns out to be some random rock formation in some totally new location that some team of nutcases have convinced themselves is petrified wood (even though there are no rings, but of course they always have some random ad hoc "explanation" for that too).
How many times must we go through this before people stop being taken in by charlatans and true-believers? This isn't much different than the "true cross" craze.
Yep, good old Nero the antichrist, known for his mark of 666 (or 616 depending on the Greek translation), should have not been so hard on the Christians. :(
I wonder how different the world would be had Christianity and eventually Islam had not caused the Roman empire to implode upon itself, and burned or destroyed anything that argued against the agreed upon tenants of the Abraham religions.
What a waste.
Jesus and Mohammad suck. Stop worshiping them and maybe we will finally be able to create our own utopia while we are alive, and not just hope we end up in one when we die.