(June 15, 2015 at 10:32 am)Clueless Morgan Wrote:(June 15, 2015 at 3:56 am)robvalue Wrote: When they say "woman" I assume this isn't going to be a human as we know them today, but one of our ancestors, right?
Mitochondrial Eve lived between about 100,00 and 200,000 years ago so in the timescale of evolution she was right at the time anthropologists think that Homo Sapiens became its own species. But that's kind of like looking at the electromagnetic spectrum and assigning an exact wavelength to when green ends and blue begins - there is no definite dividing line.
It's the same thing with Y-Chromosomal Adam - he lived more recently that Mitochondrial Eve so he was most definitely a Homo Sapiens.
Quote:And if you do the same on the male side, you're going to reach one of our ancestors eventually... but it's not going to be one who actually necessarily bred with the woman above.
Mito-Eve and Y-Adam lived tens of thousands of years apart. To my understanding, Y-Adam is the paternal ancestor to all males - the one from which every male can trace back his Y-chromosome whereas Mito-Eve is the woman from whom everyone, not just women, can trace their mitochondrial DNA back to (but it must be traced back through the female line only because it's passed down through the egg a woman contributes to an embryo).
Quote:So this isn't a "couple" who generated all of us as in the bible.
No.
I read an article that I linked in a different post on this thread that its plausible that they could have lived at the same time.
And please correct me if I am wrong, but I thought that speciation was the point where an evolutionary line did branch out on its own? Wouldn't this be a clear distinction in the space time continuum? ok, I don't know what that last part was supposed to mean, I just want to sound smart too :/
Why are mules for example sterile? I believe the same went for Ligers, which are real! Does evolution have a safety mechanism that keeps us equal but separate?
