Scientific Adam and Eve

[Regina]

That reads a bit confused. She is defined as the unique individual who is the latest common female ancestor of all currently living humans *in a purely maternal line*. And while we are inbred in a certain sense because we probably all originate from some organism 3 billion years ago or so, there were never just 2 humans - as long as we were anything close to humans, the population size never dropped below several thousands. This is what analysis of the human gene pool tells us

My understanding of Mito-Eve is that she is the human to whom we can trace the mitochondrial mutations that we all currently share.  In other words, when she was born of her mother, she was born with certain mutations in her mtDNA that were unique to her, and that is what scientists can trace our mutations back to, hence why we can pinpoint a specific person as being our Mito-Eve.  We don't know exactly who she was, exactly when she lived, or even much about her, but we are reasonably certain that this one person existed and that she is the individual who happened to be the one whose mtDNA has persisted among the human species.

The same with Y-Adam.

Ok this makes more sense, I didn't consider the "genetic mutation" angle of it, I was thinking more in terms of evolution being too slow to suddenly pump out a new species in one generation.