Scientific Adam and Eve

[Clueless Morgan]

@CM,

So are you saying I'm not completely wrong then? I'm not sure whether you quote me to disagree on a specific point or to elaborate further

To elaborate further and to clarify when speciation occurs.  It seemed like you were still unclear about what Mito-Eve meant.

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.

(I'm going off memory so I'm going to get stuff wrong but here's another example)

There is a family in Northern Italy that has a mutation that makes them very tolerant to high levels of cholesterol, levels that in other people would guarantee that they develop heart disease, clogged arteries and other related health problems, but this family's mutation makes them sort of "immune" to such problems. This mutation has been traced back to a single ancestor, a man who lived in the late 1700s who lived long enough to father children and pass this mutation on such that it has survived to this day in a town in Northern Italy. If this mutation continues to spread throughout the human population such that in 100,000 years every human has this mutation, this man would be considered the most recent common ancestor, the Cholesterol-Resistance-Adam if you will, in the way that Mito-Eve is considered the most recent common ancestor from which everyone can trace their mtDNA.

When we're talking about Mito-Eve and Y-Adam, we're talking only about that one aspect of their genetics that proliferated throughout the species. If you trace back any other specific gene you could theoretically trace it back to its own Adam or Eve, the creature from which that gene mutation originated.