

Father of all humankind is 340,000 years old - McKittrick
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/father-humankind-340-000-years-old-210033011.html

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arethuza
If you find this kind of thing interesting I can strongly recommend "The
Ancestor's Tale" by Richard Dawkins which looks at ~40 common ancestors we
have, not just the common ancestors of all humanity, but common ancestors with
chimps, gorillas, all the way back to the Last Universal Ancestor - the
beastie that all life has as an ancestor:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ancestor%27s_Tale>

~~~
tubelite
+100 for "The Ancestor's Tale". There's a nice illustration there regarding
the existence of Henry, a shrew who _must_ have been the ancestor of all
humans, and his brother Eric, who might well have been the ancestor of all
aardvarks (but not any humans).

Dawkins has written better books - The Greatest Show on Earth is perhaps the
best introduction to evolution - but I have a special affection for Ancestor's
Tale, because it was while reading it that I finally 'got' evolution, and
experienced a sort of minor enlightenment. You know, the one where you stare
into space with a foolish grin, as answers to a hundred questions which have
been at the back of your mind ever since you could remember suddenly start
pouring in.

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Strilanc
You might wonder: why should there be a single common-father in the first
place? Why not a non-singleton set of common fathers all the way back to near
the point where the questions becomes odd because you're dealing with
hermaphrodites and/or asexual reproduction?

See: Galton-Watson process (
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galton%E2%80%93Watson_process> )

> The Galton–Watson process is a branching stochastic process arising from
> Francis Galton's statistical investigation of the extinction of family
> names.

~~~
piokoch
As far as modern evolution theory teaches as (not original Darwin
absurdities), new species arises in the course of genetic mutation. Mutations
are kind of random and quite rare, so it is unlikely that the mutation leading
to birth of homo sapiens happened many times. Looks like we have one common
ancestor, the "chromosomal Adam".

~~~
ithkuil
honest question: can you please point out some of the original Darwin
absurdities?

The more I read about it, the more it seems that Darwin got right more things
that he's usually accredited. I.e. he's depicted as father of the original
idea but that it was only a rough prototype. But, according to evolutionist
like Richard Dawkins, there no good new theories actually displacing the core
concepts, and which don't merely refine or provide slightly different
interpretation of some statistical cases (like Gould's Punctuated equilibrium
theory).

Given the amount of funded anti Darwin bashing, I wonder if your comment is
based on actual knowledge or some distorted information. Can you please
elaborate?

~~~
barry-cotter
His Darwin bashing is probably bullshit. Given that Darwin didn't have a
theory of discrete (Mendelian) inheritance he got a truly insane amount right.
There are things in _Origin of Species_ that were ignored for generations and
when investigated were incredibly fruitful in understanding evolution, like
sexual selection.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
And cows - whales are descended from cows ancestors too!

He just threw that one off the cuff :-)

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RK
Just a side note: They quote a person from the Ronin Institute, which is a
virtual research institute for independent academics. They've received a fair
amount of press as an alternative model for scholarship / academia.

<http://ronininstitute.org>

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lunaru
Honest question: Let X be the single common-father. What was X-1? That is,
what was X's dad? Not human?

~~~
Sharlin
The article uses somewhat confusing language, but I think this is about the
most _recent_ common patrilinear ancestor; now older than what was assumed
before. So, the father of a patrilinear MRCA would obviously also have been a
common ancestor, but not the most recent one.

"Patrilinear" means that all male humans can trace a path to the ancestral
individual that contains only males. Whether the same individual is also the
ancestor of all living females cannot be known based on the Y-chromosomal
evidence.

If we allow paths that contain both males and females, the MRCA of all living
humans may have lived remarkably close to the present time - circa 3000 BCE,
based on many estimates.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Most_recent_common_ancestor>

~~~
lsd5you
Can 3000 years be even close to being true? What about, for example,
aboriginals in Australia. Is it not believed that they were an isolated
population for 40,000-50,000 years?

~~~
prawn
Wikipedia: "An explanation of this recent MRCA date is that, while humanity's
MRCA was indeed a Paleolithic individual up to early modern times, the
European explorers of the 16th and 17th centuries would have fathered enough
offspring so that some "mainland" ancestry by today pervades remote habitats.
The possibility remains that an isolated population with no recent "mainland"
admixture persists somewhere, which would immediately push back the date of
humanity's MRCA by many millennia. While simulations help estimate
probabilities, the question can be resolved only by genetically testing every
living human individual."

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kyberias
Please understand this correctly. This refers to the "Y-cromosomal Adam", or
the Most Recent Common Ancestor (MRCA) patrilinearly [1]. It is important to
understand that some contemporaries of the MRCA are ancestors of no one in the
current population. In other words, when that human lived, there were humans
living concurrently that represented the same species (Homo) but their family
line does not reach the current time.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y-chromosomal_Adam>

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qwertzlcoatl
340,000 years as of the time yahoo posted this story, or as of the time the
study paper was published, or what? At what time was he born (UTC)?

Not so long ago it was proven "The father of all men is 170,000 years old."

If we determine every time that the most recent research is correct, we make
all future research obsolete.

Here is a much better link : [http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn23240-the-
father-of-al...](http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn23240-the-father-of-
all-men-is-340000-years-old.html)

Scientific Paper : <http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ajhg.2013.02.002>

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StefanKarpinski
It concerns me that a single individual's chromosome can bump up the common
ancestry age estimate from 170,000 to 340,000 – doubling it. That indicates
that this estimate is incredibly sensitive to outliers. How can we know that
finding another person with interesting ancestry isn't going to bump up the
estimate by another factor of two?

Also: regarding "The Ancestor's Tale" – this is probably the best non-fiction
book I've ever read. If this kind of thing interests you at all, do yourself a
favor and read it.

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benpbenp
Does any one know, is there any chance that any advanced, isolated
civilisations arose-- tens of thousands of years before the agricultural
revolution that we know of?

~~~
arethuza
I guess it is possible, but without any actual evidence this would just be
speculation.

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billpg
Interesting to think that if there were a disaster that killed off a whole
continent of people, the title of most-recent-ancestor of all _living_ humans
would move to someone else.

That's, after all, what we'd be primarily thinking about in that event.

~~~
dizzystar
This may have already happened but in much larger magnitude than you realize:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_catastrophe_theory>

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jayfuerstenberg
I wonder what the bible thumpers have to say about this.

~~~
FaddiCat
Bible thumper here.

As science it's pretty interesting.

Because it _seems_ to say that all humanity comes from one father it's also
interesting, and I'm sure I'll hear plenty about it on my Facebook feed.

But still, it's not harmonious with a strictly literal interpretation of
Genesis, so it's hardly confirmation that the strictly literal interpretation
is correct.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
So, is that an example of reclaiming the word "bible thumper" for the moderate
wing - very classily done btw.

I just love this stuff on all humanities shared family tree - especially as I
did not read the first paragraph carefully and thought they had discovered the
340,000 year old man was called Albert Perry !

Humanity it seems has travelled, adventured and loved all over the world for
far longer than we can imagine - its a privilege to be part of such an
inspiring history.

~~~
chinpokomon
My first pass, I thought Albert Perry lived 340,000 years ago too. I think
this article needs an editor. :-)

~~~
lifeisstillgood
Glad its not just me.

I would love the next human ancestor to be named Albert Perry in honour of the
article, much like Lucy.

