12-01-2008, 07:48 PM
davester wrote:
[quote=JoeH]
Misstated facts to boot. The genetic markers actually imply a small, related group of women about 150,000 years ago and the same for males at the other point in time. It was articles in the popular, not scientific press that "exaggerated" the story to a single ancestor.
Do you have information to back that up? Here's the link I intended to cite (I don't know how that car salesman link got in there): http://www.finfacts.com/irelandbusinessn...9121.shtml
There are many other links that state exactly the same thing, and Spencer Wells (the guy in charge of the genographic project) said exactly what I said. I haven't heard the hypothesis you state.
No direct links without doing a bunch of searching. Just based on reports from other geneticists read and seen over the recent years. Wells and the National Geographic are part of the "popular" press, he overstates evidence that others accept as just pointing to groups as being a "single" ancestor. The genetic trail is not as cut-and-dry as he states, just evident of very low genetic diversity at points in the past such as you would get from an intermarried clan. It is part of the push to be able to state an "Adam" and an "Eve" have been detected in the human family tree. It becomes more evident when they start talking about this:
"Another interesting concept explored is that three of the world’s most dominant religions – Christianity, Islam and Judaism – all believe one man fathered us all. And Wells seems intent on finding some sort of balance between faith and Science. He reported to even go as far as looking for a descendent of King Solomon, who in the book of Luke in the Bible, is cited as a direct descendent of Adam."