The Shallow Roots of the Human Family Tree 760
An anonymous reader writes to mention an AP story about research discussing the relatively recent origins of every human on earth. Despite the age of our species, every human on earth can trace their ancestry back to someone who may have lived as recently as the Golden Age of Greece (around 500 BC). From the article: "It is human nature to wonder about our ancestors -- who they were, where they lived, what they were like. People trace their genealogy, collect antiques and visit historical sites hoping to capture just a glimpse of those who came before, to locate themselves in the sweep of history and position themselves in the web of human existence. But few people realize just how intricately that web connects them not just to people living on the planet today, but to everyone who ever lived."
Nature paper and Wikipedia entry (Score:1, Informative)
There is also a relevant Wikipedia entry on the most recent common ancestor [wikipedia.org].
Re:Additional Startling Implication: Genetic Disea (Score:3, Informative)
That is patently false. Humans, before we had modern technology that allowed us to travel great distances in short periods of time, had very little contact outside of our own tribes. To put, humans lived within their own tribes for hundreds of thousands of years.
Mixing does not create a "stronger" result. If anything, it creates a weaker result, depending on how different the two parents are. Why do you think the traits of various ethnic groups were selected? Do you think they are randomly arranged? No, they were selected based on adaptations to the environment of that group of people. Mixing in differnet traits that do not fit well into that environment will result in those traits being removed.
Re:What native Tasmanian population? (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Family Tree Grafting (Score:2, Informative)
Not really [wikipedia.org]. For those averse to reading, the Netherlands section is probably the funniest.
But while we're on the subject, I do wonder why a woman asserting her independence by refusing to take her husband's name when getting married feels perfectly comfortable carrying her father's name. According to the Wikipedia article, the practice is generally in decline, but for those of us old enough to remember the shrill "I'm no one's property" arguments before the notion became politically correct and commonplace, the irony lingers. Even funnier if you've been through divorce court.
Re:Family Tree Grafting (Score:5, Informative)
You mean like this? [nationalgeographic.com]
Re:weak argument (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Family Tree Grafting (Score:4, Informative)
The entirety of the population of Iceland has been DNA-sampled and indexed according to their lineage. DNA studies are already used to determine how populations moved and intermixed in the past, on a population-wide scale (where a few people from a population are sampled, rather than everyone).
There even a (if somewhat shaky) DNA test to determine racial descent [raceandhistory.com]. I saw it on a TV show once, where they had some school kids find out they had DNA from basically another race. I.e. a black guy turned out to have some asian genes, a white girl with blonde hair turned out to have some black genes etc. Possibly a bullshit test, possibly not.
You can be a universal ancestor too! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Christians claim to be children of Abraham? (Score:2, Informative)
Not the acutal decendents of Abraham, but the "Spiritual" children of Abraham.
Indeed, Jewishness (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Christians claim to be children of Abraham? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:From TFA (Score:5, Informative)
The Arabs have a long running grudge against the Persian empire, which Saddam used to unite the Iraqi people during that war.
Maybe 30% of Iraqi families are mixed Sunni-Shia. To pretend that the sectarian violence in Iraq isn't religiously motivated is ignorance in the extreme.
It's exactly the thing that Bush Sr. predicted would happen if he invaded Iraq. So he didn't. If you honestly believe that "This generally artificial tension is being produced as a convenient cover" then i suggest you go read a book or two, because Civil War is exactly what most political scientists expected would happen.
Better links (Score:4, Informative)
Genealogists discover royal roots on every family tree [physorg.com]
In which they discuss the royal roots of Brooke Shields.
What is it about Brooke? Well, nothing -- at least genealogically.
Even without a documented connection to a notable forebear, experts say the odds are virtually 100 percent that every person on Earth is descended from one royal personage or another.
then there is this old link to the notion of the Most Recent Common Ancestor of Mankind [humphrysfamilytree.com].
The huge number of proven descents of people from common European royal ancestry in historical times, when considered with the vastly greater number of descents that must exist but are not among the rare few that can be proven, suggest strongly that everyone, in the West at least, is descended from an MRCA in historical times. They suggest, for example, that everyone in the West is descended from Charlemagne, c. 800 AD.
It would seem possible that, even with a lot of geographical separation, the MRCA of the entire world is still within historical times, 3000 BC - 1000 AD. In fact, it is quite likely the entire world is descended from the Ancient Egyptian royal house, c. 1600 BC.
We pick them as an example because they left proven descents for centuries, so it seems likely their descents did not die out, and they are ancestors of some people alive today. Hence probably ancestors of all people alive today.
Quite likely almost everyone in the world descends from Confucius, c. 500 BC. We pick him as an example because he is the proven ancestor of some people alive today. Hence probably the ancestor of all people alive today.
Atlantic Magazine, among others, had a story on this a few years back [theatlantic.com].
The mathematical study of genealogy indicates that everyone in the world is descended from Nefertiti and Confucius, and everyone of European ancestry is descended from Muhammad and Charlemagne
Somewhat misleading (Score:3, Informative)
That said, the religious status (priest/Levite, Cohain), tribe, and inheritance are all passed through the father. For instance, David was the scion of Saul. His mother was irrelavent to his being King of Isreal.
-1, Incoherent Rant (Score:3, Informative)
The "idiot" was wrong, but so are you: the article makes no reference to Hardy-Weinburg equilibria, nor does it need to -- it doesn't discuss allele frequencies.
"What HRE means is that there is no "population structure" such as "races" -- which plays very well with the PC Feelgoodism that has been elevated to a state of theocratic dogma by the current zeigeist pervading not just media and academia but governmental circles."
Whoa...settle down, there, Cletus. The liberals aren't coming to get you today!
Incoherent, vaguely conservative ranting about "dogma" and "zeigests" aside, you don't understand the definition of Hardy-Weinburg equilibria (perhaps that's why you're so upset!) Simply put, HRE tells us how to predict the stable frequencies of dominant and recessive alleles within a closed population. It's a fundamental theorem of population genetics, not a wedge issue in the Culture War.
This article is about ancestry, and makes a simple mathematical argument that human beings are all related. It doesn't make a commentary about race or geographical diversity. Get a grip.
Indeed, 20% of fathers, aren't. (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.childsupportanalysis.co.uk/analysis_an
ok, it seems to vary from about 5%, but rates of 20% - 30% are common. So... Guys... have you had a DNA test?
Re:Family Tree Grafting (Score:3, Informative)
same in the Vietnamese culture. Children take both their parents name. Married people don't take their partner's name.
Their children take the father's last name for the combination.
So, say father Huynh, mother Vo.
Children would have the last name Huynh Vo.
Say, children marries someone whose father and mother were Nguyen and Quan respectivelly, then their children would have the last name Huynh Nguyen.
This practice has gone out of use though, especially for people who grew up in the Western world (most of the people I know living in the US or Europe basically decided on a family name, like Huynh, and kept it "simple")
Re:Somewhat misleading (Score:5, Informative)
Your facts were wrong, your point is right.
Re:Family Tree Grafting (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Persian country? (Score:4, Informative)
Iranians called their land Iran beginning around 226 AD/CE
Yes, I wrote that correctly. 1,780 years of calling themselves Iranians.
Before 226 AD, the Persians referred to themselves as Aryanam, which the word "Iran" is a spinoff of. The earliest written self-reference of the Persians as Aryanam was in 486 BC. That stretches the Iranian timeline back another 712 years.
Iran (the Persian Empire) started out roughly 700 BC when several Aryan tribes united.
Iran literally means "the land of Aryans"
Culturally and linguistically they're Aryans.
Ethnically, Iran (the Persian Empire) is a mix, which includes Caucusians.
It's a bit confusing to discuss since the 'Iranian (Persian) people' covers more than just the people inside Iran's current border.
P.S. Aryan, as I'm using it, has nothing to do with the racial supremecists or Nazis. In the 1900's they confused & bastardized the word.
LDS Church (Score:2, Informative)
this holds for single alleles (genes), not individ (Score:2, Informative)
In other words, the conclusion is false for entire individuals, but true for single genes or very tightly linked clusters.
Questions?
Re:Family Tree Grafting (Score:3, Informative)
The aborigines were not genetically isolated. Australia was visited by Indonesians at least 4000 years ago. We know this because that is when dingoes (dogs) arrived in Australia.
Nothing new here (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Indeed, Jewishness (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, not Christianity bringing Roman attitudes, but Romans. For the first few centuries of Christianity in Ireland and northern Great Britain, it had a distinctly Celtic flavor, including a greater degree of gender equality and married clergy. Some even believe that St. Brigid was a bishop (the evidence is not very strong in either direction). The change came when the Celts started sending missionaries to the European mainland and they came into some conflict with Rome because they did things differently. It was at that point that Rome tightened control over the Celtic church and brought them in line with the Roman way of doing things.
slave-owning white trash (Score:3, Informative)
Um, not. Great-granddaddy was poor white racist trash, coming from probably your typical subsistence farming South Carolina background, and his family owned slaves (just a few) before the war. This was normal - even the slightly better-off poor had slaves.
Also, need I mention Trent Lott or Strom Thurmond?
Re:Indeed, Jewishness (Score:1, Informative)
And the male-centered society of ancient Greece definitely predates Aristotle. This is why, in Plato's dialogues, Socrates says that love between two men is superior to love between a man and a woman. Tyrants were men, and any dynasties were patrilineal. And if you go much further back, Homer also describes a very male-dominated society. And so does Greek mythology in general.
Some of the older remains of the ancient Minoan civilization shows strong signs of being different. It is very possible that in earlier times there was a more female-oriented Greek civilization that was overwritten when Indo-European influences came in from elsewhere. (presumably Mesopotamia)
Of course there were various female-oriented cults that existed in Roman times. E.g. The cult of Cybele, the rites of the bona dea, the cult of Isis, and so on. There were also various exclusively female rituals in classical Greece, as seen in the Thesmophorizeusae. But these are distinct from each other, and none of them are definitively known to be connected with the pre-Indo-European cultures.