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> The point in the article is that at many generations ago, we are heavily inbred, it is not that we are all related. I'm not following your point - maybe it's
by jerzyt 6y ago
> The point in the article is that at many generations ago, we are heavily inbred, it is not that we are all related.
I'm not following your point - maybe it's just a linguistic thing. To me, inbreeding implies relation, at least blood-relation, even when there was no other relation, e.g. conquering armies raping and pillaging.
No argument with your math.
- andi999 6y agoThere might have been multiple separated inbreeding groups. Yes these groups are related among themselves but not inter-group.
- zuminator 6y agoThe article is saying that every person bears some relation to each other, even among distant groups. No further back than 3500 years ago existed a person who was a common ancestor to every currently living human being.
- xbmcuser 6y ago3500 or 35000?
- pegasus 6y ago3500 sounds about right, if we consider only Eurasia. Otherwise, it could be farther back, but possibly not that much further, according to the wikipedia entry for Mitochondiral Eve (look for "most recent common ancestor"): "Monte Carlo simulations suggest the MRCA was born surprisingly recently, perhaps even within the last 5,000 years, even for people born on different continents."
- pepy 6y agoNoah, that you? :D
- danaris 6y agoNnnno; 3500 years ago, there were already clearly-separated groups of humans on different continents. Perhaps you're off by a 0 or two...?
- TheCoelacanth 6y agoNo, there were fuzzily-separated groups of humans on different continents. There was still some interbreeding across continents. The Americas may have been clearly separated for a while, but they have done so much interbreeding with people from other continents since 1492, that the common ancestor is more recent than that.
- danaris 6y agoI guess that depends much on whether the claim is that literally every human can draw ancestry back to this common pair, or merely the vast majority, because I'm fairly sure there are still "uncontacted" indigenous peoples in the Americas...