5 ms·

Stop press: everyone may descend from a single ancestor!

by denton-scratch 4y ago

fundad 4y ago
Sources?
- rags2riches 4y ago
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrial_Eve https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrial_Eve https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y-chromosomal_Adam https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y-chromosomal_Adam
  - ErikCorry 4y ago
    And probably there is a more recent person than these two, who is the ancestor of everyone alive today.
    - irrational 4y ago
      https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/humans-are-all-more-closely-related-than-we-commonly-think/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/humans-are-all-mo...
bookofjoe 4y ago
or two
pfannkuchen 4y ago
This would actually be really surprising, wouldn’t it? I would think the default would be a pool of pre-human hominids which gradually changed over time and eventually crossed the arbitrary line we deem “human”. I suppose in theory one individual may have had the last teeny mutation to cross over that arbitrary line which then spread everywhere to cross the rest of the pool over, but it seems more likely that bits of the “human” features developed in different populations over time and eventually and gradually merged through cross breeding (after each mutation was already in multiple individuals). The linear view with a singleton seems overly simplistic for “humans” overall. For a single trait it still seems overly simplistic and unlikely, but not nearly as radically so. EDIT I think there is some confusion here. I believe the article claim is that the feature "blue eyes" may have originated from a mutation in a single individual organism, or at least bottlenecked in a single individual organism. OP sounds like they are saying "yeah, now do humans", but the entire feature complex "human" is almost certainly not like that. If all OP is saying is that there is probably at least one tiny feature in humans which originated from a mutation in a single individual organism, then sure this is trivially true, but that situation is very, very different from the article situation.
- im3w1l 4y ago
  Well you have two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents etc. Eventually inbreeding (if you can call it that when it's really distant relatives) starts becoming a factor so that some person may take up multiple "slots" in your family tree. But either way, it would seem that if you go far enough back every single human will be an ancestor of yours. Edit: Just to clarify what I'm trying to get at is that there are probably quite a lot of Ancestors That Everyone Descend from.
  - denton-scratch 4y ago
    Agreed (FSVO "quite a lot"). But the same argument applies to blue eyes.
  - SideburnsOfDoom 4y ago
    > But either way, it would seem that if you go far enough back every single human will be an ancestor of yours. The nearest "ancestor of all living people" is calculated to 150 000 to 300 000 years ago, depending on which one you're talking about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrial_Eve https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrial_Eve or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y-chromosomal_Adam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y-chromosomal_Adam
    - irrational 4y ago
      Or, 2,000 years ago - if by “all living people” you mean everyone alive right now. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/humans-are-all-more-closely-related-than-we-commonly-think/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/humans-are-all-mo...
      - denton-scratch 4y ago
        Oh, that's interesting. My father researched a family tree; not rigorously, like Mormons do, but he spent about a decade tramping around the country, visiting graveyards and inspecting parish records. I have a bound volume of the tree. He claimed descent from (a) William The Conqueror, (b) Lady Godiva, and (c) Charlemagne. I don't have his records, only the tree. The links are pretty ropey, especially when you reach further back. And he imported big chunks of it from trees built by others. His conclusions seem pretty implausible, but that article makes them seem a bit more plausible.
amelius 4y ago
In your view, does that include monkeys, dogs, spiders, and even plants?
klyrs 4y ago
... and it wasn't even multicellular https://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2018/01/31/581874421/be-humbled-our-oldest-ancestors-were-single-celled-organisms https://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2018/01/31/581874421/be-hu... I do wonder how many "single ancestor" bottlenecks humans and other species have evolved through. That said, I do wonder how sound the research above is. It seems that lateral gene transfer resulting from, say, the first viral pandemic, could be responsible for a common snippet present in all surviving life billions of years later.
kaba0 4y ago
If you go back a “bit”, there is LUCA (last universal common ancestor).
dekhn 4y ago
Yes, it's generally believe that all living women descend from a single common woman see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Most_recent_common_ancestor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Most_recent_common_ancestor and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrial_Eve https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrial_Eve for some discussion on the quantitative analysis.

Stop press: everyone may descend from a single ancestor!

fundad 4y ago

Sources?

rags2riches 4y ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrial_Eve https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrial_Eve https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y-chromosomal_Adam https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y-chromosomal_Adam
- ErikCorry 4y ago
  And probably there is a more recent person than these two, who is the ancestor of everyone alive today.
  - irrational 4y ago
    https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/humans-are-all-more-closely-related-than-we-commonly-think/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/humans-are-all-mo...

bookofjoe 4y ago

or two

pfannkuchen 4y ago

This would actually be really surprising, wouldn’t it? I would think the default would be a pool of pre-human hominids which gradually changed over time and eventually crossed the arbitrary line we deem “human”. I suppose in theory one individual may have had the last teeny mutation to cross over that arbitrary line which then spread everywhere to cross the rest of the pool over, but it seems more likely that bits of the “human” features developed in different populations over time and eventually and gradually merged through cross breeding (after each mutation was already in multiple individuals). The linear view with a singleton seems overly simplistic for “humans” overall. For a single trait it still seems overly simplistic and unlikely, but not nearly as radically so. EDIT I think there is some confusion here. I believe the article claim is that the feature "blue eyes" may have originated from a mutation in a single individual organism, or at least bottlenecked in a single individual organism. OP sounds like they are saying "yeah, now do humans", but the entire feature complex "human" is almost certainly not like that. If all OP is saying is that there is probably at least one tiny feature in humans which originated from a mutation in a single individual organism, then sure this is trivially true, but that situation is very, very different from the article situation.

im3w1l 4y ago
Well you have two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents etc. Eventually inbreeding (if you can call it that when it's really distant relatives) starts becoming a factor so that some person may take up multiple "slots" in your family tree. But either way, it would seem that if you go far enough back every single human will be an ancestor of yours. Edit: Just to clarify what I'm trying to get at is that there are probably quite a lot of Ancestors That Everyone Descend from.
- denton-scratch 4y ago
  Agreed (FSVO "quite a lot"). But the same argument applies to blue eyes.
- SideburnsOfDoom 4y ago
  > But either way, it would seem that if you go far enough back every single human will be an ancestor of yours. The nearest "ancestor of all living people" is calculated to 150 000 to 300 000 years ago, depending on which one you're talking about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrial_Eve https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrial_Eve or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y-chromosomal_Adam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y-chromosomal_Adam
  - irrational 4y ago
    Or, 2,000 years ago - if by “all living people” you mean everyone alive right now. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/humans-are-all-more-closely-related-than-we-commonly-think/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/humans-are-all-mo...
    - denton-scratch 4y ago
      Oh, that's interesting. My father researched a family tree; not rigorously, like Mormons do, but he spent about a decade tramping around the country, visiting graveyards and inspecting parish records. I have a bound volume of the tree. He claimed descent from (a) William The Conqueror, (b) Lady Godiva, and (c) Charlemagne. I don't have his records, only the tree. The links are pretty ropey, especially when you reach further back. And he imported big chunks of it from trees built by others. His conclusions seem pretty implausible, but that article makes them seem a bit more plausible.

amelius 4y ago

In your view, does that include monkeys, dogs, spiders, and even plants?

klyrs 4y ago

... and it wasn't even multicellular https://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2018/01/31/581874421/be-humbled-our-oldest-ancestors-were-single-celled-organisms https://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2018/01/31/581874421/be-hu... I do wonder how many "single ancestor" bottlenecks humans and other species have evolved through. That said, I do wonder how sound the research above is. It seems that lateral gene transfer resulting from, say, the first viral pandemic, could be responsible for a common snippet present in all surviving life billions of years later.

kaba0 4y ago

If you go back a “bit”, there is LUCA (last universal common ancestor).

dekhn 4y ago

Yes, it's generally believe that all living women descend from a single common woman see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Most_recent_common_ancestor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Most_recent_common_ancestor and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrial_Eve https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrial_Eve for some discussion on the quantitative analysis.