| It says the evidence comes from genetic testing, which is testing different people in a population to see what genetic mutations they share (meaning did they have a common ancestor about how many generations back was this ancestor alive). By testing genes of a ton of different people, scientists can see what gene sequences they share and group people into difference gene sequences. The idea is that there was one dude in the past with that sequence who passed it down to his/her kids. The article is very misleading since it implies that a group 70 - ~100 people wandered out of Africa tens of thousands of years ago and populated the entire planet. In fact, genetic evidence is nowhere near that specific.
Its true that people are (in evolutionary terms) closely related. Given two random caucasian people, they probably have a common ancestor who lived about 200 generations ago, or sooner. So maybe all Native Americans are descended from 40 people who left African in 80,000 B.C. but genetic evidence CANNOT tell you:
- how many people actually left (Maybe millions of people left Africa but not all their kids or grandkids or great great etc. grand kids survived. So we can't see their genes today because their line died out.)
- did they leave all at once (There could have been multiple migrations. I mean, a bunch of people could have taken a vacation in Europe every summer and we wouldn't be able to tell.)
- when they all left (It's 80,000, give or take a couple thousand years so it's very imprecise anyways.)
The article just exaggerates the findings by involving some colonization story. What's really amazing is how closely we're all related.
(edit: If you want to read more, there's "Adam's Curse" and "The Seven Daughters of Eve" by Brian Sykes.) |