Are we all related?

[Jack]

...everybody on Earth descends from somebody who was around as recently as the reign of Tutankhamen, maybe even during the Golden Age of ancient Greece. There's even a chance that our last shared ancestor lived at the time of Christ. "It's a mathematical certainty that that person existed," said Steve Olson, whose 2002 book "Mapping Human History" traces the history of the species since its origins in Africa more than 100,000 years ago. With the help of a statistician, a computer scientist and a supercomputer, Olson has calculated just how interconnected the human family tree is. You would have to go back in time only 2,000 to 5,000 years — and probably on the low side of that range — to find somebody who could count every person alive today as a descendant. Furthermore, Olson and his colleagues have found that if you go back a little farther — about 5,000 to 7,000 years ago — everybody living today has exactly the same set of ancestors. In other words, every person who was alive at that time is either an ancestor to all 6 billion people living today, or their line died out and they have no remaining descendants.

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Just a little something to piss off all the bigots and racists. :)

[PatrickHenry]

I have a bit of a problem believing that isolated groups share ancestors from as recently as 2000 to 7000 years back. I think the research shows that the Aussie aboriginals have been on their continent and isolated for something like 40,000 years. But I have no problem believing in an "Eve" from 100,000 to 250,000 years back. No doubt we are all related, let's be nice to our brothers and sisters...

[Wailer]

I don't know about 2000 to 5000 years---that's not enough time. I would agree more with the 100k to 250k year range.

Scientists contend that it would take 20,000 years to transform a black man into a white man by simply letting his environment/climate complete the change.

When the first human tribes left Africa and headed north into the colder climates, they lost the need for excessive amounts of melanin, the pigment that offered protection from the hot African sun. This brought about the change to lighter skin, eyes, and hair for today's white man.

Scientists have also discovered that every human alive today can trace their ancestry, via mitochondrial DNA, to a common female ancestor who lived in Africa about 100k to 250k years ago. Mitochondrial DNA is only passed on through women.

[Nono]

I agree with Pat. Mathematics schmathematics -- given that people 2,000 years ago (time of Christ LOL) were already living in the Americas, Australia, etc. etc., how could anyone alive then have managed to squeeze into the lineage of all them far-flung folks?

[Jack]

I don't know about 2000 to 5000 years---that's not enough time.

From the article:

It's simple math. Every person has two parents, four grandparents and eight great-grandparents. Keep doubling back through the generations — 16, 32, 64, 128 — and within a few hundred years you have thousands of ancestors. It's nothing more than exponential growth combined with the facts of life. By the 15th century you've got a million ancestors. By the 13th you've got a billion. Sometime around the 9th century — just 40 generations ago — the number tops a trillion. But wait. How could anybody — much less everybody — alive today have had a trillion ancestors living during the 9th century? The answer is, they didn't. Imagine there was a man living 1,200 years ago whose daughter was your mother's 36th great-grandmother, and whose son was your father's 36th great-grandfather. That would put him on two branches on your family tree, one on your mother's side and one on your father's. In fact, most of the people who lived 1,200 years ago appear not twice, but thousands of times on our family trees, because there were only 200 million people on Earth back then. Simple division — a trillion divided by 200 million — shows that on average each person back then would appear 5,000 times on the family tree of every single individual living today. But things are never average. Many of the people who were alive in the year 800 never had children; they don't appear on anybody's family tree. Meanwhile, more prolific members of society would show up many more than 5,000 times on a lot of people's trees. Keep going back in time, and there are fewer and fewer people available to put on more and more branches of the 6.5 billion family trees of people living today. It is mathematically inevitable that at some point, there will be a person who appears at least once on everybody's tree. But don't stop there; keep going back. As the number of potential ancestors dwindles and the number of branches explodes there comes a time when every single person on Earth is an ancestor to all of us, except the ones who never had children or whose lines eventually died out.

[G. Adams]

Quote by: Nono I agree with Pat. Mathematics schmathematics -- given that people 2,000 years ago (time of Christ LOL) were already living in the Americas, Australia, etc. etc., how could anyone alive then have managed to squeeze into the lineage of all them far-flung folks?

Well considering that most native americans and aussie aboriginals have been subject to sustained ethnic cleansing for 200 years or more, there's hardly many left to factor into the equasion.

[underbear1]

I would guess the oldest ancestors were neither what we'd recognise as white or black, probably some shade of brown which subdivided, and each mutated (from climate, and seperation of continents) towards the extremes.

[Wailer]

Quote by: underbear1 I would guess the oldest ancestors were neither what we'd recognise as white or black, probably some shade of brown which subdivided, and each mutated (from climate, and seperation of continents) towards the extremes.

Precisely. Just because the first man came from Africa, according to most scientific accounts, does not mean he had any resemblance to modern day Africans. A shade of brown is probably more accurate. Those who stayed (in Africa) took on the characteristics of the modern African; those who ventured north took on the characteristics of the modern Caucasian; those who ventured into the Far East took on the characteristics of the modern Asian.

Political Correctness (PC) has negated the practice of dividing humankind into three distinct scientific categories: Negroid, Caucasoid, and Mongoloid. From those three categories stem the races of modern man.

[PatrickHenry]

The earlier categories were too simplistic. Physiognomy differentiates many more racial characteristics than those three...

[lsbskins1]

If no one would know you at the family reunion, you ain't related. ( Adoption and "outside children" aside) If I could marry you (outside of Kentucky), we ain't related. But I'm all for making racists uncomfortable, so I open my arms to my cousins Nelson Mandela and King Abdullah II and Dr. Manmohan Singh.

And in case it ain't obvious... I'm a big ole' whitey-white gal with relatives burried in the grave-yard of the church my family still attends with CSA carved big as shit on their tombstones. I'm not ashamed of myself because my ancestors had not figured out which side was the morrally correct one. That is the reason I do not have to pretend that the Confererate Flag is a benign symbol of regional pride. But then, most of the people who claim that know better as well, but that belongs in another thread.

[underbear1]

I believe we still haven't uncovered the oldest ancestors which I believe are in India or China. It seems logical that all races procreated to have as many children as they could, (so a few would survive to care for them in old age, and to carry on the family/clan.) Unless regional pandemics or catastrophic climate conditions killed off many more other races than Asians, there should be more equal populations. I've wondered if possibly Asians cultivated rice earlier than most other races, learned agriculture, so they depended on hunting. This might have given Asians an edge on having more children survive. Rice would be one of the easiest food item to learn to cultivate.

[Milton Bradley]

Quote by: PatrickHenry The earlier categories were too simplistic. Physiognomy differentiates many more racial characteristics than those three...

While I agree with your first post entirely, I think the science on this quoted part is outdated information. I believe the latest science has confirmed three distinct races as listed by Wailer.

[PatrickHenry]

Quote by: Milton Bradley While I agree with your first post entirely, I think the science on this quoted part is outdated information. I believe the latest science has confirmed three distinct races as listed by Wailer.

Aussie aboriginals are?

Aymara Indians are?

Bushmen are?

Polynesians are?

[Milton Bradley]

I was not claiming to know the answers ( for sure anyway ), I was only commenting that as of the latest DNA map that I have seen, there appeared to be three distinct races, and all people alive today are just variations on the possible combinations that mixing three pure examples could produce.


Hmmm, I'm not even familair with the Aymara Indians. Are they Native Americans, or Asian Indians?

[PatrickHenry]

Aymara: Bolivians from near Lake Titicaca. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aymara


Polynesians:


Australians: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigen...alians#Origins

[Wailer]

Aussie aboriginals---Strong Negroid/Mongoloid strain

Aymara----Mongoloid strain

Polynesian---Strong Mongoloid/Negroid strain

Not sure about the Bushmen. Are they from the African continent?

I equate the Caucasoid/Negroid/Mongoloid categorization to the three digit padlock (000 to 999), you've only got three digits to work with, but there are so many combinations.

Just dig out a map of the world and beachcomb your way around the world starting from Africa.

[Wailer]

*bump*

I think this thread actually had some potential. Who knows how many very similar threads have been created in the past two years while this one sat and gathered dust?

Your thoughts on whether or not we are all related.

[Zakari]

If we are all related - how much in back money and vouchers am I owed from all my new Aunts and Uncles!!!

[Thanatos]

Quote by: PatrickHenry I have a bit of a problem believing that isolated groups share ancestors from as recently as 2000 to 7000 years back. I think the research shows that the Aussie aboriginals have been on their continent and isolated for something like 40,000 years. But I have no problem believing in an "Eve" from 100,000 to 250,000 years back. No doubt we are all related, let's be nice to our brothers and sisters...

I doubt the Aussie natives have been completely isolated. There would have been lost sailors and such.

The silk road and the Mongols connects Asia to Europe, the slave trade connects the Middle East and Africa to India and Europe. It is unclear what happened to the vikings of Vinland but they probably connected Europe to North America (explorers usually do some heavy duty connecting the night after they get off the boat), and there were the puzzling cocaine mummies in Egypt that suggest people somehow managed to get at least one boat across the Atlantic from South America.

I don't know how far back you'd have to go to find someone with relatives on every continent but it is perfectly plausible.

[Diogenes]

Excuse me cousins...but can I borrow a few thousand?




And it'd be one ell' of a family reunion BBQ