Hello, cousin...

[Maia]

70,000 to 80,000 years ago, there were only 2,000 of us! The human race almost became extinct. That's what Dr. Spencer Wells has to say on the subject. Wow, just wow... thinking about the cultural, social, and ethical implications of this idea. It means we're all cousins. We were an itty bitty little family.

 

[dropzone]

And now I feel awkward for having once been attracted to a woman named Maia. (small ) She'd be your mom's age.

I once thought a second cousin was hot, but she, without my prompting and based on the testimony of others, some years later was elected Queen Bitch of the Universe. Trust me: you are far nicer.

 

[autumn1971]

Still one-thousand times less incestuous than most creation myths.

 

[Maia]

And now I feel awkward for having once been attracted to a woman named Maia. (small ) She'd be your mom's age.

I once thought a second cousin was hot, but she, without my prompting and based on the testimony of others, some years later was elected Queen Bitch of the Universe. Trust me: you are far nicer.

Thanks. (I wonder what the exact process is for being elected Queen Bitch of the Universe...) Anyway, Dr. Wells has a great analogy in the transcript of the video: 2,000 years ago, we all could have fit into a small concert hall. Every last person on the planet. And now look at us! Maybe we overdid it a tad... I do see some logistical problems when it comes to reincarnation.

 

[Jimbo07]

70,000 to 80,000 years ago, there were only 2,000 of us! The human race almost became extinct. That's what Dr. Spencer Wells has to say on the subject. Wow, just wow... thinking about the cultural, social, and ethical implications of this idea. It means we're all cousins. We were an itty bitty little family.

Yeah, but then, you see, Battlestar Galactica came along and taught them all and helped them to flourish, so that thousands of years later we're now able to build Sony Cylons...

... or sommat

 

[Lucian]

Thanks. (I wonder what the exact process is for being elected Queen Bitch of the Universe...) Anyway, Dr. Wells has a great analogy in the transcript of the video: 2,000 years ago, we all could have fit into a small concert hall. Every last person on the planet. And now look at us! Maybe we overdid it a tad... I do see some logistical problems when it comes to reincarnation.

All I can say is that the election was rigged, and I demand a recount.

 

[dropzone]

the nice part of bailing on a thread until tomorrow because my reply is not complete is that, by now, most Merkins have done it, too. One reason Americans have no idea what time it is? The TV networks' schedule.

Note that I am studiously ignoring that Maia is either in, or close to, my time zone. It can wait.

 

[rjh01]

And all of us have a few common ancestors. Most of us share other ancestors.

 

[Hallo Alfie]

Still one-thousand times less incestuous than most creation myths.

Um, but how and where did the 2000 come from?



I once heard or read that we were all derived from nine (?) original females. Our facial features are all based around the commonalities within these nine.

Happy to be wrong - just sumptin I heard.

 

[shadron]

Um, but how and where did the 2000 come from?

Africa. Which is where we were when he afore-stated winnowing occurred, though not where the event that caused he problem was, Lake Toba^WP. Soon thereafter, some of us left.

I once heard or read that we were all derived from nine (?) original females. Our facial features are all based around the commonalities within these nine.

Happy to be wrong - just sumptin I heard.

Sounds like the "The Seven Daughters of Eve", by Bryan Sykes^WP. It gets worse than that - you can read about Sykes' Eve here: mitochondrial Eve^WP and Y-chromosomal Adam^WP.

I like Welles in this video:

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sour...OnLYUiZ4pWtvGlCww&sig2=oFdgiE0zZ9Bh6hHM0MMlXA

 

[whatthebutlersaw]

Would this be about the same era as the one including Mitochondrial Eve's lifetime?

 

[shadron]

Would this be about the same era as the one including Mitochondrial Eve's lifetime?

Yup. Eve lived just before the migration started. Every human alive today is descended from her through their exclusively female line (as well as lots of other lines). She could well have lived just a few generations before the Big Botleneck.

 

[learner]

Thanks. (I wonder what the exact process is for being elected Queen Bitch of the Universe...) Anyway, Dr. Wells has a great analogy in the transcript of the video: 2,000 years ago, we all could have fit into a small concert hall. Every last person on the planet. And now look at us! Maybe we overdid it a tad... I do see some logistical problems when it comes to reincarnation.

I cant play the vid but did he really say "2000 years ago we could all have fit into a small concert hall"?

 

[Soapy Sam]

I take it this is Toba? (I can't get the OP link to work).

There's certainly evidence for massive deforestation in India following the eruption, but I find the numbers hard to understand. If there was global dieback, what are the chances of these people ever meeting? If only a single breeding group survived, where is the equivalent effect in other mammals? By that time, humas were widely dispersed.
It doesn't hang together.

 

[Brian-M]

Yup. Eve lived just before the migration started. Every human alive today is descended from her through their exclusively female line (as well as lots of other lines). She could well have lived just a few generations before the Big Botleneck.

But wouldn't Mitochondrial Eve's mother also be a Mitochondrial Eve, and her mother before that... and so on? With a recursive regression of Mitochondrial Eves to choose from, how do you decide which Mitochondrial Eve is the Mitochondrial Eve?

 

[UndercoverElephant]

70,000 to 80,000 years ago, there were only 2,000 of us! The human race almost became extinct. That's what Dr. Spencer Wells has to say on the subject. Wow, just wow... thinking about the cultural, social, and ethical implications of this idea. It means we're all cousins. We were an itty bitty little family.

That theory is now seriously questioned. It was once thought that the super-eruption at Toba wiped out all but 2000 humans but the evidence does not stack up. It was a big eruption alright, but the effects were not widespread enough to nearly wipe out humanity. There has not been an eruption like that since, but compared to the really big mass-extinction-causing super-eruptions, it was a baby.

The mitochondrial "DNA clock" theory is also in trouble, since it is now known that recombination in mitochondrial DNA can and does happen in humans. We nearly always inherit our mtDNA from our mothers but nearly always isn't enough for the clock to be reliable.

 

[Dats]

But wouldn't Mitochondrial Eve's mother also be a Mitochondrial Eve, and her mother before that... and so on? With a recursive regression of Mitochondrial Eves to choose from, how do you decide which Mitochondrial Eve is the Mitochondrial Eve?

Mitochondrial Eve is the most recent common ancestor through the female lineage so her mother would not be the most recent.

 

[Cainkane1]

I saw the science channel and I thought they said we all descended from between 35000 and 70000 people. Humans almost became extinct after a volcanic explosion and the survivors made their living scavenging along the coasts.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

I saw the science channel and I thought they said we all descended from between 35000 and 70000 people. Humans almost became extinct after a volcanic explosion and the survivors made their living scavenging along the coasts.

Those humans had already been living on the African coasts for maybe 50,000 years before Toba went off. It wasn't really "scavenging". They just became coastal/aquatic specialists, which eventually contributed to the migration. If you are a coastal specialist then there are only two directions you can go in: back to where you came from or forwards along the coast, whereever it leads. And apart from a short-cut across India, it led to Australia.

 

[SonOfLaertes]

Those humans had already been living on the African coasts for maybe 50,000 years before Toba went off. It wasn't really "scavenging". They just became coastal/aquatic specialists, which eventually contributed to the migration. If you are a coastal specialist then there are only two directions you can go in: back to where you came from or forwards along the coast, whereever it leads. And apart from a short-cut across India, it led to Australia.

Which leads to an interesting thought-experiment, IMO. If humans weren't quite as intelligent at that time, and had to rely a little less on their intelligence to out-compete other animals of the day, perhaps a branch of humanity would have spent more time in the aquatic part of the coastal zone, and speciated to a fully aquatic primate much like the cetacean's ancestors did, while their cousins continued up the coast to further develop their tool-making skills.

I know it's a little off-kilter, but when I have read about this group of ancestors before I've always wondered what such a species would look like, how it it's phenotype would have evolved, etc.