Mitochondrial Eve and Y-chromosomal Adam

Abraxas wrote:

otseng wrote:

You tell me. Does human evolutionary theory posit that humans arose from one couple?

No. Evolution works on populations.

Then you reject these findings?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y-chromosomal_Adam
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrial_Eve

As noted, these two were not a couple and in fact lived over a hundred thousand years apart.

It would make more sense if it was explained by a male bottleneck and they did live at the same time and was the first and only couple.

Let’s take the case that they did not live at the same time and did in fact live 100,000 years apart.

From what I can gather from human evolutionary theory, mitochondrial “Eve” was not the only human female at that time. There was a population of humans (how much, nobody seems to know). But, what it means is that every single lineage of all other females went extinct. What can account for that?

The same situation would’ve happened for Y-chromosome “Adam” 100,000 years later. There would’ve been a much larger group of males at that time. Yet all other lineages from other males would’ve gone extinct and only one lineage would’ve persisted. Again, what can account for all the other male lineages to become extinct?

So, here’s a prediction. The human creation model predicts that all ancient human DNA will relate to either Mitochondrial Eve or Y-chromosomal Adam. It will not be from any of the other males and females that were not in the line of “Adam” or “Eve” that became extinct.

Home sapiens is a broad term and is not consistently used. If it cannot be accurately defined, no accurate dating can be placed on it. From your same source:

“The category archaic Homo sapiens is disputed. There is no single agreed upon definition of archaic Homo sapiens.”

This leaves you with a dilemma then. Either you accept a broad definition of Homo sapiens which then means we can trace modern man back over 200,000 years, in violation of the creationist model, or, if you accept a more narrow definition, we then have ample examples of fossils of whatever evolved into man, which violates your creationist model. Either way, it is bad for your argument.

There’s no dilemma for me since one cannot even define what is a Home sapiens. (Yes, I’m taking this from the Ignostic playbook)

If you present a claim that cannot be supported, it must be retracted.

Well, how about that had their been a flood it would have destroyed the ice caps and with what we know about climatology the icecaps could not have regrown in the past few thousand years? Or that had their been a flood it would have greatly changed the salinity of the worlds water supply, either wiping out salt water of fresh water sea life, or both? Or how about that we still have plants even though such a flood would have destroyed land vegetation the world over? Or how about the fact there isn’t that much water on Earth and that the geological events necessary to reshape the Earth to have the current amount of water cover everything would have been more destructive than the flood itself in the quakes and tsunamis that would have been created? Or how about uneven erosion the world over? Or that with only two animals of each time (or 7 of the clean ones) the carnivores would have nothing to eat (usually fatal), or if they were herbivores before they would have had to rapidly evolve new digestive systems and jaws? Or that even with only two of each animal, coupled with their supplies, you could not possibly fit that many into a space the size of the ark? Or that 40 days of rainy cloud cover would have produced a massive drop in temperature that would have been extremely dangerous to a number of animals indigenous to warm, dry climates?

We can start with these and continue if necessary.

We can always go back in an infinite regress on assumptions. As for addressing these issues, it has been done elsewhere in other threads. For the sake of concentrating on human origins and not getting too distracted, the flood is just an assumption for the human creation model.

Correct, if the two did not exist at the same time, then they could not have produced offspring. So, what is the explanation that the genetic dating of males and females differ? In the human creation model, this is explained by the male genetic bottleneck during the flood. And this confirms the prediction that there is more genetic diversity in females than males.

For human evolution, how can the discrepancy be explained?

You have not yet justified the idea there is more genetic variation in females than males. Until you provide some evidence that it in fact exists, I need not explain why it exists.

I’m not stating that currently there is more genetic diversity (though there could be). I’m saying that when the 8 people repopulated the world at the time of the flood, the females had more genetic diversity as compared to the males. This is because all the males were of Noah’s line. The females were not of Noah’s wife’s line.

As I mentioned before, even a gradual evolution among hominids to man cannot even be established. We do not have any fossil evidence of the common ancestor between chimps and humans. And we do not have any fossil evidence of a common ancestor with any other primate. So, I have a differing opinion of which fails dramatically.

None of which is really all that relevant.

Right, because evolution is unfalsifiable. Any lack of evidence or evidence against evolution doesn’t matter.

Does it not seem strange that if humans evolved, that we are not able to find any fossil evidence of the common ancestor between man and chimps or any of the other great apes? That we cannot establish any clear evidence that there is a gradual progression of hominids to humans?

Even if many of the huge number of fossils found are offshoots of the human line, they still had to come from something.

And where is that “something”?

That we see differing ages over the course of several million years with an increasing resemblance to modern humans the closer we get to present is much more informative than you seem willing to consider.

One problem is that none of those supposed resemblances can be established to be a human ancestor. And those that do truly resemble humans, they can be classified as a human.

Did you miss the tools listed as over a million years old or just not post them?

I’ll post later to start exploring stone tools.

https://debatingchristianity.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=320064#p320064

McCulloch wrote: All humanity has in common one woman estimated to have lived around 200,000 years ago and one man who probably lived between 90,000 and 60,000 years ago.
Nuclear DNA studies indicate that the size of the ancient human population never dropped below some tens of thousands.

Would you agree that mtEve was not the only female on the planet 200,000 years ago? If there were others, then it would need to be explained how all other female lineages died out. And only the same would need to be explained for yAdam.

Human origins seem to be from East Africa not the Middle East.

I addressed this here.

Thus if the flood model was correct, all of humanity would be descended from one man (Noah) and four women (Noah’s sons wives and Noah’s wife who passed on her genes to Noah’s three sons).

All humanity is from one pair – Adam and Eve. During the flood, only 8 people survived. So, mankind’s genes would trace back to these 8 and ultimately to one couple.

https://debatingchristianity.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=320787#p320787

McCulloch wrote:

otseng wrote: From what I can gather from human evolutionary theory, mitochondrial “Eve” was not the only human female at that time. There was a population of humans (how much, nobody seems to know). But, what it means is that every single lineage of all other females went extinct. What can account for that?

You misunderstand the concept of mitochondrial Eve. She is the most recent female common ancestor of all humanity. That is all. None of the other lineages from her time had to become extinct. They just all eventually interbred with at least one of her direct descendants. Modern genetics does not predict a bottleneck of just one female, ever.

Mitochondrial DNA is only passed from mother to child.

“Because mtDNA is transmitted from mother to child (both male and female), it can be a useful tool in genealogical research into a person’s maternal line.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrial_DNA

If other lineages other than Eve bred and did not die out, it would not be possible for their mitochontrial DNA to trace to Eve. It would rather be an odd piece of the puzzle that would not be able to fit into the mtEve pattern.

Let’s take an example of two females – Eve and Fran. Eve names her children Eve and Everest. Fran names her children Fran and Francis. All subsequent descendents of Eve continue to name their children Eve and Everest. Same from Fran. Fran has children with Everest, so their children would be Fran and Francis. Eve has children with Francis, so their children would be Eve and Everest. There would be an unbroken female line from the first Eve to all other Eves and Everests. Likewise for the Fran line.

What you would expect after many generations is that there would be a population of a bunch of Eve, Everest, Fran, and Francis. But if after many generations, all you have is Eve and Everest, then it would need to be explained how did the Fran line die out. For human evolutionary theory, it would have to also explain how did all the other female lines die out.

What I believe to be the more parsimonious explanation is that there was no Fran (or any other females) to begin with and all originated from a single female.

https://debatingchristianity.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=321050#p321050

Goat wrote:

otseng wrote:

McCulloch wrote: All humanity has in common one woman estimated to have lived around 200,000 years ago and one man who probably lived between 90,000 and 60,000 years ago.
Nuclear DNA studies indicate that the size of the ancient human population never dropped below some tens of thousands.

Would you agree that mtEve was not the only female on the planet 200,000 years ago? If there were others, then it would need to be explained how all other female lineages died out. And only the same would need to be explained for yAdam.

That has been explained.. that is just the one that ‘replaced’ the others. The same thing with the ‘y-chromosome’ Adam… he is just the male that didn’t get ‘replaced’ by any other male.

Answering that one replaced the others would only be a truism. The question is what can account for it? What can cause all other females lines (and male lines) to become extinct?

Also, the human creation model predicts that all humanity would be traceable to one woman (and one man). I have not seen anywhere that human evolutionary theory would predict this.

For example, the last common ancestor for people with blue eyes was 10,000 years ago!

That is interesting. What source do you have for this?

Except, of course, according to the evidence, the last common ancestor for all the y-chromosome people, and the last common ancestor for the mdna women live 100,000 years apart, and the migration patterns we see via DNA testing do not match the flood model.

The 100,000 year figure is not an exact figure. There is no way that they can give an exact figure of when Eve actually lived. Even more recent figures are given, such as “Y-chromosomal Adam probably lived between 90,000 and 60,000 years ago in Africa and is the male counterpart of Mitochondrial Eve, although he lived much later than she did, possibly 50,000 to 80,000 years later.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y-chromosomal_Adam

Also, there is evidence that mtDNA mutation rate is faster than assumed.

DNA studies of the remains of the last Russian tsar, Nicholas II illustrate troubling questions in forensics and the dating of evolutionary events. The Tsar inherited two different sequences of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) from their mother, a condition known as heteroplasmy that was previously considered rare but which new studies show may occur in at least 10% and probably 20% of all humans. This may mean that mtDNA mutates perhaps as much as 20-fold faster than expected, according to two controversial studies. Since evolutionists had assumed that mtDNA mutations occur at a steady rate, these studies cast doubt over the dating of such events as the peopling of Europe. The new results are already prompting changes in DNA forensics procedures.

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/short/279/5347/28

https://debatingchristianity.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=321262#p321262

McCulloch wrote: No, it does not need to be explained, because it did not happen. mtEve was an unremarkable person of her generation. She had children, more than likely a few more than the average number. Her contemporaries also had children. Her children had children and her contemporaries’ children had children. Some of her children mated with the children that were not from her lineage. Eventually, over many generations, the descendants of this one person intermarried and traveled and exchanged so much that all of humanity could call her one of their ancestors. Of course, we all have other ancestors, but this one is statistically important because her genes are in everyone. The other female lineages did not die out, however.

Here’s another illustration.

Let’s assume that at time 0, there are n females. We’ll call label them F1 to Fn. mtDNA is only passed from mother to child. Now, let’s say 100,000 year passes. Every single person would be then be able to trace to only one female that existed at time 0. It could be anyone from F1 to Fn. As n increases, it would be less likely to trace back lineage to any particular female at time 0. As n decreases, it would be more likely to trace back lineage to a particular female. What we see is that all trace back to one particular female. The most reasonable solution to this is that n equals 1.

To clear up some of your misunderstandings, read up on pedigree collapse and Most recent common ancestor.

How exactly do these clear up things?

Yes, but my point is that the most recent common male ancestor, according to the flood model, of all humanity is Noah. The most recent common female ancestor, according to the flood model could be Eve. There are only about ten generations between Eve and Noah. Genetics show that there should be about 100,000 years between the most recent common female ancestor and the most recent common male ancestor. Not a mere ten generations.

First, I do not claim that the geneology lists in the Bible are exhaustive. They would only indicate the minimum number of generations. Also, as I mentioned elsewhere, the 100,000 year figure is not an absolute figure. And I see many other places that uses a 50,000 year figure. Also there is evidence that mtDNA mutation rate is not as slow as assumed.

https://debatingchristianity.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=321527#p321527

McCulloch wrote: Thus there must exist a single woman whose is the matrilineal most-recent common ancestor of everyone in set of humans alive today.

Actually, I have no contention with this. And this fits with the human creation model. But in evolutionary theory, at the time of that single common mother, there are tens of thousands of other females who did not result in any lineage alive today. Those others that did not pass on their mtDNA is what needs to be explained.

If one of them had left matrilineal descendants, then that would not change the facts of the necessity of mEve, just require the calculation to be pushed back some generations.

And what I’m saying is that it pushes it back to only one female that existed. There is no need to posit thousands of other females who left no evidence of their existence.

The existence of the Mitochondrial Eve is no longer in any doubt.

And fully predicted by the human creation model before genetic studies proved her existence.

https://debatingchristianity.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=333852#p333852