Besides, it was only natural for ol’ Genghis to keep a detailed log of his sexual encounters.
He no doubt stole that, along with much else, from Capt. James T. Kirk, whence "Khaaaaaaan!!!"
“Revenge is a dish best served cold. It is very cold on the steppes.” --Temujin
As I’ve already pointed it, it’s not necessary for a group to be in direct contact with Europeans (or other outsiders), only that they be in contact with other local groups that have been in contact with outsiders. Given the maximum estimated size of the population of 500, I doubt very much that the Sentinelese could have gone indefinitely without any interchange with the other Andamanese. And the archipelago was known to Arab sources 1,200 years ago, and most likely to Malay seafarers even before that. Plenty of time for some interchange to have happened.
This said, I will admit that the Andamanese in general are one of the best candidates for having a more remote ancestor in common with other populations than the one proposed.
We’re not talking about whether they had a few European or African ancestors, but whether they had any at all. As I pointed out earlier, and which robby has also mentioned, it is quite possible (and even likely) that a single ancestor in a person’s pedigree from many generations back is not going to leave any detectable genetic trace. Identifiable European and African markers make up only a small part of the genome; these could easily be eliminated over many generations. Also, the Cayapo are a small group, numbering only about 7,000. Such a small population could easily lose these markers.
In the time of Julius Caesar, I undoubtedly had one or more ancestors who were Roman slaves of sub-Saharan origin. But these were only a minuscule percentage of all the millions of potential ancestors I had at the time. It’s unlikely that I have any identifiable African genetic markers that descended to me from them.
So the answer is statistically yes in theory but after a while everything original gets flushed out? And there is no way to know for sure?
Yes. Also remember that many genes don’t vary (at least without lethal effects); and also, in the genes that do vary, many of your individual ancestors had the same version of the gene (allele). This will reduce the detectability of any particular genetic heritage from an ancestor in a descendant.
Which is an excellent reason to note that this isn’t very remarkable, even though it might seem that way at first blush.
Babur’s mother was a descendent of Chinghiz and I’ve never heard of anyone doubting this.
Being a genealogy buff, I confirmed this at Leo van de Pas’ usually reliable website, and discovered a tidbit very relevant to the discussion of Ghenghis’ Y-chromosome:
Tumana Khan, agnatic ancestor of Tamerlane, was also the agnatic 3-g grandfather of Ghenghis Khan! So Tamerlane had “the Ghenghis” chromosome, even though agnatically there were distant cousins!
Which in turn means that some of the prevalence of that chromosome might be due to Tamerlane’s branch of the family, rather than Genghis’s.
Since **Tamerlane **is a regular poster on this board, why don’t we just get him in here to confirm!
I don’t think that this news is a big change from previous studies, but:
‘Mitochondrial Eve’: Mother of All Humans Lived 200,000 Years Ago (ScienceDaily, 17 August 2010)
I read a similar article a few days ago. I can’t find the article I read, but the interesting thing in that article, from my perspective, was that it stated that mtDNA Eve had to be a member of our species. I don’t see why that is so (as I noted in an earlier post).
Given the small size of our population in its first 100k years of existence, it certainly seems likely, but I can’t see that mtDNA Eve couldn’t have lived 500k years ago, and been a member of a species we recognize as being pre-sapiens.
Anyone have a comment?
But the people who did have descendants were probably related to the people who didn’t, if you go back another 2000 years.
It goes without saying that if you go far enough back, every person who has ever lived is related to everyone else.
Indeed, the same is true for all life on Earth.
Sorry Arnold, that article is no good. It makes no mention whatsoever of Mitochondrial Eve" actually being a poptart, or of her parents, Helo and Athena.
Beside what **robby **said, it was actually a non sequitur. If I say: “Ostriches are Mammals, so basically what I’m saying is dogs are mammals”, it’s certainly true that dogs are mammals, but it doesn’t follow from the premise.
Well, of course in theory she could have. However, the analysis described in that article indicates she lived 200,000 years ago, which corresponds approximately with the origin of modern humans. She could only have been pre-sapiens if you disbelieve their analysis.
No, that’s not what I meant. And I found the article I was talking about here. This is the quote I don’t understand:
This says to me that it’s impossible for mtDNA Eve to be pre-sapiens.
I think you’re reading too much into the remark. He’s mainly saying that mtDNA Eve didn’t coincide exactly with the first female sapiens, and making the assumption that the origin of sapiens was earlier. In principle, this doesn’t have to be true. In fact, there are species that share genetic variants that predate the separation of the two species.
The polar bear diverged from the brown bear about 150,000 years ago. It is certainly possible that the “polar bear eve” was a brown bear and not a polar bear.
I don’t follow. “Polar bear Eve” must have had multiple independent lines of female descent from her, right? Otherwise she wouldn’t be Eve; one of her descendants would have been. But if PBE was a brown bear, that means that those multiple lines of descent independently went through the changes that made them polar.
I realize that I’m oversimplifying, here, since female-line descent is not the same thing as descent in general, but it still seems like this should hold.