Talk:Y-chromosomal Adam
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[edit] Y-chromosomal Aaron
Now we have Y-chromosomal Aaron -- those interested may wish to comment on the vfd page. Dunc|☺ 10:43, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)
- We've had this article for quite some time, and despite skepticism - the phenomenon is there. Vfd has been withdrawn, by the way. JFW | T@lk 14:12, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)
- I do not support the deletion of the Aaron article. It strikes me as one of the crankier things in Judaism, but it's fair enough to give it its article. I do oppose the linking of Aaron from here. "Y-chromosomal Adam" is just a pet name. It has nothing to do with Genesis. "Y-chromosomal Aaron", otoh, is completely arbitrary, we might as well have "Y-chromosomal Smith" tracing the common ancestor of all people called Smith. this link says "The name Eve, in retrospect, is perhaps the worst possible name to give to the entity in question" for mitochondrial Eve. The same might be said for Y-Adam. It was chosen as a funny and suggestive name, without thinking that it may stir interest in religious or racist circles. Y-Adam is significant and interesting to trace the origins of humanity. Y-Aaron may or may not be of interest to questions about the jewish diaspora. A link from "Aaron" to "Adam" is in order, in the interest of making clear the concept. Nothing is gained by the link from Adam to Aaron than to shed a dubious light on the whole thing altogether. dab 13:04, 7 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Dab, if you can come up with with a better name for this article then please do propose one. As for Aaron, it is cranky indeed, but the proof if quite interesting. Furthermore, both the Adam and the Aaron research employs the same methodology and linking Aaron from here is interesting for the sake of comparison. BTW the Aaron phenomenon is also quite forceful proof that the wives of the kohanim have generally been faithful to their husbands :-) JFW | T@lk 13:12, 7 Nov 2004 (UTC)
- fine. at least, let me move "Aaron" to the end of the see alsos. Oh, and I don't suggest we rename "Adam" to something else. It's what it's called now. It may have been an unhappy choice, but we're stuck with it now. dab 13:16, 7 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Cool. JFW | T@lk 20:18, 7 Nov 2004 (UTC)
[edit] FINDING OUR LINEAL ANCESTORS
I have one question to ask.
Since men have XY would it be correct to assume we can trace his mothers maternal line and his fathers paternal line
AND
Since women have XX would it be correct to assume we can trace her mothers maternal line and her fathers maternal line?
From: Australia. 15/01/06
- Yes, you can trace a man's maternal line, not because he has an X chromosome, but rather because he has his mother's mitochondrial DNA. The same is true of a woman, but you can't trace a woman's father's maternal line on the basis of her own DNA - to do so you need mitochondrial DNA from her father, his siblings, descendants of his mother via maternal lines, or some other suitable candidate. - Nunh-huh 17:57, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
[edit] age
90.000 years, fair enough. But 35.000? whose estimate is this? This would be significantly younger than e.g. immigration to Australia or the Americas. This would imply that there have been some *very* mobile males during the Neolithic that weeded out all earlier Y-chromosomes in these continents. dab 16:28, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)
- since nobody answered this, I did a websearch and came up with the figure 60,000. I don't have any hard evidence to back this up, but I insert it for the moment, as it fits human migration much better than th 35,000 figure. dab 13:14, 7 Nov 2004 (UTC)
From Hammer, 1995: "The time back to a common ancestral human Y chromosome is estimated to be 188,000 years, with a 95% confidence interval from 51,000 to 411,000 years." Abstract --Astator 11:24, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
[edit] hypothetical?
what is this "hypothetical"/"If such a person existed" business, btw? Y-Adam existed by definition. It may not be possible to identify him positively, but if we define him as the mrca of the Y-chomosomes present in the world population alive today, this defines a particular man who must have been alive at some point. Why hypothetical? If I define "dab**100" to be my father's father's.... father, 100 generations removed, that doesn't make dab**100 a hypothetical figure. rather dab**100 is uniquely defined, even if I cannot tell you his real name. ("mrca of the Y-chomosomes present in the world population alive today", otoh shows that Y-Adam is defined relative to a particular time. I.e. 2004-Y-Adam is not necessarily identical to 1800-Y-Adam (in all probability he isn't). Y-Adam may even change overnight, i.e. if the last bearer of a particular Y-mutation/male line were to die. If nobody explains how Y-Adam is hypothetical, I will rephrase the article according to what I just said. dab 15:23, 7 Nov 2004 (UTC)
- 2004-Y-Adam is probably identical to 1800-Y-Adam, given that world population has risen so fast and there have been relatively few extinctions of long-lived subgroups. Since the individuals concerned cannot be indentified, all you are left with is a definition and a time estimate: the definition alone does not even guarantee that Y-Adam was human. Some people would call this a hypothetical man based on a hypothetical definition. --Henrygb 17:46, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
- it's hypothetical alright, but the 'long-lived subgroups' are not the groups responsible for the population rise. The groups with the longest isolated Y chromosomes are likely stone age people in Papua or African Bushmen, and it is not unlikely that there are a few single indivduals in the jungle somewhere with whose deaths the date of Y-Adam will be postponed by millennia. We just don't know. dab (ᛏ) 08:45, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Creationism
needless to say, the creationism stuff was offtopic; it is still correct to say that in a biblical literalist's world (not just "Creationism", that's not the same), X-Eve is certainly Eve, while Y-Adam is certainly later than or equal to Noah. Therefore even in the intellectual prison of Christian fundamentalism, the concept that Y-Adam has never met X-Eve is perfectly admissible. I find this amusing, since after all Y-Adam was named after the Genesis character, and it might make sense to point out that it would have been more consequent to name him "Y-Noah". dab (ᛏ) 08:41, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Human?
Would he necessarily have been human? --LakeHMM 23:24, 6 May 2006 (UTC)
- strictly speaking, not a priori; in stochastic simulations, there would always be a finite chance that a paternal line dating to pre-Homo times (more than 3 Mya) survives, but this chance will be astronomically small. Similarly, empirical evidence seems to preclude this, but of course not every person on the planet was tested. When I say "astronomically small" I imagine a number like 10^-20, which is to say "we are sure he would have been human". dab (ᛏ) 19:23, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Noah?
In the sister article on mt-Eve there was an explanation on why mt-Eve can't be compared to "Noah's wife". The reasoning being that according to the tale about Noah's arch he took his wife, his sons and their wives with him. Unless his sons married their sisters, Noah's wife could therefore not be mt-Eve by analogy.
Does the Noah example work for Y-Adam nevertheless? All males onboard the arch would be his direct offspring, though the females (apart from Noah's wife) would not. I'm not very savvy when it comes to bible details (I never read through the entire Lord of the Rings either, though I found it more enlightening and relevant </sarcasm>), so it'd be nice if I could have some "authorative" word on this. — Ashmodai (talk · contribs) 14:38, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
- Nice observation. Just from the biblical description you've written above, then yes, according to the bible, Noah would be the Y-chromosomal "Adam" until a later Adam came along after another male-bottlenecking event (or, for example, if only one of Noah's sons gave him a grandson, then that son would become he new "Adam".. Although the Y-chromosomal DNA would likely be indistiguishable from his father's.) For the record I never read Lord of the Rings either, except for the Hobbit, but then they brought out a movie of all the others so I never had to :) —Pengo talk · contribs 22:28, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
[edit] New external link
I added a link to [1], a diagram I put together. I think it will be helpful to people interested in this topic. JoeCasey 13:44, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Myth!
Why is the creation according to Genesis listed as a myth when it is believed by many people, when a myth is not factual.
- Even though I DO think it's (along with religion) a myth, I find that calling it so is non-neutral POV. But I don't know how to reword it to not be biased towards either side. 24.68.65.244 04:30, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
- please look up myth, religion and mythology and wikt:myth for the meaning of the term. dab (𒁳) 09:38, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
It should be noted that the biblical text would also suggest that Adam & Eve were not the lone humans in the world. The 'mark of Cain' had to be placed on their first born to protect him from others, Genesis 4:14. It is also quite possible from the subsequent text that Cain's and other descendants wives were not Eve's daughters. Therefore I don't believe there would be a biblical requirement to believe that Eve was mitochondrial Eve. As I understand it the biblical imperative is to believe we are descended from Adam and have part in his disobedience and consequent punishment, Romans 5:14. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Dgpl (talk • contribs) 14:09, August 20, 2007 (UTC).
- You are trying to make sense of inconsistent accounts of various bible passages, some borrowed from Mesopotamian myths and others edited by later generations. According to the bible, Adam and Eve were the only people God created, as explicitly stated. If that were truth, Y-chromosomal Adam and mt Eve should be dated to the same time. In fact, genetic Y Adam and mt Eve should be dated to Noah and (very possibly) his wife (there were only a few women left in the Ark). And guess what, we should also find a population bottleneck for ALL animals that live today, at the time of the flood. But unfortunately, that is not the case, scientifically. So, I do not believe we need to further complicated things by trying to add more clarifications to this article. Also check out the numerous first men and first women; why talk about the Christian tradition only? Fred Hsu 02:38, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Possible error?
The article currently says the following (emphasis mine):
The name may seem to imply that Y-chromosomal Adam was the only living male of his time, but he in fact co-existed with a large population of human males whose male offspring either did not survive to modern times, or who are ancestors of some, but not all, currently living humans.
It seems to me that this needs to be corrected. By using the logic from the last paragraph of Mitochondrial Eve#Misconceptions, every man living at the time of Y-chromosomal Adam is an ancestor of either none or all currently living humans.
That is, the contemporaries of Y-chromosomal Adam either have no surviving descendants, or are ancestors of all living people, but aren't connected to any of them by an all-male line. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 18.21.0.86 (talk) 18:17, 8 June 2008 (UTC)
