elt@astrovax.UUCP (Ed Turner) (11/16/83)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------- As the originator of this discussion, let me first apologize for posting it to so many different groups. My only excuse is that I couldn't figure out which group would be most appropriate or who would be most interested. It seems peculiar to me that the discussion has (more or less) settled into net.religion, a group I only hesitantly included because of my half serious remark about the amusing contrast with the biblical story. In fact I think the religious implications (if any) of this discovery are its *least* interesting aspect. People who take the Bible literally will not be convinced by this new and exciting but still speculative line of research when they are ready to dismiss such a huge body of well established results (already discussed at length in net.religion). People who do not believe the Bible to be literally (or, in some cases, even figuratively) true probably don't take the Adam and Eve business seriously anyway. Thus, I propose that the discussion of our "Common Female Ancestor" be moved to net.followup except for those articles *explicitly* concerning it in a religious context. I will post some articles on plausible statistical and biological explanations for the phenomenon in net.followup within the next few days. Ed Turner astrovax!elt