ward@hao.UUCP (Mike Ward) (11/19/83)
The original article: > All living people (or at least ~99% of them) have a single common female > ancestor on their purely maternal line. In other words, tracing back to > one's mother's mother's mother's ... mother will bring everyone back to > a single individual woman. She is estimated to have lived between > 50,000 and 500,000 years ago. Ed Turner (who by the way, we should thank for bringing this to our attention) feels that the only reasonable explanation is that all hominids other than one family (or tribe) somehow all died. Jim Davis feels that it can be explained by postulating that our ancestors "crowded out" other hominids, much as one cell culture will "crowd out" another. I find Ed Turner's explanation unlikely because of the widespread distribution of hominids in the time frame given. It is, of course, within the realm of possibility that there was a *worldwide* flood, and that one man gathered two creatures of all species and his family in a boat, etc. But to accept such an idea, I would need more evidence. I would like to know why Ed feels that this is so reasonable. I feel that Jim Davis's explanation in unlikely because I cannot envision any "almost human" creatures allowing themselves to be simply crowded out of existance. I have to believe that any close relatives of ours would put up a fight. The historically "normal" phenomenon is that one tribe invades an area, conquers the people, then mingles with the conquered to form a synthesis. Thus the Britons, the Angles, the Saxons, the Vikings and the Normans are now the English. But in order for the mitocondrial phenomenon to occur, *no* offspring of *any* of the females of the conquered tribes could have survived. I would like to hear a reasonable explanation for this lack of survival, other than the simplest one: that for a long time, and over a wide geographical area, the conquered tribes were just eliminated. Again, I would like to say that this is not being presented because I like the idea. Just the opposite: the notion appalls me, and I would really like to see someone shoot it down. -- Michael Ward seismo!hao!sa%ward decvax!brl-bmol!hao!sa%ward ucbvax!hplabs!hao!sa%ward allegra!nbires!hao!sa%ward