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Humans are more closely related than we commonly think

scientificamerican.com

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Re: Humans are more closely related than we commonly think

#131

Post by nobodyandproud »

hnracer wrote: post #125
nobodyandproud wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You realize that much of Asia in modern times has only enjoyed first world lifestyles in the past 30 years? That’s not to say that there aren’t genetic differences, but every “evidence” I’ve seen brought up has jumped the gun.

In the post you responded to, I was talking about Asian Americans which have similar wealth to White Americans and earn 38 percent more than the national median income. Asian Americans are 6cm shorter than Black Americans who earn much less than the national median. Thus their smaller average height can't be attributed to nutritional deficiency or wealth factors, and can only be explained by genetics.

Does your data differentiate between: - Naturalization vs native born? - Multi-generation height changes? - The differences in physical activities? - Diet differences? I think East Asians tend to be lactose intolerant.

Once all things are made equal, then how does the data look?

Re: Humans are more closely related than we commonly think

#132

Post by nsajko »

nabla9 wrote: post #60
jerzyt wrote: post #24

Disclaimer - the last thing I want to do is to start a religious debate on HN. So, please, don't down-vote me because I'm going to mention Bible here. But I find it interesting that the Individual Ancestors Point is not that far off from the Biblical estimate of the Earth's age of about 6,000 to 15,000 years. So forget about "planting" the planet with "fake" fossils, Adam and Eve are right on the same timeline as the…

If you take the Bible at face value it contradicts itself. It all depended on the fan interpretation to to make sense. If you are non religious and think about the old testament just as what it was, its easier to understand the contradictions. (1) In Genesis 1 the god creates animals before the man. He creates man and woman and tells them to be fruitful and multiply. (2) In Genesis 2 God creates Adam before animals.…

Just a note, but actually relevant to the main topic of the thread:

> Judaism is folk religion of the Israelites, ...

In the Hebrew Bible, the tribe of Judah was just one of twelve tribes. Nowadays, the Samaritans still consider themselves distinct from the Jews with different tribal lineage.

Re: Humans are more closely related than we commonly think

#133

Post by danaris »

TheCoelacanth wrote: post #92
danaris wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nnnno; 3500 years ago, there were already clearly-separated groups of humans on different continents. Perhaps you're off by a 0 or two...?

No, there were fuzzily-separated groups of humans on different continents. There was still some interbreeding across continents. The Americas may have been clearly separated for a while, but they have done so much interbreeding with people from other continents since 1492, that the common ancestor is more recent than that.

I guess that depends much on whether the claim is that literally every human can draw ancestry back to this common pair, or merely the vast majority, because I'm fairly sure there are still "uncontacted" indigenous peoples in the Americas...

Re: Humans are more closely related than we commonly think

#134

Post by nextaccountic »

titzer wrote: post #4
themgt wrote: post #3

While this article's content isn't exactly wrong, the Wikipedia on "Identical ancestors point" gives some important context for what's actually being asserted: All living people share exactly the same set of ancestors from this point back, all the way to the very first single-celled organism. However, people will vary widely in how much ancestry and genes they inherit from each ancestor, which will cause them to have…

An intuition about the "appearing trillions of times in a family tree" is to realize that family trees are actually a binary tree extending backwards in time --i.e. each person has exactly two parents, who have exactly two parents, and so on. So N generations back, there are 2^N individuals. Obviously, there weren't 2^100 people on Earth at any point in time, so this backwards tree starts folding back on itself, cont…

> It helps to visualize this more as a mesh than a tree, or as a flowing river.

Or: it's a DAG, not a tree.

Re: Humans are more closely related than we commonly think

#135

Post by chasil »

coldtea wrote: post #55
titzer wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An intuition about the "appearing trillions of times in a family tree" is to realize that family trees are actually a binary tree extending backwards in time --i.e. each person has exactly two parents, who have exactly two parents, and so on. So N generations back, there are 2^N individuals. Obviously, there weren't 2^100 people on Earth at any point in time, so this backwards tree starts folding back on itself, cont…

> Go back far enough and there is a set of individuals who were alive at a particular point in time that completely cover that forward tree. So like Adam and Eve? :-)

Mhitochrondrial Eve and Y-Chromosome Adam likely could not have met.

There was too much time between them.

We focus too much on these two inputs, and forget the other (20) pairs of our nuclei.

Re: Humans are more closely related than we commonly think

#136

Post by tsimionescu »

dmos62 wrote: post #129
tsimionescu wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had heard a different theory, that this may be a mythological explanation on why humans don't have a penile bone like many common farm animals at that time (with 'rib' being a mistranslation of a more vague 'bone'). This would also make more symbolic sense, as a penile bone would be more obviously related to creation than a rib.

Quoting the wiki article for penile bone: > The baculum (also penis bone, penile bone, or os penis, os genitale or os priapi) is a bone found in the penis of many placental mammals. It is absent in the human penis, but present in the penises of other primates, such as the gorilla and chimpanzee.

Well, ancient Israelis were quite likely to have known that sheep and goats have a baculum (and perhaps wonder why they do not), and less likely to have known about gorillas and chimpanzees.

Re: Humans are more closely related than we commonly think

#137

Post by goto11 »

diegoholiveira wrote: post #106
jerzyt wrote: post #24

Disclaimer - the last thing I want to do is to start a religious debate on HN. So, please, don't down-vote me because I'm going to mention Bible here. But I find it interesting that the Individual Ancestors Point is not that far off from the Biblical estimate of the Earth's age of about 6,000 to 15,000 years. So forget about "planting" the planet with "fake" fossils, Adam and Eve are right on the same timeline as the…

> So, at least in this case, the Bible got the math down fairly well, and I'm bringing it up purely as a historical document here. No. Genesis is not a historical document. It is an allegory about creation. Adam and Eve need not necessarily be the first humans, but they were the first to receive a divine spark called "the soul".

Genesis is a creation myth, not an allegory. And according to Genesis Adam and Eve were the first humans.

Re: Humans are more closely related than we commonly think

#138

Post by daveslash »

sfblah wrote: post #116

The article asserts that all people have some European ancestry. I strongly doubt that. Consider uncontacted tribes in Papua New Guinea, the Amazon rainforests or Sentinel Island.

I agree - I struggle with this too. I'm not convinced that in 500 years, European DNA has made it into every. single. individual. in South America. Similarly, I struggle to accept that the same is true for some of the indigenous people of Australia, or other similarly remote tribes.

As a mathematical model, I don't doubt the assertion that it's possible one bit. But humans don't interbreed like that.

Re: Humans are more closely related than we commonly think

#140

Post by goto11 »

tsimionescu wrote: post #114
goto11 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are looking at two different verses. NIV have basically the same text for Genesis 2:21: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis+2%3A21&... > So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and then closed up the place with flesh.

I had heard a different theory, that this may be a mythological explanation on why humans don't have a penile bone like many common farm animals at that time (with 'rib' being a mistranslation of a more vague 'bone'). This would also make more symbolic sense, as a penile bone would be more obviously related to creation than a rib.

Do you know this is actually a mistranslation from Hebrew, or are you just repeating an urban legend?
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