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From: mauney@ncsu.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: Re: A Common Female Ancestor for Everyone
Message-ID: <2403@ncsu.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 15-Nov-83 15:49:16 EST
Article-I.D.: ncsu.2403
Posted: Tue Nov 15 15:49:16 1983
Date-Received: Wed, 16-Nov-83 07:12:32 EST
Lines: 47

References: ihuxi.675

This business about a common female ancestor n-thousand years ago
is getting a lot of people excited.  The questions, like all Gaul,
are divided into three parts:
(1)  Is the state of genetic art sufficient to produce such a result?
     One person says that his wife says that it is not,  and that she
     is qualified to answer the question.  I am not qualified,  and
     will not try to debate.
(2)  Is the result true?
     This depends in part on the answer to question 1.  But the result
     is also subject to analysis from a population genetics viewpoint,
     as well as a DNA viewpoint.  The question then is "Could this be
     true?"  More on this in a moment.
(3)  What are the ramifications of such a result?
     This is where people go wild.  "What did the men do before that
     one woman came along?"  "What about that woman's mother?"  The
     questions are understandable in origin,  but are shown to be
     silly when you think about it.  Here we are in mathematics;  the
     results of the theorem can be explored without regard to whether
     it is true.  The theorem states "any two women can,  if they trace
     their ancestries,  find a common direct matrilineal ancestor who
     lived less than 200,000 years ago."  This implies, of course,
     that they have lots of common matrilineal ancestors.  Let the most
     recent CMA be Oggette.  Then all of Oggette's matrilineal
     ancestors are CMA's to both modern women.  This theorem also
     implies there is some woman who is the most recent CMA to all
     modern women.  If Jane and Mary intersect at Oggette,  and Jane
     and Frieda intersect at Uggette,  then Oggette is a matrilineal
     ancestor of Uggette,  or else the other way around.  Whichever one
     is older is the CMA to Jane, Mary, and Frieda.  None of this
     implies that Uggette was the only woman in existence,  nor that
     she is the only one whose progeny have survived.  It merely
     implies that all of the matrilineal lines happen to go through
     Uggette.

     The next question is,  how reasonable is it to believe that
     we are all related to Uggette,  who lived so recently?  I am no
     expert,  but I am not surprised.  We are talking about 200,000 to
     a million generations,  and you can produce one whale of a lot of
     descendents in a million generations, if you aren't wiped out by
     the Plague.  Coupled with the human propensity to wander,  even in
     the days before steamships,  and I don't wonder that everyone is related.


					 Jon Mauney
					 mcnc!ncsu!mauney