Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!cmcl2!beta!hc!ames!xanth!kent
From: kent@xanth.UUCP (Kent Paul Dolan)
Newsgroups: sci.misc,sci.bio,soc.women
Subject: Re: Universal Common Female Ancestor
Message-ID: <2752@xanth.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 13-Oct-87 01:11:39 EDT
Article-I.D.: xanth.2752
Posted: Tue Oct 13 01:11:39 1987
Date-Received: Thu, 15-Oct-87 04:38:31 EDT
References: <894@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> <1248@bsu-cs.UUCP> <11066@beta.UUCP> <317@dg-rtp.UUCP>
Reply-To: kent@xanth.UUCP (Kent Paul Dolan)
Organization: Old Dominion University, Norfolk Va.
Lines: 39
Xref: mnetor sci.misc:549 sci.bio:734 soc.women:7769


I guess I'm just feeling exceptionally stupid this morning, but there
seems to be a gaping hole in this argument somewhere.  Somebody
enlighten me.

Years ago, I learned that just by the propagation of the number of
needed ancestors, versus the diminishing size of the human species as
you go backward in time, there is a point not that far back where
everybody now is the descendent of everybody then who left
descendents.

Now we discover, after this argument is well known, that there is
something that everyone inherits only from their mother, and zappo,
all but one of the women back then suddenly have no living
descendents?  I don't believe it.

How about, instead, that by the usual same set of circumstances that
eventually extinguishes family names, all but one of the lines
somewhere passes only through the male side.

So, sure, there's some lady back then who is mother to us all in the
sense that the mothers of everyone living today can trace their
ancestry back entirely on the maternal side to her, but this doesn't
seem to be too big of a surprise; we knew it all along.  This doesn't
mean that the other ladies of that era don't also have lots of
descendants, male and female, alive today, though.  Just remember that
tracing ones ancestry back entirely through the female side represents
a vanishingly small portion of all your ancestors as you go further
back in time.

Look at it another way.  If tomorrow we discover something which is
inherited entirely from the father (an inclusion from the sperm coat,
for example ;-), we will immediately discover that there was also an
"Adam".  Doesn't mean all the other fellows didn't leave descendents,
though, just that somewhere along the way they were all daughters.

Does this make sense, or is it just low blood sugar at work?

Kent, the man from xanth.