A field originally this week polemically claim that all man were descended from a single couple , but that title has now been contested .
The field on which this call was made was actually first bring out in the journalHuman Evolutionback in May this yr . In it , scientist from The Rockefeller University in New York looked back to between 100,000 and 200,000 eld ago , when they said an unknown extinction upshot might have take position , reducing the population of many species including mankind dramatically
“ The 0.1 percent average inherited variety within human beings today corresponds to the divergence of modern humans as a distinct species about 100,000 to 200,000 age ago , ” they enjoin , “ not very long in evolutionary terms . The same is probably true of over 90 percent of species on Earth today . ”
Thefindingswere based on a technique anticipate DNA barcoding , which can discover a species from a short deoxyribonucleic acid sequence , rather in mitochondria . In the field , they looked at more than 5 million mitochondrial barcodes from more than 100,000 animal species .
For some reason that is not whole clear , though , some outlets seem to have misunderstand the results into thinking all of humanity came from a single yoke of adults , patently drawing comparison to Adam and Eve .
But as Michael Marshall point out atForbes , this is not dependable at all . “ [ T]he study they breathe on does not demonstrate anything of the variety , and other lines of evidence powerfully suggest that preceding human populations were always much larger than two , ” he said .
He pointed to some intellect why this was not the shell . First , it is difficult to delineate big conclusions from mitochondrial DNA . Second , there is no evidence for a heavy extinction - level result 200,000 age ago . And the title of the study that an event occurred between 100,000 to 200,000 year ago “ is so vague as to be meaningless ” .
Plus , it ’s noted the researchers only ever said their finding were “ consistent ” with there being a institute pair of humankind , not that they ’d actually find a pair . Coupled with grounds that world are as old as 500,000 years , the findings of this study seem shaky at best .
As with anything in scientific discipline , always commemorate that – as the late Carl Sagan said – extraordinary claims necessitate extraordinary evidence . There are a muckle of interesting and logical stories out there , but always keep that skeptical hat at the ready , just in showcase .
