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Descendants of Adam and Eve =

In the article we read: "While their descendants certainly became close intimates, Y-chromosomal Adam and mitochondrial Eve are separated by tens of thousands of years." I have a hard time understanding why "their descendants certainly became close intimates". If it is true for some mathematical reason or based on some genetic evidence, it is not obvious to a layman (like myself) why it should be so. Couldn't Eve and Adam have been from two separate and isolated communities that merged only much later but men of Eve's community left no strictly patrilineal descendants and women of Adam's community left behind no all-female-line descendants? I might be missing some obvious point here. Otherwise, it would be great if the article cites a reference for this sentence. Smirarab (talk) 03:24, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

Y-chromosomal Aaron

Now we have Y-chromosomal Aaron -- those interested may wish to comment on the vfd page. Dunc|☺ 10:43, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)

We've had this article for quite some time, and despite skepticism - the phenomenon is there. Vfd has been withdrawn, by the way. JFW | T@lk 14:12, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I do not support the deletion of the Aaron article. It strikes me as one of the crankier things in Judaism, but it's fair enough to give it its article. I do oppose the linking of Aaron from here. "Y-chromosomal Adam" is just a pet name. It has nothing to do with Genesis. "Y-chromosomal Aaron", otoh, is completely arbitrary, we might as well have "Y-chromosomal Smith" tracing the common ancestor of all people called Smith. this link says "The name Eve, in retrospect, is perhaps the worst possible name to give to the entity in question" for mitochondrial Eve. The same might be said for Y-Adam. It was chosen as a funny and suggestive name, without thinking that it may stir interest in religious or racist circles. Y-Adam is significant and interesting to trace the origins of humanity. Y-Aaron may or may not be of interest to questions about the jewish diaspora. A link from "Aaron" to "Adam" is in order, in the interest of making clear the concept. Nothing is gained by the link from Adam to Aaron than to shed a dubious light on the whole thing altogether. dab 13:04, 7 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Dab, if you can come up with with a better name for this article then please do propose one. As for Aaron, it is cranky indeed, but the proof if quite interesting. Furthermore, both the Adam and the Aaron research employs the same methodology and linking Aaron from here is interesting for the sake of comparison. BTW the Aaron phenomenon is also quite forceful proof that the wives of the kohanim have generally been faithful to their husbands :-) JFW | T@lk 13:12, 7 Nov 2004 (UTC)

fine. at least, let me move "Aaron" to the end of the see alsos. Oh, and I don't suggest we rename "Adam" to something else. It's what it's called now. It may have been an unhappy choice, but we're stuck with it now. dab 13:16, 7 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Cool. JFW | T@lk 20:18, 7 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Actually the Aaron phenomenon shows that when the wives of the kohanim have cheated, it's usually been with another Cohen. Which makes sense, considering the high status of kohanim in Jewish society. --60.240.145.232 (talk) 07:56, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

FINDING OUR LINEAL ANCESTORS

I have one question to ask.

Since men have XY would it be correct to assume we can trace his mothers maternal line and his fathers paternal line

AND

Since women have XX would it be correct to assume we can trace her mothers maternal line and her fathers maternal line?

From: Australia. 15/01/06

Yes, you can trace a man's maternal line, not because he has an X chromosome, but rather because he has his mother's mitochondrial DNA. The same is true of a woman, but you can't trace a woman's father's maternal line on the basis of her own DNA - to do so you need mitochondrial DNA from her father, his siblings, descendants of his mother via maternal lines, or some other suitable candidate. - Nunh-huh 17:57, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

age

90.000 years, fair enough. But 35.000? whose estimate is this? This would be significantly younger than e.g. immigration to Australia or the Americas. This would imply that there have been some *very* mobile males during the Neolithic that weeded out all earlier Y-chromosomes in these continents. dab 16:28, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)

since nobody answered this, I did a websearch and came up with the figure 60,000. I don't have any hard evidence to back this up, but I insert it for the moment, as it fits human migration much better than th 35,000 figure. dab 13:14, 7 Nov 2004 (UTC)

From Hammer, 1995: "The time back to a common ancestral human Y chromosome is estimated to be 188,000 years, with a 95% confidence interval from 51,000 to 411,000 years." Abstract --Astator 11:24, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

hypothetical?

what is this "hypothetical"/"If such a person existed" business, btw? Y-Adam existed by definition. It may not be possible to identify him positively, but if we define him as the mrca of the Y-chomosomes present in the world population alive today, this defines a particular man who must have been alive at some point. Why hypothetical? If I define "dab**100" to be my father's father's.... father, 100 generations removed, that doesn't make dab**100 a hypothetical figure. rather dab**100 is uniquely defined, even if I cannot tell you his real name. ("mrca of the Y-chomosomes present in the world population alive today", otoh shows that Y-Adam is defined relative to a particular time. I.e. 2004-Y-Adam is not necessarily identical to 1800-Y-Adam (in all probability he isn't). Y-Adam may even change overnight, i.e. if the last bearer of a particular Y-mutation/male line were to die. If nobody explains how Y-Adam is hypothetical, I will rephrase the article according to what I just said. dab 15:23, 7 Nov 2004 (UTC)

2004-Y-Adam is probably identical to 1800-Y-Adam, given that world population has risen so fast and there have been relatively few extinctions of long-lived subgroups. Since the individuals concerned cannot be indentified, all you are left with is a definition and a time estimate: the definition alone does not even guarantee that Y-Adam was human. Some people would call this a hypothetical man based on a hypothetical definition. --Henrygb 17:46, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

it's hypothetical alright, but the 'long-lived subgroups' are not the groups responsible for the population rise. The groups with the longest isolated Y chromosomes are likely stone age people in Papua or African Bushmen, and it is not unlikely that there are a few single indivduals in the jungle somewhere with whose deaths the date of Y-Adam will be postponed by millennia. We just don't know. dab (ᛏ) 08:45, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Creationism

needless to say, the creationism stuff was offtopic; it is still correct to say that in a biblical literalist's world (not just "Creationism", that's not the same), X-Eve is certainly Eve, while Y-Adam is certainly later than or equal to Noah. Therefore even in the intellectual prison of Christian fundamentalism, the concept that Y-Adam has never met X-Eve is perfectly admissible. I find this amusing, since after all Y-Adam was named after the Genesis character, and it might make sense to point out that it would have been more consequent to name him "Y-Noah". dab (ᛏ) 08:41, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Damn you for getting in first! :). I presume we can check the relative dates of X-Eve's various daughters against that of Y-Adam to see if Shem, Ham or Japheth had more than one wife each?

More seriously, has anyone come up with a statistical model which could determine how small a population would need to be to yield a 50%, 10%, 1% or even 0.1% probability that only one male line (or female line) would survive? Koro Neil (talk) 02:52, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

I agree with both of the above. If you're going to use a biblical allusion to talk about our genetic common male and female ancestors, you might as well show a little expert knowledge of the Bible, which says that our last common male ancestor lived many generations later than our last common female ancestor. It should be 'Y-chromosomal Noah' and 'Mitochondrial Eve'. For the second point, I am extremely curious whether anyone has actually worked out the probabilities of only one female or male member of the population leaving behind any descendants after so many millennia. To say, for instance, that it would only take one daughter-less generation after each of 'Eve's' contemporaries sounds misleadingly straightforward. Think about it. If each of her contemporaries had had no daughters, that would be improbable enough. But then if you accept that many of her contemporaries would have had some daughters, then you require ALL the daughters of ALL those contemporaries not to have any daughters. Do the same operation for the following generation and so on, and you get to see the problem. It gets exponentially more and more improbable with each generation. Now, of course bottlenecks happen, which would seriously constrict the genetic variation at the time the population is reduced, but from the scenario I sketched above, if mitochondrial variation still existed in any form, the only kind of bottleneck that would under any reasonably probable scenario eliminate all other variants would be a bottleneck of one female. Basically, as far as I can see, the only scenario that makes sense is that, because of whatever disaster, all or almost all other females had died by Eve's time.Jtgw (talk) 19:31, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Human?

Would he necessarily have been human? --LakeHMM 23:24, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

strictly speaking, not a priori; in stochastic simulations, there would always be a finite chance that a paternal line dating to pre-Homo times (more than 3 Mya) survives, but this chance will be astronomically small. Similarly, empirical evidence seems to preclude this, but of course not every person on the planet was tested. When I say "astronomically small" I imagine a number like 10^-20, which is to say "we are sure he would have been human". dab (ᛏ) 19:23, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Noah?

In the sister article on mt-Eve there was an explanation on why mt-Eve can't be compared to "Noah's wife". The reasoning being that according to the tale about Noah's arch he took his wife, his sons and their wives with him. Unless his sons married their sisters, Noah's wife could therefore not be mt-Eve by analogy.

Does the Noah example work for Y-Adam nevertheless? All males onboard the arch would be his direct offspring, though the females (apart from Noah's wife) would not. I'm not very savvy when it comes to bible details (I never read through the entire Lord of the Rings either, though I found it more enlightening and relevant </sarcasm>), so it'd be nice if I could have some "authorative" word on this. — Ashmodai 14:38, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Nice observation. Just from the biblical description you've written above, then yes, according to the bible, Noah would be the Y-chromosomal "Adam" until a later Adam came along after another male-bottlenecking event (or, for example, if only one of Noah's sons gave him a grandson, then that son would become he new "Adam".. Although the Y-chromosomal DNA would likely be indistiguishable from his father's.) For the record I never read Lord of the Rings either, except for the Hobbit, but then they brought out a movie of all the others so I never had to :) —Pengo 22:28, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Well if we take this numbers serious and we take the bible serious and allow for certain room in the interpretation of the "son of" genealogy in Genesis and the six days of creation, we could assume that Eve lived before or is identical to mt-Eve and Noah lived before or is identical to Y-Adam. Which tells us not much, besides the flood must have been pretty long ago... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.73.9.154 (talk) 11:46, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

New external link

I added a link to , a diagram I put together. I think it will be helpful to people interested in this topic. JoeCasey 13:44, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Myth!

Why is the creation according to Genesis listed as a myth when it is believed by many people, when a myth is not factual.

- Even though I DO think it's (along with religion) a myth, I find that calling it so is non-neutral POV. But I don't know how to reword it to not be biased towards either side. 24.68.65.244 04:30, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

please look up myth, religion and mythology and wikt:myth for the meaning of the term. dab (𒁳) 09:38, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

It should be noted that the biblical text would also suggest that Adam & Eve were not the lone humans in the world. The 'mark of Cain' had to be placed on their first born to protect him from others, Genesis 4:14. It is also quite possible from the subsequent text that Cain's and other descendants wives were not Eve's daughters. Therefore I don't believe there would be a biblical requirement to believe that Eve was mitochondrial Eve. As I understand it the biblical imperative is to believe we are descended from Adam and have part in his disobedience and consequent punishment, Romans 5:14. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Dgpl (talk • contribs) 14:09, August 20, 2007 (UTC).

You are trying to make sense of inconsistent accounts of various bible passages, some borrowed from Mesopotamian myths and others edited by later generations. According to the bible, Adam and Eve were the only people God created, as explicitly stated. If that were truth, Y-chromosomal Adam and mt Eve should be dated to the same time. In fact, genetic Y Adam and mt Eve should be dated to Noah and (very possibly) his wife (there were only a few women left in the Ark). And guess what, we should also find a population bottleneck for ALL animals that live today, at the time of the flood. But unfortunately, that is not the case, scientifically. So, I do not believe we need to further complicated things by trying to add more clarifications to this article. Also check out the numerous first men and first women; why talk about the Christian tradition only? Fred Hsu 02:38, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Noah's daughters-in-law were (probably) not descended from his wife. Koro Neil (talk) 03:08, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Possible error?

The article currently says the following (emphasis mine):

The name may seem to imply that Y-chromosomal Adam was the only living male of his time, but he in fact co-existed with a large population of human males whose male offspring either did not survive to modern times, or who are ancestors of some, but not all, currently living humans.

It seems to me that this needs to be corrected. By using the logic from the last paragraph of Mitochondrial Eve#Misconceptions, every man living at the time of Y-chromosomal Adam is an ancestor of either none or all currently living humans.

That is, the contemporaries of Y-chromosomal Adam either have no surviving descendants, or are ancestors of all living people, but aren't connected to any of them by an all-male line. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 18.21.0.86 (talk) 18:17, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

I agree that this topic is potentially confusing to many readers -- particularly because of the misleading emphasis on "descended from a single man" -- and needs to be expressed more clearly. As our MRCA article explains, the human family "tree" is not tree-shaped, but a complex maze of interwoven strands. An MRCA of a particular population simply means an individual from whom a descent line can be drawn to all the living members of the population; it says nothing about other ancestors, and it is practically certain that many members of that population are also descended from other ancestors alive at the same time as the MRCA; it's just that it isn't all members.

Now, the Y-chromosomal MRCA is a special case, because unlike other chromosomes, the Y chromosome is also the whole gene for maleness, and isn't shared between parents. Thus we can say that any person exhibiting that genotype (i.e., all males) inherited their Y chromosome from "Y-chromosomal Adam." However that says nothing about any of their other genes. The very first line of our article brushes on this, but doesn't make it clear enough (in my opinion.) Later when we say " ...Spencer Wells has concluded that all humans alive today are descended from a single man ..." we really should emphasise that they are also descended from many other men who were alive at the same time; "Y-chromosomal Adam" is their MRCA only for the Y chromosome.

We should probably also mention that the estimate of 60,000 years ago is based on the molecular clock hypothesis, which is by no means universally accepted. -- Securiger (talk) 20:51, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Graphical presentation

I'm reading this now.. and, IMHO, some graphical presentation of the concept would be good for better understanding. Something akin to a "family tree", maybe animated, showing lines being cut with a new Adam appearing? Best regards, --CopperKettle 20:09, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Age?

"In scholarly literature first "Adam" or rather first paternal ancestor date was estimated at 270,000 years ago. Later new set of markers was chosen and the age was adjusted to mostly cited value. The dates calculated on new markers was 37,000–49,000 years ago to 51,000–411,000 years ago " - So does this mean that the first guesstimate was wrong or that the evolutionists pressured them to change their results to fit the establishments accepted theories?--Degen Earthfast (talk) 00:28, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

Recent findings on Neanderthal and Denisovan contribution to genome of modern humans

I put a question relevant to Y-chromosomal Adam at the Science RefDesk. It is important because it raises the possibility that Y-chromosomal Adam could have lived one million ybp. Mathew5000 (talk) 03:52, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

It's a possibility, but no evidence yet. If they do discover some extremely divergent Y-chromosomes or MtDNA then it would change the dating of Y-Adam or Mt-Eve, but until such a discovery these exclusively maternal or paternal lines must be presumed extinct.-- cheers, Michael C. Price 06:37, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

Name change

This is a proposal to change the articles name from "Y-chromosomal Adam" to "Y chromosome Adam". Wapondaponda (talk) 07:19, 24 July 2011 (UTC)

No: -- cheers, Michael C. Price 07:57, 24 July 2011 (UTC)

lol. Yes when it comes to an ordinary google web search Y- chromosomal adam wins

• Y chromosomal Adam 322000 hits
• Y chromosome Adam 16300 hits.

But when we use google scholar, the result is different

• Y chromosomal Adam google scholar search has 62 hits
• Y chromosome Adam google scholar search has 97 hits

Google books is also similar

• Y chromosomal Adam google book search has 158 hits
• Y chromosome Adam google book search has 232 hits

In summary, with a general web search Y-chromosomal Adam seems to be the more common name. I suspect this is because of references to the wikipedia article. But in scientific and educational literature, "Y chromosome Adam" seems to be preferred. Wapondaponda (talk) 01:05, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

• Week Support as per Y chromosome and X chromosome conventional styles that were recently changed without complaints - Although this may require a much broader talk. This "style" of having Y-DNA is the current format used for most titles in this family of articles. As seen with Human Y-chromosome DNA haplogroup and Y-chromosome haplogroups by populations sub pages.Moxy (talk) 02:44, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

So what do we call mtEve? -- cheers, Michael C. Price 03:39, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

Michael C. Price could you stop elaborating so much in your edits they are so lengthy that they are tedious to read :-(. Again as mentioned above those within the Y-DNA family are of this style.Moxy (talk)

Consistency is relevant. Mitochondrion Eve it is? -- cheers, Michael C. Price 04:09, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

It is a case of an irregular convention. Moxy has made a good point, we have Human Y-chromosome DNA haplogroup but we have Human mitochondrial DNA haplogroup. So the convention seems to be mitochondrial rather than mitochondrion and y chromosome rather than y-chromosomal. Wapondaponda (talk) 11:07, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

Does this mean all men before Adam have no descendants?

Same with eve, no women before her have any descendants? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.104.98.252 (talk) 18:17, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

How could there be any people if that was the case! -- cheers, Michael C. Price 18:38, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

THERE WERE HUMANS BEFORE Y-Chromosomal ADAM, since all males are descended from him, does it mean humans other than Y-Chromsonal Adam have descendants? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.104.97.12 (talk) 13:54, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

Actually, all humans now living, but not by the paternal line. -- cheers, Michael C. Price 16:50, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

To rephrase 88.104.98.252's question, since by definition, all males now living are descended from Y-Chromosomal ADAM by the paternal line, but there were other humans not descended from Adam (descended from Adam's uncles for example), does this mean that some humans now living could be descended from Adam's uncles by a different paternal line and not be descended from Adam by his paternal line? The answer is no, by definition, but there could have been many males descended by a different paternal line from Adam's uncles and who all died years ago and hence are excluded from "all males now living" in the definition of Y-Chromosomal ADAM. Greensburger (talk) 18:38, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

Timing of Out-of-Africa migration relative to Y-chromosome Adam

The page says that the date of 59,000 years ago for Y-chromosome Adam, proposed by initial studies such as Thomson et al. 2000, "meant that Y-chromosome Adam lived at a time very close to, and possibly after, the out of Africa migration". In good faith I removed the words "and possibly after", with the explanation "Y-chromosome Adam cannot have lived after the out-of-Africa migration". Another user has restored the words, also in good faith, with the explanation "No, your logic is false - it is possible".

I am not an expert, but I thought I understood this. On the Recent African Origin model (which the sentence in question presupposes by using the phrase "the out of Africa migration") members of one branch of Homo sapiens left Africa by between 125,000 and 60,000 years ago, in what may be called the earliest successful "out of Africa" migration (the earliest migrants with living descendants), and over time these humans replaced earlier human populations such as Neanderthals and Homo erectus. Surely then Y-chromosomal Adam, who is defined as the most recent common patrilineal ancestor, must in all but the most absurd scenarios have preceded the migration? When I say "the most absurd scenarios" I am thinking for example about a scenario in which the earliest successful out-of-Africa migration came to the point of extinction, there being only females (and possibly infertile males) left, and was saved by males from a subsequent wave of migration finding them and breeding with them; does anyone seriously put forward such a scenario?

On the major competing hypothesis, the multiregional origin of modern humans, which envisions a wave of Homo sapiens migrating from Africa and interbreeding with local Homo erectus populations in multiple regions of the globe, the date of Y-chromosomal Adam can only be pushed further back, not pulled forward.

Elsewhere on the same page there is the assertion: "The defining mutations separating CT (all haplogroups excepting A and B) are M168 and M294. These mutations predate the 'Out of Africa' migration." No "probably" there. And that assertion entails that Y-chromosomal Adam preceded the migration.

Can anyone who knows about these things confirm what I have said, or explain why I am wrong please? Prim Ethics (talk) 01:37, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

The scenarios don't have to be that absurd. Suppose a favourable mutation occurs on the Y-chromosome in a male that confers an advantage to all his male descendants. Even a very slight advantage will cause the Y chromosome to dominate within a surprisingly short time, without having to suppose a sudden decimation of other males. It doesn't matter whether this male (Y-chromosomal Adam) lived before or after a particular out-of-Africa migration, inside or outside Africa, since there were later back-into-Africa waves. -- cheers, Michael C. Price 06:53, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

The confusion over dates arises because the time frames suggested for when Y-Adam lived overlap with the "out of Africa" migration. Typically the Out of Africa migration is dated to between 50,000 -80,000 years ago. If Y-Adam lived 59,000 years ago, as had been suggested by , then it could in theory mean he lived after the out of africa migration. But the final sentence in the section Y-chromosomal_Adam#Time_frame states "According to Cruciani et al., the much older date is easier to reconcile with models of human origins". Basically recent dates have been published, but as Prim Ethics has mentioned, they don't chime well with models of human origins. Wapondaponda (talk) 09:03, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, Michael. I am comfortable with your revert now. Prim Ethics (talk) 12:52, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. However, I must grant, that whilst it is possible that Y-Adam lived outside Africa, it does seem most unlikely, from the haplogroup data.-- cheers, Michael C. Price 17:59, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

Adam (and the MRCA) is not 'theoretical'

The article initially asserts that Adam is the 'theoretical' MRCA. Although (according to the article) the existence of Y-chromosomal Adam follows from the theory of molecular evolution, the actual wording of the initial sentence gives the reader the impression that Y-chromosomal Adam exists only in theory, but not (necessarily) in practice. Although few specifics can be given about Adam (and MRCAs in general), those specifics apply to a human that actually walked this planet - unless one rejects the entire scientific theory of (molecular) evolution. As such I am removing the word. Otherwise _anything_ that established scientific theory predicts as existing can be labelled 'theoretical', like a 'theoretical' heavier-than-air aircraft. Please revert the edit only after justifying it here. Thanks. Lklundin (talk) 22:17, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Semitism

Why is he called Adam? Was he Jewish or Muslim? This choice of naming is discriminatory.--144.122.104.211 (talk) 13:51, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

hmm perhaps Eskimo and should obviously be named Charley (as in Brown).

Take your discrimination blather elsewhere, we just report what the reliable sources use. Vsmith (talk) 14:19, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

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