African Savanna
…according to a headline at NewScientist. That’s a tad off the 6,000 years or so suggested by some Bible scholars. You’ll enjoy this article if you’re interested in human evolution.
Africa is said to be the cradle of humanity, but the exact coordinates of the nursery are unknown.
When you read of the Y chromosome below, remember that only men have them. Women have two X chromosomes; men have one Y and one X. Sounding familiar?
Some snippets from the article:
Hundreds of thousands of people have now had their DNA tested. The data from these tests had shown that all men gained their Y chromosome from a common male ancestor. This genetic “Adam” lived between 60,000 and 140,000 years ago.
Scientists analyzed the DNA of Albert Perry, and African-American who recently died in South Carolina.
Michael Hammer, a geneticist at the University of Arizona in Tucson, heard about Perry’s unusual Y chromosome and did some further testing. His team’s research revealed something extraordinary: Perry did not descend from the genetic Adam. In fact, his Y chromosome was so distinct that his male lineage probably separated from all others about 338,000 years ago.
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The first anatomically modern human fossils date back only 195,000 years, so Perry’s Y chromosome lineage split from the rest of humanity long before our species appeared.
What are the implications? One possibility is that Perry’s Y chromosome may have been inherited from an archaic human population that has since gone extinct. If that’s the case, then some time within the last 195,000 years, anatomically modern humans interbred with an ancient African human.
Paleo Diabetic 