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This OP is very misleading and not visiting the entirety of the study.
I must say I'd welcome an informed explanation. I could see a couple of flaws or questionable suppositions and points ignored, but I just don't know enough about the subject to do a proper job on it.
Most people don't know, of course. Why should they? That is how creationists can bamboozle them by misrepresentations and false claims dressed up as science. It is only by explaining the fallacies and lies that they can be exposed for the frauds they are.
we can stop letting people bamboozle others by teaching people how to "believe". Teach them to lay out what they know and then form a belief. We also should teach people how to understand their own emotions. Then we can limit, not remove, the bamboozlement. Tossing out "big Religion" verse asking people to toss out emotional considerations are not the same thing.
Parents should be teaching kids that while they were young that a parent tells them things just to move the learning process along. And as the child grows they can't start offering the alternative explanations. It's ok to teach the child that "I don't think it's that way but some people do." and the parent can tell the child they can decide for themselves when they learn what they want to learn about it.
I feel that almost every parent should be able to at least explain a rainbow or why the sky is blue to a child. That's basic stuff and its meaning go far beyond the physical description.
I must say I'd welcome an informed explanation. I could see a couple of flaws or questionable suppositions and points ignored, but I just don't know enough about the subject to do a proper job on it.
Most people don't know, of course. Why should they? That is how creationists can bamboozle them by misrepresentations and false claims dressed up as science. It is only by explaining the fallacies and lies that they can be exposed for the frauds they are.
Read all five pages. Mitochondrial Eve was not the first woman. It was a cheeky labeling, a misnomer. They believe there was a catastrophic event where only a small amount of people survived. A meteorite perhaps. The humanoid record predates this finding.
This study was cherry picked by theist hucksters.
Last edited by willingsniper; 05-09-2015 at 09:42 AM..
from that site.. Cann and her fellow researchers estimated that Mitochondrial Eve lived about 200,000 years ago. With their margin of error included, she would have been alive between 500,000 and 50,000 years ago. Given that Eve is thought to have lived during a time when there were other women alive, how is it that all of us alive today descended from her alone? There are a couple explanations for how only Eve’s mtDNA alone could have survived, and most likely a combination of converging factors is responsible.
The likeliest possibility is that an evolutionary bottleneck occurred among humankind while Eve was alive. This is a situation where a large majority of the members of species suddenly die out, bringing the species to the verge of extinction. This sudden decrease in numbers isn’t due to any kind of failure to adapt. Instead, it's more likely the result of a catastrophe of some sort, for example, the result of a comet hitting the Earth. Afterward, just a few members remain to repopulate the group and continue to evolve. Bottlenecks are suspected to have taken place at different times in humanity’s history, so it’s not a farfetched notion that an event like this could have taken place during Eve’s lifetime.
A report issued in 1998 concluded that about 70,000 years ago, humanity was reduced to only about 15,000 people on the whole planet [source: Whitehouse]. With very few people spread out across the planet, humankind was indeed on the verge of extinction. The event that caused the near-loss of our species was an eruption of Mount Toba in Sumatra. This volcanic eruption was so immense that it lowered global temperatures, killed off the animals and plants that nourished humans and spurred the coldest ice age the planet has seen, lasting 1,000 years.
*The Mitochondrial Eve theory evokes similar scenarios. If the human population was reduced dramatically, and there weren’t many women around to have kids, the stage is set for one “Lucky Mother,” as Cann puts it, to emerge as a most recent common ancestor. It’s possible that after a few generations, the mtDNA of the other women died out. If a woman produces only male offspring, her mtDNA won't be passed along, since children don’t receive mtDNA from their father. This means that while the woman’s sons will have her mtDNA, her grandchildren won’t, and her line will be lost.
It’s possible that this was the cause of Eve emerging as the sole “Lucky Mother” who in essence gave birth to us all.
the later pages deal with criticism. And criticism - if sound - should be listened to. A criticism about the sample led to a re-sampling designed to eliminate doubt. The results were said to be 'virtually the same'.
This one deals with the main point of the OP that I wanted clarification on. The population rate and which scenario best explains it - African Eve or Eden Eve.
Another problem with mtDNA study is the differences in the rate of mutation. Think about it this way, if you looked at how long it took for a particular sequence of mtDNA to develop a change -- a mutation -- and concluded that it took 1,000 years, then two strains of mtDNA from the same lineage with two mutations would have diverged about 2,000 years ago, right? This is how Cann and company decided Mitochondrial Eve was living around 200,000 years ago.
The researchers said that in their study they assumed that mtDNA mutates at a consistent rate. The problem is, science isn't exactly sure what the rate of mutation for mtDNA is, if there even is a measurable rate. If you look at the rate of mutation among a whole group of organisms, say, all people alive today -- called the phylogenetic rate -- you might conclude that mtDNA mutates at a consistent rate. But if you look at a single family line within that larger group -- the pedigree rate -- you'll most likely find an entirely different rate of mutation.
Since the "mutational clock" used by Cann and her co-authors was called into question, they expanded the date for Eve's existence to between 500,000 and 50,000 years ago.
Well, I have to say that I can see why Creationists and Bible -literalists and YE enthusiasts might laugh at this. In order to explain what the Eden scenario has as a starting -point, a disaster has to be invented. A Volcano, Comet (A comet took out all the dinosaurs, it would leave 15 thousand apes intact?) and I was thinking of the Ice -age, but that, at 25,000 yrs ago, is beyond the the most recent end of the date -range. And that huge date-range is as dismaying to me as Rate's announcement to creationism that the date of creation is anything from 10 to 50,000 BC.
I would think that this Mitochondrial Eve data gives us facts, and conclusions - we are descended from two strains that really go back to one, and the mutation rate at the widest goes further back than most Eden -believers can tolerate.
And mostly, the YE Creationists view denies the evidence of human evolution before Motochondrial Eve (who would be Homo Sapiens). If I were a Bible - believer I might keep in mind the possibility that Lucy might turn out just to be a chimp, but without much hope, but would be more tempted by an Eden scenario fitted into the evolutionary time scale. No matter what the primate ancestors were, Eve was mitiochondrially different, even if she was created using primates 50,000 years ago. And I would put out of my mind the possibility of alien scientists.
As an atheist who regularly debates the evolution vs Creation case, I want to fully understand the merits of either case on this, so further (useful) comment would be welcome.
Creationists willfully misunderstand the entire notion of Mitochondrial Eve. Since the concept was first introduced in 1987 by A.C.Wilson et al., creationists have been deliberately claiming that she must have been the first woman. They believe this because it says so in the Bible, and such is the addled state of their brains that they need no further proof. It really is most unfortunate that Allan Wilson did not call Eve by some other name. We might then have creationists wittering on about someone called Mitochondrial Doris instead.
Answers in Genesis thinks for some reason that Mitochondrial Eve was not the Biblical Eve but Shem's wife.
Yes, Like the Big Bang and the 'God particle' the name was a bit unfortunate.
As I said, the Eden scenario dismisses any humans before mitochondrial Eve (unless as you say AIG doesn't make her Adam's wife, which is a surprise to me) but then that was always the position - Ape men fossils were just Ape fossils. I suspect that they would have dubbed her 'Eve' in any case.
Look...Adam and Eve only had 3 sons and one of them got killed and one got evicted.
Supposedly that's it but Cain miraculously found someone (thing?) to mate with even though there were no other humans accounted for.
Well, whadda ya' know! A primate can start looking real good to a horny young man!
He probably named his first daughter Eve after his mommy because there were no other females names yet.
Look...Adam and Eve only had 3 sons and one of them got killed and one got evicted.
Supposedly that's it but Cain miraculously found someone (thing?) to mate with even though there were no other humans accounted for.
Well, whadda ya' know! A primate can start looking real good to a horny young man!
He probably named his first daughter Eve after his mommy because there were no other females names yet.
Yes, Like the Big Bang and the 'God particle' the name was a bit unfortunate.
As I said, the Eden scenario dismisses any humans before mitochondrial Eve (unless as you say AIG doesn't make her Adam's wife, which is a surprise to me) but then that was always the position - Ape men fossils were just Ape fossils. I suspect that they would have dubbed her 'Eve' in any case.
I thought I did, but it deserves a re-read. I may not have absorbed all the arguments. If you think I missed something, please feel free to educate me. I don't claim to be up to speed in this area.
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