Questions about humans?

[Mahammad]

Do we all(7 billion people) somehow have 1 same ancestor, not the same herd, the same father/mother?

If yes, when did this ancestor live?

P.S. please no mythical creation story fights.

 

[epiktetos]

Do we all(7 billion people) somehow have 1 same ancestor, not the same herd, the same father/mother?

If yes, when did this ancestor live?

P.S. please no mythical creation story fights.

I've always wondered this myself.

Do you think there was a first human being
that became evolved into exactly who we are
as humans today?

Or do you think it sorta happened at many
places at once?

I do believe in God, but, I do have every reason
to believe the theory of evolution.

 

[plindboe]

Do we all(7 billion people) somehow have 1 same ancestor, not the same herd, the same father/mother?

We haven't all arisen from a single couple of people. Had that occured we'd have become extinct long ago due to inbreeding depression. Modern humans arose in Africa about 100.000 years ago, or further back, and it's from this population we all derive.

We can trace some parts of our genomes back to individuals though, so in that sense there are universal mothers and fathers. Each of these still lived in populations though.

Peter

 

[Exiledoomsayer]

It depends ofcourse how far back you want to take it since the lines are blurry.
But assuming that we are trying to find this first ancestor among primates..

If you want to consider the first ape that had a mutation found in humans today but not in other apes as the first ancestor i guess you could argue that is the one.
However that would still not be a human, it would look act and talk just like every other ape in its species. It just passed on this first mutation to its kids. course its just as possible that the same thing happend in another ape somewhere down the line and it mates with one of the apes carrying that first mutation <or one of its offspring that carry it at some point do>

Im no expert. But i know that the only way your going to find a answer to your question is by defining what it is your looking for exactly. Cause nature does not act in neat catagories we impose a catagory system on it ourselfs to make it more comprehensable but its flawed around the boundries of when something becomes something else since there is no way to draw a line and go "nows its human" and be correct other then by using a system you came up with which doesnt need to be any more or less correct then the system of someone else.

So it depends on how you want to look at it. Untill then we cant say anything about when it lived. I supose you could bring it back all the way to singlecelled lifeforms for the ancestor aswell but I do not think that was what you had in mind when you asked the question.

Edit: darn i spend like half an hour trying to formulate what i was thinking only to find peter put it into words a thousand times better and shorter -.-'

 

[kharisym]

Evolution happens to populations, not individuals, and the line between early apes and humans is quite blurry. So basically at some point ape A was born with a mutation that was passes on and spread throughout the population, ape B did the same, ape C the same etc until the accumulation of these mutations produced a group of humans. You could say that humans evolved in 'pieces'.

 

[Mahammad]

I wanna know if we all share the same singular mother even if she was a single cell creature. or is that impossible to know?

 

[Mahammad]

I've always wondered this myself.

Do you think there was a first human being
that became evolved into exactly who we are
as humans today?

Or do you think it sorta happened at many
places at once?

I do believe in God, but, I do have every reason
to believe the theory of evolution.

I don't know much about evolution, I only studied a bit of adaptation at school.

 

[plindboe]

I wanna know if we all share the same singular mother even if she was a single cell creature. or is that impossible to know?

Depends on your definition of "mother". Everything in our genomes originated in individuals, so in a sense all these countless individuals, going back almost 4 billion years, are our mothers and fathers. Larger parts of our genomes, for instance the mitochondrial DNA that we all share, has been traced back to a female living ~200.000 years ago, and she's the most recent common ancestor concerning the mitochondrial genome.

If you're talking about the origin of life, the modern view isn't that it started with a single cell, but more likely a community of primitive cells liberally exchanging genetic material. Also, it's doubtful there was a single, specific moment where non-life turned into life, as it was presumably a gradual process, and there would have been a period where whatever definition you use of life would have been difficult to apply.

Peter

 

[Doveaman]

Do we all(7 billion people) somehow have 1 same ancestor, not the same herd, the same father/mother?

Yes, Adam and Eve.

If yes, when did this ancestor live?

Some estimate around 5,500-6,000 ago, give or take a few years.

P.S. please no mythical creation story fights.

I agree. We should stop fighting over the macro-evolution myth.

 

[TheBlueBlurr]

I agree. We should stop fighting over the creationism myth

I agree.

See I can contribute nothing as well.

 

[Washington]

I agree.

See I can contribute nothing as well.

But being succinct, you do it much better.

 

[TheBlueBlurr]

But being succinct, you do it much better.

Oh man I had to google that one.

 

[marlowe007]

Sometimes mitochondrial Eve is assumed to have lived at the same time as Y-chromosomal Adam, perhaps even meeting and mating with him. Like Eve, "Adam" probably lived in Africa, however Eve lived much earlier than Adam &#8211; perhaps some 50,000 to 80,000 years earlier than Adam &#8211; due to the greater variability in male fecundity.

Ah, but technically whomever mitochondrial Eve mated with could be considered "Adam", right?

 

[plindboe]

Ah, but technically whomever mitochondrial Eve mated with could be considered "Adam", right?

If you feel you need to call this unknown male a specific name, to square science with the Bible, go for it. Personally, I prefer Al.

Peter

 

[dewaddict84]

Right, that's Mitochondial Eve, which isn't quite the same thing as the most recent common human ancestor. She was aroudn 95,000 to 45,000 years ago. The most common anscetor was later, but it's harder to figure out. Estimations put it at only a few thousand years ago. Apparently the exploreres of the 16th century left a lot of babies everywhere.

Here's a couple of pages if you want to know more:

Entertainment - Home Page
Mitochondrial Eve - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[sbvera13]

If you feel you need to call this unknown male a specific name, to square science with the Bible, go for it. Personally, I prefer Al.

Peter

How do we know there was only one?

 

[BrianOnEarth]

Do we all(7 billion people) somehow have 1 same ancestor, not the same herd, the same father/mother?

If yes, when did this ancestor live?

P.S. please no mythical creation story fights.

It might help think about this to ask whether all poodles have 1 ancestor.

 

[dewaddict84]

It might help think about this to ask whether all poodles have 1 ancestor.

Uh.... ok. If you say so. Poodles are a breed of dog that was established a while ago in Germany. They were around at least by the 15th century, where they appear in some artists drawings, so probably around then. Variations were created with other breeds of dog.

But the initial poodle? Probably a mutant dog of another breed that had a slightly more water resistant coat. And then people bred dogs for that trait and it turned into the poodles we know of today. Ok, well, then the french got involved, gave it a silly hair-cut, and they turned into the poodles we know of today.

Of course, it could likely be a situation like the hairless cat. It's a freak mutation that has happened several times through history, but was only really bred for it's hairless trait in the 70's, when it spontaneously happened in a litter of two and three in two separate cases. It's also happened since then in Russia. But they're all in the species of cat and can still inter-breed. Speciation takes bigger differences then hair I suppose.

 

[BrianOnEarth]

Indeed. Refering to the OP I was wondering whether it is even possible to identify the first poodle. I don't think there is such a thing. According to Dawkins, all dogs came from wolves, originally, having been selectively bred by humans. I don't think a poodle was suddenly born all poodle-like.
So if there wasn't a first poodle there probably wasn't a first human either.

 

[dingdong]

Indeed. Refering to the OP I was wondering whether it is even possible to identify the first poodle. I don't think there is such a thing. According to Dawkins, all dogs came from wolves, originally, having been selectively bred by humans. I don't think a poodle was suddenly born all poodle-like.
So if there wasn't a first poodle there probably wasn't a first human either.

Selective breeding can be done with anything that lives, a white flower with a spec of red in it can be grown on until it is all red, and so it is with all life, the only thing against it is time.
If will grew to adulthood in a week we could breed an army of 7ft giants within six months.