Adam and Eve

In 1987, the world was shocked by the announcement that the common ancestor of all humans’ mitochondria had been found- a woman that lived in Africa 200,000 years ago. Unfortunately, the general understanding of phylogenetics and coalescence was very low at the time, and this led to many misconceptions. Among these, many people mistakenly assumed that either a fossil had been discovered, or that only one single woman lived 200,000 years ago who was the mother of the human race- dubbed “Mitochondrial Eve”. Later, when scientists sequenced the Y chromosome from men, it was found that there was also a “Y-chromosome Adam”. This was sometimes seen as surprising too, especially when early estimates indicated that Y-chromosome Adam may never have met Mitochondrial Eve. Working together, collaboratively formulate a short post that explains…