Skip to main content

One thing I can tell you: this man was NOT your ancestor



This is Oetzi--the famous ice-man mummy found a few years back in the Tyrolean Alps.

New genetic testing--specifically mitochondrial DNA analysis--has shown that it is statistically highly unlikely that any modern human alive is descended from him or his immediate kin.

This is actually pretty important stuff, because it raises points about genetic diversity, genetic drift, and the idea that the human race periodically passes through very narrow choke points where lots and lots of lines simply ... don't make it.

Oetzi is probably about 5,300 years old. That means he died in his Alpine cave when Egyptians in the Middle Kingdom were carving out gigantic statues of Ramses II, and only a smallish minority of the people alive then are actually the ancestors of the folks around today.

For the past thousand years, however, we've been undergoing a massive population boom, driven by better farming methods, better medicine, and a lot of religious with the old go-out-and-out-multiply-the-heathens mentality. There is probably at least as much if not more diversity in the human genome today [with over 6 billion of the 80-100 billion of all the people who have ever lived walking around right now] than there has been throughout the entirety of human history.

But I have my doubts that in 2108 my grandchildren will be able to make the same boast.

This should [but probably won't] temper your sense that which party controls the Delaware legislature in 2009 is going to make a hell of a lot of difference 100 years from now, let alone 5,000 years out.

[h/t ScienceDaily]

Comments

Anonymous said…
Is Jason Scott that dude's direct descendant?

Popular posts from this blog

A Libertarian Martin Luther King Jr. Day post

In which we travel into interesting waters . . . (for a fairly long trip, so be prepared) Dr. King's 1968 book, Where do we go from here:  chaos or community? , is profound in that it criticizes anti-poverty programs for their piecemeal approach, as John Schlosberg of the Center for a Stateless Society  [C4SS] observes: King noted that the antipoverty programs of the time “proceeded from a premise that poverty is a consequence of multiple evils,” with separate programs each dedicated to individual issues such as education and housing. Though in his view “none of these remedies in itself is unsound,” they “all have a fatal disadvantage” of being “piecemeal,” with their implementation having “fluctuated at the whims of legislative bodies” or been “entangled in bureaucratic stalling.”   The result is that “fragmentary and spasmodic reforms have failed to reach down to the profoundest needs of the poor.” Such single-issue approaches also have “another common failing — ...

More of This, Please

Or perhaps I should say, "Less of this one, please." Or how about just, "None of them. Ever again. Please....For the Love of God." Sunshine State Poll: Grayson In Trouble The latest Sunshine State/VSS poll shows controversial Democratic incumbent Alan Grayson trailing former state Senator Dan Webster by seven points, 43 percent to 36 percent. A majority of respondents -- 51 percent -- disapprove of the job that Grayson is doing. Independents have an unfavorable view of him as well, by a 36/47 margin. Grayson has ignored the conventional wisdom that a freshman should be a quiet member who carefully tends to the home fires. The latest controversy involves his " Taliban Dan " advertisement, where he explicitly compares his opponent to the Taliban, and shows a clip of Webster paraphrasing Ephesians 5:22 -- "wives, submit to your husbands." An unedited version of the clip shows that Webster was actually suggesting that husba...

A reply to Salon's R. J. Eskrow, and his 11 stupid questions about Libertarians

Posts here have been in short supply as I have been living life and trying to get a campaign off the ground. But "11 questions to see if Libertarians are hypocrites" by R. J. Eskrow, picked up at Salon , was just so freaking lame that I spent half an hour answering them. In the end (but I'll leave it to your judgment), it is not that Libertarians or Libertarian theory looks hypocritical, but that the best that can be said for Mr. Eskrow is that he doesn't have the faintest clue what he's talking about. That's ok, because even ill-informed attacks by people like this make an important point:  Libertarian ideas (as opposed to Conservative ideas, which are completely different) are making a comeback as the dynamic counterpoint to "politics as usual," and so every hack you can imagine must be dragged out to refute them. Ergo:  Mr. Eskrow's 11 questions, with answers: 1.       Are unions, political parties, elections, and ...