Genetics, surnames, and hyphenated surnames are like the blue pyramid. You have to win the lottery to be on the line.
Geneologies are like the grey shapes with black borders. At a certain point they are everywhere. You have to win the lottery not to be one of them.
It is not just conceivable, it is overwhelmingly likely that if Adam and Eve existed they would be genealogical ancestors of all people about 3,000 to 4,000 years later.
It really isnāt clear to me why you think you and I arenāt on the same page.
My last posts on this topic havenāt even bothered with genetics. Iāve been writing purely on genealogical dynamics.
As much as I admire the blue and red schematic in your post, it doesnāt seem to present the issue I was discussing, which is the ācompressionā of genealogies due to inevitable pairings of cousins-with-cousins. It is much more focused on presenting the generational pathways for āYā and Mitochondrian genes.
The journal article I cite (and which apparently is cited by lots of others as well) introduces assumptions regarding minimum migration from one isolated region into new or other isolated regions. I believe there are some newer journal articles on this. All of them appear to come up with similar results.
Here is the Tricky Part: As several sources have said about people alive in 3000 BCE ā¦ they are either the ancestors of no person currently living, or they are the ancestors of all persons alive today.
This means we can easily say:
Correct>: Everyone alive today descends from the same people who were alive in 3000 BCE.
But we cannot also say:
Incorrect>: Everyone alive in 3000 BCE are the ancestors of everyone alive today. Right?
So, the trick is in how God would have helped guide the descendants of Adam to become one of the āAllāsā rather than one of the āNoneāsā.
We agree that it is a more difficult problem than trying to track Sir names, because the assumption there is that given too many females in a generation, a Sir name ultimately & inevitably dies out. But, as you are careful to point out, the ability for Adamās lineage to survive into the present age has nothing to do with Sir names (nor with Adamās or Eveās actual genes).
**I would say that the āTrickiest Part of the Tricky partā is that we canāt apply these concepts to the modern population ā¦ we have to apply them to the population that was alive during the time of Jesus!
This does compress the time frame quite a bit. Instead of having [say] 5000 years to work with, we only have [say] 3,000 years for the first part (which must be thoroughly complete). By the time of Jesus, Adamās descendants need to have become one of the many genealogical āwinnersā not just in the Middle East, but in China, India, Australia, Japan, North America and South America.
@Swamidass, does it sound like you and I are on the same page?
āWithin 10K years ago, it is very likely there were a large number of universal genealogical ancestors of all those alive at the time of Paul, and probably all those in recorded history. If we move back to 15K, then it is even more certain because this is a conservative identical ancestor point for all those in recorded historyā
It is because the words and analogies you are using to process the implications of genealogical science seem to indicate misunderstandings of how it works. Normally, I might let it slide. In this case, however, everyone seems very new to this science. So I am trying to explain the mistakes so that it does not accidently perpetuate a misconception about the science.
Maybe I can recolor it, but the real contrast is the the red/blue VS. the black bordered universal genealogical ancestors. There is a single tree for the genetic ancestry, but a CLOUD of genealogical ancestors. There are a very large number of trees for genealogies, too many to draw in clearly.
False. You are confusing the Most Recent Universal Genealogical Ancestor with the identical ancestor point. The identical ancestors point is earlier.
True. But this is not really the key point. The real point is what percentage of people alive at a particular point of time are universal genealogical ancestors.
There is a lot of interesting subtlety here, and there are some interesting cases that are relevant and produce non-intuitive results. Unfortunately, "evidenceā does not really help us here. There is a high amount of uncertainty because the genaologies are unobservable.[quote=āgbrooks9, post:42, topic:36093ā]
So, the trick is in how God would have helped guide the descendants of Adam to become one of the āAllāsā rather than one of the āNoneāsā.
[/quote]
Except, in the range of about 15,000 to 6,000 years ago, a very high percentage of people that become universal common ancestors appears to be very high, if there is just tiny amounts of migration. Of course, we do not know for a fact if there are tiny amounts of migration, because this is unobservable. But it seems very likely.
To be clear, your question presumes that there is some sort of āfine tuningā or āunlikelihoodā associated with my claim. This is not the case. Rather, there is both high uncertainty (because it is unobservable) and high likelihood (for the reasons Iāve just given).
Remember, not trick needed. The only people that become "nonesā are those whose lineage dies off quickly. Once your descendents get past the initial risky time and have enough descendents, the chances of becoming a None are essentially zero. Nothing particularly magical required here.
Sort of. It is an open question what date needs to apply. Regardless, Iāve been saying āwithin 10K years ago, it is very likely there were a large number of universal genealogical ancestors of all those alive at the time of Paul.ā That appears to be true unless we posit total isolation of a population for several millennia, an evidence free claim that seems to defy everything we know of human populations.
No, because if you have followed what I have written, this summary is not accurate. Becoming a āwinnerā is not hard, but almost inevitable. You talk as if it is unlikely. It turns out to be very likely.
@gbrooks9 I do appreciate you pressing on this. I guarantee you are not the only one confused on this. Everyoneās intuition appears calibrated by genetics, so this turns out to be hard to learn. You make a good foil, asking good questions, so I can explain what is going on here for everyone. Thanks and peace.
If we take the theory as read for now, and the question is applied to the particular Individual āAdamā, the question of whether his line was providentially preserved isnāt an imponderable. The question would be whether he left any descendants or not, and the answer is a historical affirmative.
Thatās because he is only recorded at all because, at least, he is a named ancestor of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (Israel). And there is an entire race scattered around the world whose identity is based on their historical progenitor Israel.
If there is providential contingency, itās in the relatively short timescale, and on the question of whether the worldwide genealogical mixing, in practice, matches the statistical probabilities. But that uncertainty is exactly the same in all statistical sciences - we take its sufficiency for granted if weāre mixing gases.
It is interesting to realise the discussions on Adam during the first few centuries of Christianity. In a paper on Universals and Patristic writings, we find this comment:
"ā¦we find Gregory doing something very similar. He too argues that the mention of į¼Ī½ĪøĻĻĻĪæĻ in this verse is significant:
When the word says that God made man, the whole of humanity is indicated
by the indefiniteness of its [sc. the termās] signification. For it is not named Adam now alongside the creature, as the history says in the following: but the name for the created man is not the particular [į½ ĻĪ¹Ļ], but the universal [į½ ĪŗĪ±ĪøĻĪ»ĪæĻ ] (Greg. Nyss., De hom. op., 16; PG 44, 185B, trans. Zachhuber 2000, p. 155.).
This means, as Gregory makes clear ā¦, that in the first creation the entirety of humankind is already comprehended. The Ā«indefiniteness of the significationĀ», which Gregory here once again ascribes to the universal term Ā«manĀ» means more precisely that the referent of this word is humankind in its entirety.In his own way, then, Gregory reiterates exactly ā¦ (and many other Christians before him), namely that we all āareā Adam.
What is the threshold? If we need āxā population 4000 years ago to explain current human diversityā¦ what is the āyā pop we need of Adamās pop?
And how do you get the Yecās to accept the Flood as regional?
This is a common objection. Letās just say that, from evidence, we have no idea if exactly zero people crossed the strait into Tasmania. Though we can rule out large scale population movement, a single person on a boat is enough to make a common genealogical ancestors likely, but also undetectable. I find it very hard to believe that over 10,000 years that exactly zero people made it across that gap.
Remember, at the same time, polynesians are boating across the Pacific. It is seems to be a genuinely difficult to believe claim, and it is certainly without evidence, that no one crossed for 10K years.
Actually Polynesians only made it as far as New Zealand by about the 1200s CE and there is still a considerable distance from there to Tasmania (and one would expect some evidence of them in southern and south eastern Australia first (this also still leaves several thousand years of potential isolation) and the prevailing winds would have been against them exploring to the east. In addition the Australian and Tasmanian Aborigines did not have very seaworthy craft in that area (https://www.australianmuseum.net.au/blogpost/science/tentative-chronology-of-indigenous-canoes-of-eastern-australia) and Bass Strait is not known for its calm waters (roaring forties). It is possible there was some incidental rare contact and it is also possible there was not. More likely prior to the extinction of the human population on Flinders Island circa 4500 BP or shortly thereafter. āThe archaeology of isolation? : prehistoric occupation in the Furneaux Group of Islands, Bass Strait, Tasmaniaā a PhD thesis seems of relevance. https://openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/handle/1885/110266
The specific recent timeframe of <10,000 which is up for debate but essentially observable.
More distant time frames (still recent) of about 40,000 years ago or earlier.
Whether or not we agree on #1 (which is debatable and unobservable), it is seems almost certain that if Adam existed before about 20K years ago (as in #2) then was our genealogical ancestor. This last point is still no observable, but much much less debatable.
Exactly. Iām just saying that it is unobservable and impossible to say with certainty. Though it does strain the imagination to insist that there was no contact over thousands of years. I find that impossible to believe given what we know of human proclivity to exploration. Therefore we cannot say with anything resembling certainty that evolution rules this out.
Of course, but maybe it was a fluke with a man on raft. All we need is a one in 1,000 year event, not a regular trade route or a particular level of technology. We infer this type of migration all the time for animals without technology.
To be clear, I am not arguing that it certainly happened. Iām rather pointing out that we are very far from knowing it did not, and we never will be. Our scientific claims have to be more restrained regarding their impact on theology.
A better way to engage this story is to ask the question. How would we think of these populations if they were not genealogical descendants of Adam? That is a more important question that does not presume more than science tells us. And hopefully ones theology is robust enough to answer.
There is a great deal of debate about this. Because sea levels have risen by 400 ft, all the relevant archaeology is erased.
There is open questions about how important boats were in colonization as early as 15,000, and we may never have the data we need to resolve this. None the less, there is increasing evidence that the migration happened along the coast by boat, and may have included some long voyages across the entire pacific. Either possibility ends the notion that the Americas were totally isolated because a land bridge closed.
Regardless of what the final theories end up being, we just cannot be certain there was not a single immigrant over thousands of years. That is just too strong of a belief. All it takes is a single immigrant to give us a common genealogical ancestor in recent times.
I thought we were discussing Tasmania; the Americas are a different situation. There is evidence of pre-Columbian cultural transmission (sweet potatoes, chickens [a little more disputed]) between South America and the Pacific islands (though relatively recently). In addition there are the human cultures around the Arctic circle with good boats so the culture to culture links can be made connecting the Americas with Asia (there is evidence of Siberian obsidian showing up in Alaska).
I did shift there to Americas, because that is a bigger question than Tasmania. If we were immigrating to Americas it is not unreasonable to wonder if Tasmania was not totally isolated.
