Father of all humankind is 340,000 years old

Eboard10

The Living Force
FOTCM Member
Father of all humankind is 340,000 years old

_http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/father-humankind-340-000-years-old-210033011.html

DNA evidence has revealed that the oldest known common male ancestor is 340,000 years old, more than twice as old as previous estimates.

New Scientist reports that the sample comes from a recently deceased man named Albert Perry. After the African-American South Carolina man died, one of his relatives submitted a sample of his DNA to a company called Family Tree DNA for analysis.

The findings were published in the The American Journal of Human Genetics and may require researchers to adjust the known timeline of humankind’s evolution.

And the historical mark came at something of a bargain—the company does historical DNA analysis on individuals for about $150.

All previously compared DNA samples pointed to a common Y chromosome traced back to man who lived between 60,000 and 140,000 years ago. But Perry’s DNA sample broke the trend, not matching up with this common ancestor.

"It's a cool discovery," Jon Wilkins of the Ronin Institute in Montclair, N.J., told New Scientist. "We geneticists have been looking at Y chromosomes about as long as we've been looking at anything. Changing where the root of the Y-chromosome tree is at this point is extremely surprising."

After the initial tests on Perry’s DNA, geneticists at the University of Arizona conducted further tests to confirm the anomaly. The Y chromosome in Perry’s test matched up with those of 11 men who all lived in one village in Cameroon.

University of Arizona researcher Michael Hammer says Perry’s DNA suggests there may have been an earlier species of humans that went extinct—but not before interbreeding with the more modern version of man.

This is the abstract of the paper in question. If you do a search online you may be able to find the actual paper.

An African American Paternal Lineage Adds an Extremely Ancient Root to the Human Y Chromosome Phylogenetic Tree

_http://www.cell.com/AJHG/abstract/S0002-9297%2813%2900073-6

We report the discovery of an African American Y chromosome that carries the ancestral state of all SNPs that defined the basal portion of the Y chromosome phylogenetic tree. We sequenced ∼240 kb of this chromosome to identify private, derived mutations on this lineage, which we named A00. We then estimated the time to the most recent common ancestor (TMRCA) for the Y tree as 338 thousand years ago (kya) (95% confidence interval = 237-581 kya). Remarkably, this exceeds current estimates of the mtDNA TMRCA, as well as those of the age of the oldest anatomically modern human fossils. The extremely ancient age combined with the rarity of the A00 lineage, which we also find at very low frequency in central Africa, point to the importance of considering more complex models for the origin of Y chromosome diversity. These models include ancient population structure and the possibility of archaic introgression of Y chromosomes into anatomically modern humans. The A00 lineage was discovered in a large database of consumer samples of African Americans and has not been identified in traditional hunter-gatherer populations from sub-Saharan Africa. This underscores how the stochastic nature of the genealogical process can affect inference from a single locus and warrants caution during the interpretation of the geographic location of divergent branches of the Y chromosome phylogenetic tree for the elucidation of human origins.

The current consensus about the origin of mankind has us tracing our most recent common ancestor via mtDNA to a single woman 160,000 ya and via the Y chromosome to a single man 140,000 ya, known as the basal lineage A1b which the authors of the paper renamed the A0 line. The new findings push the ancestral line back 338,000 ya on the male side which they term the A00 lineage.

The proposed date for the most common ancestor comes close to the Cs date on the origin of the Adamic man some 309,000 ya. The A1b line could then represent the genetic tweaking made at the time, 130,000 ya, to the black peoples. http://www.sott.net/article/250256-The-Cs-Hit-List-09-DNA-Rational-Design-and-the-Origins-of-Life

However, the new paper also gives a new date to the old A1b lineage of some 200,000 ya based on the fact that the previous studies weren't using mutation rates that were based on the whole-genome sequence data that was recently obtained though I think we should still take these dates with a pinch of salt.
 
Age of Human Y Chromosome

A possible hit, in regard to the 309,000 year date that's been mentioned at the beginning of the last Grand Cycle. There's about a 30,000 year discrepancy with the date below, but maybe in the right ballpark?

http://uanews.org/story/human-y-chromosome-much-older-than-previously-thought

Human Y Chromosome Much Older Than Previously Thought

The discovery and UA analysis of an extremely rare African American Y chromosome pushes back the time of the most recent common ancestor for the Y chromosome lineage tree to 338,000 years ago. This time predates the age of the oldest known anatomically modern human fossils.

UA geneticists have discovered the oldest known genetic branch of the human Y chromosome – the hereditary factor determining male sex.

The new divergent lineage, which was found in an individual who submitted his DNA to Family Tree DNA, a company specializing in DNA analysis to trace family roots, branched from the Y chromosome tree before the first appearance of anatomically modern humans in the fossil record.

The results are published in the American Journal of Human Genetics.

"Our analysis indicates this lineage diverged from previously known Y chromosomes about 338,000 ago, a time when anatomically modern humans had not yet evolved," said Michael Hammer, an associate professor in the University of Arizona's department of ecology and evolutionary biology and a research scientist at the UA's Arizona Research Labs. "This pushes back the time the last common Y chromosome ancestor lived by almost 70 percent."

Unlike the other human chromosomes, the majority of the Y chromosome does not exchange genetic material with other chromosomes, which makes it simpler to trace ancestral relationships among contemporary lineages. If two Y chromosomes carry the same mutation, it is because they share a common paternal ancestor at some point in the past. The more mutations that differ between two Y chromosomes the farther back in time the common ancestor lived.

Originally, a DNA sample obtained from an African American living in South Carolina was submitted to the National Geographic Genographic Project. When none of the genetic markers used to assign lineages to known Y chromosome groupings were found, the DNA sample was sent to Family Tree DNA for sequencing. Fernando Mendez, a postdoctoral researcher in Hammer's lab, led the effort to analyze the DNA sequence, which included more than 240,000 base pairs of the Y chromosome.

Hammer said "the most striking feature of this research is that a consumer genetic testing company identified a lineage that didn't fit anywhere on the existing Y chromosome tree, even though the tree had been constructed based on perhaps a half-million individuals or more. Nobody expected to find anything like this."

About 300,000 years ago, the time the Neanderthals are believed to have split from the ancestral human lineage. It was not until more than 100,000 years later that anatomically modern humans appear in the fossil record. They differ from the more archaic forms by a more lightly built skeleton, a smaller face tucked under a high forehead, the absence of a cranial ridge and smaller chins.

Hammer said the newly discovered Y chromosome variation is extremely rare. Through large database searches, his team eventually was able to find a similar chromosome in the Mbo, a population living in a tiny area of western Cameroon in sub-Saharan Africa.

"This was surprising because previously the most diverged branches of the Y chromosome were found in traditional hunter-gatherer populations such as Pygmies and the click-speaking KhoeSan, who are considered to be the most diverged human populations living today."

"Instead, the sample matched the Y chromosome DNA of 11 men, who all came from a very small region of western Cameroon," Hammer said. "And the sequences of those individuals are variable, so it's not like they all descended from the same grandfather."

Hammer cautions against popular concepts of "mitochondrial Eve" or "Y chromosome Adam" that suggest all of humankind descended from exactly one pair of humans that lived at a certain point in human evolution.

"There has been too much emphasis on this in the past," he said. "It is a misconception that the genealogy of a single genetic region reflects population divergence. Instead, our results suggest that there are pockets of genetically isolated communities that together preserve a great deal of human diversity."

Still, Hammer said, "It is likely that other divergent lineages will be found, whether in Africa or among African-Americans in the U.S. and that some of these may further increase the age of the Y chromosome tree."

He added: "There has been a lot of hype with people trying to trace their Y chromosome to different tribes, but this individual from South Carolina can say he did it."

The study came about by combined efforts of a private business, Family Tree DNA, the efforts of a citizen scientist, Bonnie Schrack, and the research capabilities at the UA.
 
Re: Age of Human Y Chromosome

Posted on SOTT as well. :) Post merged.

http://www.sott.net/article/259251-Human-Y-chromosome-much-older-than-previously-thought
 
Hammer is often at the forefront of the genetics.
My Cameroonian father has write a thesis on one of the tribes in Cameroon. He stipulates and he isn't the only one that many tribes of Cameroon come from Egypt. There are moreover rivers and mountains of Egyptian Gods. One of my uncles, linguistic professor at the University of Yaounde (Cameroon) is retranscribing thousands of singings and tales of oral traditions which were never put by write. Maybe that this long work will say to it to us more? it's surprising to find in Cameroon among the oldest human fossils and oldest human genetic characteristics, but to know nothing about these civilizations!
 
I have been scouring this page for a while trying to find the transcripts (there have been more then one I believe) where the C's mentioned how old modern man is. Anyone know which one I'm talking about off hand?
 
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