interesting
Iorek Byrnison
Daryl Krupa
wrote:
> http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24295165/
RE: the subtitle,
" Study maintains numbers dwindled down to 2,000 due to drought ":
No, not this one. That was another one. A few years back.
It's not news anymore.
This one says that the indigenous people of southern Africa were
separated from the rest of the Africans for something like 50,000, or
100,000 years, or something in between, or maybe more, or maybe less,
it's hard to tell.
Supposedly, northern women started crossing the border between these
groups again about 40,000 years ago, but it looks like southjern women
had been migrating north once in a while before that.
Somewhen before that time, there was supposedly a sharp decline in
human population, but that's not part of this study. There's nothing
in this study about how big either population was at any time. Maybe a
reference to the idea was just thrown in to add some drama to what is
really just a lab report.
You can read the real thing here:
Maybe a reference to the idea was just thrown in to add some drama to
what is really just a lab report.
http://www.ajhg.org/AJHG/abstract/S0002-9297(08)00255-3
- Daryl Krupa
spiznet
So, was the northern group trended down to 2000 people? Or was it the
southern group?!? Or were BOTH groups down to 1000???
Or was it the "combined" group down to 2000?!? I thought the idea was
that they didn't combine completely...
...too much information and too little data...
Daryl Krupa
> So, was the northern group trended down to 2000 people? Or was it the
> southern group?!? Or were BOTH groups down to 1000???
> Or was it the "combined" group down to 2000?!?
I'm sorry, I don't now, because I forgot which of the half-a-dozen
referenced articles on the subject was the one with the 2000 minimum,
and I haven't gone through them all yet.
> I thought the idea was
> that they didn't combine completely...
No, just that they separated and didn't combine again until later,
sorta like the Botha-Mandela transition, I suppose ...
> ...too much information and too little data
Yep, and the scientific article had the opposite problem, as genetic
studies often do.
BTW, all the dates mentioned are the result of assumptions re:
mutation rates of mitochondrial DNA that
have not been proven, so they could all be too old.
- Daryl Krupa
rmacfarl
> On Apr 26, 10:51 pm, spiznet <m...@spiznet.com> wrote:
>
> > So, was the northern group trended down to 2000 people? Or was it the
> > southern group?!? Or were BOTH groups down to 1000???
> > Or was it the "combined" group down to 2000?!?
>
> I'm sorry, I don't now, because I forgot which of the half-
> the 2000 minimum, and I haven't gone through them all yet.
>
> > I thought the idea was
> > that they didn't combine completely...
>
> No, just that they separated and didn't combine again until
> later, sorta like the Botha-Mandela transition, I suppose ...
>
> > ...too much information and too little data
>
> Yep, and the scientific article had the opposite problem, as
> genetic studies often do.
> BTW, all the dates mentioned are the result of assumptions re:
> mutation rates of mitochondrial DNA that
> have not been proven, so they could all be too old.
>
> - Daryl Krupa
Re Botha/Mandela - If I'm not mistaken evidence suggests a lot more
gene flow prior to the transition than the first-mentioned would
prefer to acknowledge...
Ross Macfarlane :-)