A new paper,
The Dawn of Human Matrilineal Diversity, is out in
AJHG. I
read too much John Hawks to really be all that excited about
mtDNA based studies, and this paper is
Mitochondrial Eve to the
nth power. But...I do think it is indicative of a trend which suggests a rollback from the most extreme
Out of Africa scenarios; i.e.,
that one band somewhere in Eastern Africa arose ~100,000 years ago and expanded demographically so that they were the exclusive ancestors of all human beings.
1 The
introgression story is one angle; but the likelihood of
preexistent population substructure within Africa itself is another. If you don't read the paper (which is Open Access), just check out
Figure 1 and
the map. Breathless
description of the study over at
ScienceDaily of course....
Related: Kambiz
comments in more detail.
1 - Some of this was more about public perception than reality; just like the one
mtDNA ancestor was conflated with one female ancestor (the same trick of course applied to the
NRY).
Labels: Evolution
