[thechat] Journey of Man

[Erika Meyer]

The DNA thing patterns are where I get confused also... but anyway,
he's tracking patterns on the y chromosome.  Women don't have a y
chromosome.  He says that men give their y chromosome to their sons
in a relatively intact state.  So that enables him to track patterns
on the y chromosome.

woman: xx
man: xy

The "adam" thing weirds me out, it's too biblical.  I guess they are
trying to make it accessible for us when they use those terms...

I do wish they had explained the DNA pattern thing a bit better on the show.

Erika


>On Wed, 2003-02-05 at 01:32, Erika Meyer wrote:
>>
>>  He is able to determine what DNA patterns are the oldest and by doing
>>  so he is  able to find a bushman tribe in Africa he thinks are the
>>  most direct descendants of the first man.
>
>First *woman*.  Assuming this is the thing about tracking
>mytochondrial DNA (I have NFI about this but used to go out
>with a woman with a PhD in Anthropology), the logic was
>that there could indeed be an 'Eve'. For reasons I forget,
>'Adam' didn't exist.
>
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