A new research study has discovered that "Adam," humankind's most-common male ancestor, actually walked the earth around the same time that genetic "Eve" was alive. It was previously believed that Adam was born much later.
Research appearing in Thursday's journal Science dates the oldest male ancestor to 120,000 to 156,000 years ago, which overlaps with Mitochondrial Eve, who probably lived 99,000 to 148,000 years ago.
The study, which is providing scientists with a greater understanding of where we came from, analyzed the Y chromosome for 69 men from nine populations, whereas previous estimates for Adam were based on a smaller amount of data and less-diverse population. In addition, earlier efforts to trace a common ancestor didn't use the whole Y chromosome.
Y chromosomes that carry the same mutations share a common male ancestor in the past. In effect, it's possible to determine how far back that ancestor was by looking at how many mutations differ between the chromosomes--the more mutations that aren't shared, the longer ago the common ancestor lived.
"When we put it together, we realized we had the very best map at the time of human genetic variation," Carlos Bustamante, a genetics professor at Stanford University and a study author, told Bloomberg. "And when we started looking at this classic question, we were getting an answer that was different than before."
The common ancestor in today's study probably isn't the first, said Jennifer Hughes, a researcher with the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Massachusetts. Instead, he's one of probably thousands of very successful and very lucky fathers, whose offspring were also successful. He just happens to be easy to track due the qualities of these portions of DNA, Hughes told Bloomberg.
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