A question about past evolution on earth

[Christopher]

^Umm, you're confusing several different levels of relatedness, and I'm not sure whether you're joking or not. Really, if you go back as little as maybe 8 centuries, all humans are related to one another, because there's been so much intermarrying and common ancestors and so forth. So when we say two people aren't related, we're only saying they have no common ancestors for a few centuries back. Go back far enough and everyone is related on the level of having individual ancestors in common. And of course we're all members of the human species.

But when we talk about species being related, naturally that's on a different level than the relationships between individual members of those species. There it's a matter of the species branching off from a common ancestor species.

 

[gturner]

I was joking, but there was a genetic study of people in the UK that found something very surprising. Almost all people with the same last names are actually related, which implies that our surnames were chosen by either just one person or a very, very small group of people, contrary to the assumption that "Smiths" were everyone who worked as a smith, etc.

 

[Christopher]

^That's interesting.

 

[USS Triumphant]

To bad there hasn't been a band called The Simians, then the statement would be correct again.

How about this?:

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXL0WDZdELc[/yt]

Note the uploader's name, for extra credit.

 

[Gov Kodos]

And
[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ul5h6bFZ1TQ[/yt]

 

[gturner]

I was slightly mistaken. "Smiths" tend not to be related, but people with rarer surnames generally are. 40 Surnames study

We found that men with rare surnames - such as Grewcock, Wadsworth, Ketley and Ravenscroft - tend to share Y chromosomes that are very similar, suggesting a common ancestor within the past 700 years. However, men with frequent surnames, such as Smith, are no more likely to have a recent common ancestor than men chosen at random from the general population - they derive from a person's trade and would have been adopted many times by unrelated people.

One of the most familiar of the rarer names we studied was Attenborough. In a random sample of Attenboroughs - including spelling derivations such as Attenborrow - almost nine out of ten men share the same Y chromosome type.

Another interesting study is here (pdf) where the researchers are using DNA and surnames to figure out more about Viking settlement in Britain.

 

[rhubarbodendron]

^^ I'll bite my tongue.

So did I. As we usually think the same way I assume you, too, wondered if the currently dominating species on this planet can rightfully be called intelligent if it requires warnings like "peanut brittle. Warning: may contain traces of peanuts"

 

[iguana_tonante]

I was slightly mistaken. "Smiths" tend not to be related, but people with rarer surnames generally are. 40 Surnames study

There are about 200 people with my last name in Italy, most of them in the same town. I think it's a given we are all more or less related, including the ones living away from the original hometown like myself.

The origin of the name is lost in time: it could go back to an ancient Roman family, but it's impossible to know for sure.

 

[RJDiogenes]

^^ I'll bite my tongue.

So did I. As we usually think the same way I assume you, too, wondered if the currently dominating species on this planet can rightfully be called intelligent if it requires warnings like "peanut brittle. Warning: may contain traces of peanuts"

Indeed.

 

[rhubarbodendron]

There are about 200 people with my last name in Italy, most of them in the same town. I think it's a given we are all more or less related, including the ones living away from the original hometown like myself.

The origin of the name is lost in time: it could go back to an ancient Roman family, but it's impossible to know for sure.

A pity. Maybe you can find a source after all? They discover old archieves all the time and in your country the warm climate preserves documents rather well.
I can trace my family back to the 1500s, but in my case it's really very simple as there have never been many of us (currently 11 in the whole world). Our name translates as "people who come from where they cut the shubbery" (and yes, we know the exact spot It's still owned by relatives of us)

 

[iguana_tonante]

The origin of the name is lost in time: it could go back to an ancient Roman family, but it's impossible to know for sure.

A pity. Maybe you can find a source after all? They discover old archieves all the time and in your country the warm climate preserves documents rather well.

That's unlikely. Two thousand years does that.

 

[rhubarbodendron]

Don't give up hope. Only recently they discovered loads of Roman military diplomas in a village nearby: carved on thin bronze sheets and completely legible
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Museum_Quintana_-_Milit%C3%A4rdiplom_2.jpg
If your ancestors were belligerent, there's a chance you can trace them
(also, there's always the possibility of genetic comparisms, particularly the mitochondrial RNA)

 

[Christopher]

Our name translates as "people who come from where they cut the shubbery" (and yes, we know the exact spot It's still owned by relatives of us)

Are you telling us that you're one of the Knights of Ni?

 

[iguana_tonante]

Don't give up hope. Only recently they discovered loads of Roman military diplomas in a village nearby: carved on thin bronze sheets and completely legible
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Museum_Quintana_-_Milit%C3%A4rdiplom_2.jpg
If your ancestors were belligerent, there's a chance you can trace them
(also, there's always the possibility of genetic comparisms, particularly the mitochondrial RNA)

That's interesting, but I am not particularly interested in researching it. Even if it turns out I am the direct descendant of a corrupt, debased, vile Roman consul, it would be nothing more than a cool topic to use at parties.

I know some people are genealogy enthusiasts, but I am not particularly into it.

 

[DarthTom]

^^ I'll bite my tongue.

So did I. As we usually think the same way I assume you, too, wondered if the currently dominating species on this planet can rightfully be called intelligent if it requires warnings like "peanut brittle. Warning: may contain traces of peanuts"

Well, blame the lawyers for that one. People sue product manufacturers and win for less - in this case if you had a peanut allergy. Oh, and we can thank the lawyers on why at a Dr.'s office the voice mail message also says, ' ... if you're calling about a medical emergency, please hang up and dial 911,' as if someone wouldn't already know to to so.

 

[YellowSubmarine]

You ought to look for your noble roots. People should know these things. It might turn out that you're descended from someone very important, like the Mitochondrial Eve or the Y-chromosomal Adam.

 

[Christopher]

Really, pretty much everyone is descended from a number of important historical figures. I mean, let's say as a simplifying assumption that each historical individual had an average of, oh, three children that each lived to adulthood and had three children in turn, and so on. So in successive generations they'd have 3 descendants, 9 descendants, 27 descendants, and so forth. After just 21 generations, then, they'd have 10 billion descendants, more than enough to include everyone on Earth. And that's only 4-500 years. Maybe that's overoptimistic, though, but even if the average number of surviving descendants is only 2, it would take about 33 generations to produce nearly 9 billion descendants, so maybe 7-800 years for one person's genes to spread through every individual on the planet. Although that's grossly simplified, of course, but it gives a sense of the magnitudes involved. Probably everyone you've ever heard of who lived 1000 years ago or more is a direct ancestor of yours, if they had any children at all, or a close relative of one if they didn't. So being descended from someone famous really isn't a big deal, if they're from that long ago.

Then again, it only takes about 7-800 years for the genes of any single ancestor to be so diluted in the sheer mass of ancestors as to make no measurable contribution to your genome at all. So that kind of cancels it out.

 

[Timelord79 (he/him)]

Genealogy... the only pyramid scheme that works because everyone joins in!

 

[gturner]

The caveat to that is that some indigenous peoples don't really have a major historical figure because they weren't writing things down.

 

[Christopher]

Even so, there would be more interbreeding there than you'd think. A number of the cultures that anthropologists have thought of as "pristine" and totally cut off from human contact since the dawn of time are often more like the descendants of formerly more connected populations that got driven into the wilderness by plague or invasion or something.