Female, male ancestors lived around same time
The most recent common ancestors to females and males — “Adam” and “Eve”, lived on the planet roughly around the same time, a new study has found.
By studying the DNA sequence of Y chromosomes of men from many different populations, scientists have determined that their male most recent common ancestor (MRCA) lived sometime between 120,000 and 156,000 years ago.
It’s the first time the human ancestry has been traced back through the male line by sequencing the DNA of many entire Y chromosomes. It agrees reasonably well with previous findings about our female most recent common ancestor, made by studying DNA carried down through the human race’s female line. Such studies used DNA from mitochrondria, structures inside cells, and placed that time of the most recent common ancestor between 99,000 and 148,000 years ago.
The study led by Stanford University, the University of Michigan Medical School, and Stony Brook University hopes to lead to further research on Y chromosomes as vehicles for studying human history, and tracing male lineages back to the common “Adam” ancestors. Jeffrey Kidd, an assistant professor of Human Genetics and Computational Medicine & Bioinformatics noted that only recently has it become possible to sequence Y chromosomes, because of technical limitations of previous approaches. The new paper details how the team was able to make reliable measurements of the sequence variation along the Y chromosome, which is handed down only from father to son without exchanging, or recombining, genetic material with other chromosomes. Kidd notes that this initial paper on Y chromosome sequence diversity provides important first evidence that the male most recent common ancestor did not live more recently than the female most recent common ancestor.
“We’re interested in understanding the historical relationships between many different human populations, and the migration patterns that have led to the peopling of the world,” he said.
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