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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by SomeAndrian (talk | contribs) at 23:36, 27 June 2011 (Edit warring). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Former featured articleMitochondrial Eve is a former featured article. Please see the links under Article milestones below for its original nomination page (for older articles, check the nomination archive) and why it was removed.
Main Page trophyThis article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on February 27, 2009.
Article milestones
DateProcessResult
January 9, 2004Featured article candidatePromoted
August 8, 2005Featured article reviewDemoted
December 15, 2005Good article nomineeListed
February 27, 2009Good article reassessmentDelisted
Current status: Former featured article
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Out of Africa 45 000 years BP?

Indigenous Australians wikipedia page - "Most scholars date the arrival of humans in Australia at 40,000 to 50,000 years ago, with a possible range of up to 125,000 years ago", and it's referenced. So how do they get from Africa to Australia in only 5000 years? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.161.51.145 (talk) 01:49, 26 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The Exodus from Africa of early human migrations was probably 60.000-70.000 years ago. (Roostalu 2006) --Maulucioni (talk) 03:53, 26 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Dating the Out of Africa exodus is a big issue in paleoanthropology. Many studies also use the range 50,000 - 70,000 years ago. The most widely accepted dates for the presence of anatomically modern humans outside africa are based on the Upper Paleolithic sites in Europe. The earliest UP sites date to 40-45000 years ago. It would have taken humans a few thousand years to migrate from East Africa to Europe. The Mungo Man remains have also been controversially dated to 42,000 years ago. If a human population were to migrate at say 1 km a year then they could get from Africa to Australia in less than 5000 years. Wapondaponda (talk) 04:17, 26 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Species?

"Mitochondrial Eve is generally estimated to have lived around 200,000 years ago, most likely in East Africa, when Homo sapiens sapiens were developing as a species separate from other human species."

Homo sapiens sapiens are a subspecies, not a species. H.s. sapiens aren't a different species than H.s. Idaltu. Should it read as

"Homo sapiens were developing as a species separate from other human species."

or

"Homo sapiens sapiens were developing as a subspecies separate from other humans." —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.69.172.148 (talk) 05:51, 23 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps such a wording would make sense. I am not sure Homo sapiens idaltu would spring to the mind of most readers, but it is indeed not really another species. It is a chrono species, an early form of homo sapiens sapiens. Therefore to introduce it into discussion would require a lot of off topic discussion. I'll try something. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 07:10, 23 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

"click-speaking pygmies"

  1. There is no eveidence whatsover that clicks were present in human language at the period in question (if anything their current geographical restriction suggests, on the contrary, that they are a recent development) - see Click consonant
  2. In any case, any claim to know anything about the consonant systems of specific languages and specific groups of speakers more than, say, 6000 years ago is simply not tenable - see linguistic reconstruction

At best, what is meant in the source for this statement is "the ancestors of groups who currently speak click languages". At worst, this is ill-informed speculation by scholars working outside their area of expertise - it's always suspicious that papers on this sort of topic never seem to include linguists as co-authors, or even as peer-reviewers, who would spot these obvious fallacies.

Since it is so problematic and contributes in fact little if anything to the argument of the article, the phrase "click-speaking" is best omitted.

If is to stay, it is so seriously contentious that it needs a specific source, ideally one which is not just something written by biologists or anthropologists with no linguistic expertise. --Pfold (talk) 13:08, 11 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I think you have a point. I've toned it down anyway, as it was not sourced to begin with, and it strikes me as maybe something someone has remembered wrongly from a real source. I do think that the general idea of a southern origin can be sourced, and I think there is a serious academic proposal that click languages represent a very old sub-stratum. Academics are indeed often wrong, but on Wikipedia we are basically just summarizing reliable sources and not normally trying to be better than them.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 21:18, 11 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I believe this were the refs use-->here.. see also this. You are correct a misinterpretation of the data at hand.Moxy (talk) 21:43, 11 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Recent pop culture section

Not sure what others think about starting a pop culture section - i personal object to this kind on trivial info in this types of articles. Plus recent adding were unsourced.Moxy (talk) 19:40, 3 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that pop culture trivia should not be allowed in this article. Pop trivia may be appropriate in articles on famous people or popular movies or TV shows, but the general public has never heard of Mitochondrial Eve or mitochondria. This is a technical article and should remain so. Greensburger (talk) 14:47, 4 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Rubbish. On so many levels. -- cheers, Michael C. Price talk 14:56, 4 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
This issue has been raised before. See the archived discussion and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mitochondrial Eve in popular culture. Wapondaponda (talk) 18:33, 4 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Not quite the same topic Wapondaponda, as that was apparently a merge discussion and therefore in a sense the opposite of thism discussion. Anyway, I'm not going to vote for or against. I have two concerns about agreeing with my normal collaborators here: first, I do not really follow the idea that some articles must only be about science while others can be about pop culture. Such assumptions always seem to amount to "discipline" ownership, and this can lead to deleting material which has nothing wrong with it except that it is "intruding" and no one can agree what article it may go into. It also seems to imply that Wikipedia should have technical articles which are not allowed to be fun. And secondly, normally if material is poorly written the first question I would normally ask is whether someone can fix it, rather than delete it, and in this case that was not really being considered. OTOH, the main reason I also don't see a big problem deleting this particular trivia is that it appears not to be very notable, which MIGHT be what everyone else means, but then I'll just say it more clearly for you.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 19:22, 4 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Strange statement

I removed the following sentence, "Although it is possible that there were multiple MRCAs, all born on the same day, month, and year, they can collectively be referred to as one individual MRCA." This just doesn't make sense. If there were contemporaries sharing the same mtDNA (none of which was the mother of all the others) that have currently living descendants, then none of them is the MRCA. They would all be descendants of the MRCA. -- Donald Albury 13:04, 31 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I meant twins or triplets, "all born on the same day". Their mother would not be "most recent". If both twins have currently living descendants, then both of them would be more recent than their mother. Greensburger (talk) 13:13, 31 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
But most is a superlative. Two people can not be "most". The concept of the MRCA is defined by trying to get back to one person, surely?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 13:30, 31 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Yes. -- cheers, Michael C. Price talk 13:35, 31 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I just noticed the flaw in my reasoning. Each twin would not be a MRCA unless all people now living were descended from both twins, which is unlikely. If one twin were the partial MRCA of two thirds of people now living, and the other twin were the partial MRCA of the other third, the twin's mother would be the MRCA. Greensburger (talk) 13:54, 31 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
It is possible that everyone could be descended from both of a pair of sisters (twin or otherwise), assuming a population bottle neck after their time, but it would be impossible for anyone to be descended from both sisters in the matrilineal line. -- Donald Albury 19:07, 31 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Some thoughts when I revisit this article after 4 years

I last edited/monitored this article in 2007. I kept it in my watch list but largely ignored what was happening here. I remember seeing large quantity of technical details added which I complained about once. These appear to be gone. I've recently written the MRCA article for a third time, and came back here to check on its much more popular sister article on mtEve. I will post some of my first re-impressions here. Fred Hsu (talk) 18:54, 12 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  • What is up with the Further reading section? I've never seen an article with so many bullets in the Further reading section. Are these remnant of the extremely verbose and technical paragraphs we purged? Fred Hsu (talk) 18:54, 12 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • Does anyone actually think we need to list "Climate shaped the worldwide distribution of human mitochondrial DNA sequence variation" as a "further reading" item?
    • What about Dawkins' The Ancestor's Tale? That's already reference inline and appears in the References section. I am one of the biggest Dawkins fans you can find in Wikidom, and have created articles related to his books and ideas that some would actually like to see removed ;) But even I think listing this book again in the Further reading section is too much.
I say be bold - Moxy (talk) 18:57, 12 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
These are minor defects (if they are) compared to the mess that was removed! -- cheers, Michael C. Price talk 19:06, 12 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Got it. But I think instead of purging them, we should try our best to find new homes for these references in appropriate articles. Fred Hsu (talk) 19:13, 12 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Common fallacies" - "Not the only woman". This paragraph can probably be slightly reworded to make it read more easily.

Wow. I think this article is in good state. It is clear and concise, yet it covers all grounds, with pointers to relevant articles for people who wish to follow up. Fred Hsu (talk) 19:11, 12 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Edit warring

Michael C Price (talk · contribs) and SomeAndrian (talk · contribs) have been edit warring. I have issued 3RR warnings to both. -- Donald Albury 21:53, 27 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry I'm new to editing wikipedia. Michael I've asked you before but since this is the official place to resolve the dispute I'm going to ask you here again. What is the relationship between the quote: "Any hypothesis that assumes a small number of founding individuals throughout the late Pleistocene can be rejected because otherwise the evolutionary theory would be wrong and that would be inconvenient to scientists and atheist." and the cited article http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/content/10/1/2.long