this post was submitted on 26 Jul 2024
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Kinda.
The Mitochondrial Eve and Y-chromosomal Adam are a thing. Admittedly, they probably lived about 100,000 years apart, but all mankind is descended from these two people.
That's a big kinda.
But you know what I mean. Mankind didn't start with one man and one woman. Mankind slowly came to be from another species that was similar to mankind, and somewhere in the history we called us humans and our ancestor something else.
You seem like you might actually have quite a detailed knowledge of evolution, especially very early evolution. I don't know a huge amount of detail about the early evolutionary time periods.
My understanding is that for a long time it had to just be the primordial soup. That would need to create a self-replicating molecule, which was a very unlikely random event that advanced life was essentially waiting for.
Some Christians and probably other people could believe life didn't originally come from this process. God could have created life and then let it evolve.
The mitochondria would have probably came in after this, and mitochondria being in cells does actually mean we can say that all eukaryotes had a common ancestor, because that was also a very rare event in the early stages. It could likely have happened to just one cell (at least the final stage of making cells with mitochondria), which is what I think you're describing, but I might be wrong.
If we're not interpreting the story of Adam and Eve literally, that could be the meaning. Adam and Eve were just a very early stage of evolution that created organisms of some kind that could easily spread.
Some more devout Christians might not like that interpretation though, since I think the story could be made at least a little more literal.
That's not wrong at all, but there is a much more recent Adam and Eve - an actual anatomically modern human woman and man that all of us are descended from (although, again, they probably lived about 100,000 years apart - I.e. they weren't a couple)
It should also be stressed that I'm not saying that at one point there was only one woman alive or one man alive.
Mitochondrial DNA isn't like the usual inherited mix of DNA - instead it's passed down directly from mothers to their children. If they have girls, then it'll be passed down to their children too. If they only have boys, though, then that mitochondrial DNA has come to a dead end. Basically it's matrilineal - it passes down the female line.
The same with the Y Chromosome. Fathers pass the Y chromosome to their sons. If they only have daughters, well it's come to a dead end. It's patrilineal - it passes down the male line.
DNA analysis shows that all of our mitochondrial DNA is shockingly similar - especially compared to many other animals. Rolling back the clock (by accounting for the tiny random mutations that occur over time) shows that everyone converges to a single person around 155,000 years ago. Before modern humans, as a species, had expanded out of Africa and spread across the world.
Interestingly, especially so if looking for biblical comparisons, the Y-chromosomal Adam can be traced to around 100,000 years earlier than Mitochondrial Eve - so he did appear first.
So, the next question might be, "if anatomically modern humans existed for at least 100,000 years before the Mitochondrial Eve, what happened to all the other mitochondria variants - why did we end up with only one?"
That is simply a numbers game. Compared to many other animals, humans only have relatively few children in their lifetime. This keeps small populations from exploding suddenly, but it also increases the likelihood of only having boys (and stopping that line of Mitochondrial DNA).
You can map it out on a piece of paper:
Get five different coloured pens and a black pen.
Across the top of the page, draw dot in each coloured pen, with a black one beside it. The coloured dots are female, the black ones male). These are the parents.
Now for the kids. Toss a coin twice - heads for a boy (draw a dot in black pen beneath the parents), tails for a girl (draw a dot the same colour as the mum). Do this for all.
Now pair up the offspring and carry on.
You'll find very quickly, one colour will start to dominate the paper. This represents the Mitochondrial DNA.