-
Asked by 10ssmith to Anna, Jonathan, Samantha, Sam on 4 Jul 2012.
-
Jonathan Kay answered on 4 Jul 2012:
Yes. We think there is only a single area of origin for our species, and it was in northeast Africa. We can study this in lots of ways including finding and dating fossils and looking at our DNA. As we get better at understanding our DNA we get better at working out when this happened. You can now take DNA from any two individuals and get some information on how closely they are related.
At the moment there’s a lot of interest in working out the relations between Homo sapiens (that’s our species) and Neanderthals.
-
-
Samantha Weaver answered on 4 Jul 2012:
Yes – whether it is Adam and Eve that we all descended from or not we are all related. Have you heard of the Kevin Bacon game? It is based on ‘Six degrees of separation’ which refers to the idea that everyone is on average approximately six steps away, by way of introduction, from any other person on Earth, so that a chain of “a friend of a friend” statements can be made, on average, to connect any two people in six steps or fewer.
-
Sam Chilka answered on 4 Jul 2012:
The theory that Jonathan is talking about is often called “out of Africa”, and most scientists believe this is where the human species developed around 150 thousand years ago. The number of humans on the planet now is huge compared to the number back then, so statistically many many of us are likely to have a common ancestor – and so yes, many of us will be related to each other – but very very distantly related!
Comments