'Adam' walked the earth 9,000 years earlier than previously believed - Page 1

Something doesn't add up here - I wonder what it could be?


http://www.foxnews.com/science/2014/01/28/adam-walked-earth-000-years-earlier-than-previously-believed

Man's earliest common male ancestor walked the earth 209,000 years ago, thousands of years earlier than scientists originally believed, according to a study from the University of Sheffield and the University of Houston.

The new research also debunked the discovery of the Y chromosome that was said to predate humanity.

"We can say with some certainty that modern humans emerged in Africa a little over 200,000 years ago," Eran Elhaik from the University of Sheffield said in a press release.

Elhaik and Dan Graur of the University of Houston used conventional biological models to date "Adam" -- man's common male ancestor, borrowing the name from the Biblical tale -- to his rightful place in evolutionary history. A whopping 9,000 years earlier to be exact.

"It is obvious that modern humans did not interbreed with hominins living over 500,000 years ago," continued Elhaik. "It is also clear that there was no single 'Adam' and 'Eve' but rather groups of 'Adams and Eves' living side by side and wandering together in our world."

Elhaik and Graur's research finds that the first male and female ancestors of mankind originated at the same time. This directly contradicts a recent study which found that the human Y chromosome originated through interbreeding among a different species and dates 'Adam' to be twice as old.

"We have shown that the University of Arizona study lacks any scientific merit," Elhaik claimed. "In fact, their hypothesis creates a sort of 'space-time paradox' whereby the most ancient individual belonging to Homo sapiens species has not yet been born."

Think of the Michael J. Fox film, "Back the the Future." Marty was worried that his parents would not meet and so he would not be born in the future. "It's the same idea," Elhaik said.

"The question to what extent did our human forbears interbreed with their closest relatives is one of the hottest questions in anthropology that remains open."

Read the full study published in the European Journal of Human Genetics here.