[HN Gopher] Oldest family tree created using DNA
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Oldest family tree created using DNA
Author : zeristor
Score : 63 points
Date : 2021-12-28 18:53 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.co.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.co.uk)
| divbzero wrote:
| The article cites this research paper [1] which provides a map of
| the tomb [2].
|
| [1]: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-04241-4
|
| [2]: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-04241-4/figures/2
| OJFord wrote:
| Why don't they ever seem to link it?
|
| > The study is published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature.
|
| but no link. I assume the author at least read the abstract, so
| it seems it would be essentially effortless to add for the
| obviously minority of readers that care.
| RunningDroid wrote:
| They don't link to it because the BBC is part of the legacy
| media that has not fully adapted to the web.
| Danborg wrote:
| Is anyone alive today that is descended from this tree?
| TomK32 wrote:
| Most likely we are all (all as in everyone on planet Earth)
| descendents of that family.
| https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/humans-are-all-mo...
| adolph wrote:
| Not necessarily from this particular set of people though.
|
| _Reich: In Europe where we have the best data currently--
| although that will change over the coming years--we know a
| lot about how people have migrated. We know of multiple
| layers of population replacement over the last 50,000 years._
|
| https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/03/ancient-.
| ..
| ema wrote:
| I wouldn't bet on everyone alive today being descended from
| them, but at least 90% is pretty likely.
| OJFord wrote:
| Why? _Related to_ them, sure, but not descended directly
| from that 'set of people' versus a different branch from
| common ancestors, i.e. their cousins.
| dekhn wrote:
| No. It's very unlikely that the vast majority of people in
| Africa, Asia, and America are descended from these people.
| They do almost certainly share a common ancestor, though.
| jollybean wrote:
| I don't think it's quite like that.
|
| Yes, everyone in a region is likely related to ancestors +800
| years ago from that region, it's not the same for regions
| with little migratory exchange.
|
| Probably every Chinese person is a descendant of the 1st Han
| Emperor, but probably most Europeans are not, though they are
| probably all descendants of Charlemagne, whereas Chinese
| citizens are not. Etc.
| polycaster wrote:
| Click bait. It's an old family tree, yes, but not a large one as
| you might expect. It's 5 successive generations living 5.7k years
| ago (still impressive).
| ChrisKnott wrote:
| I really think dang needs to add something to the guidelines
| about calling stuff clickbait. This is a perfectly reasonable
| headline.
| [deleted]
| OJFord wrote:
| I wouldn't call it clickbait, but I did read it the same way
| - a tree from now reaching back to the oldest ancestors made
| possible by DNA, rather than (as it means) the oldest 'sub-
| tree', incomplete on both ends, created using DNA.
|
| If it were to be improved I think the archaeological dig
| aspect could be highlighted, i.e. I assume using DNA samples
| on a dig to create a family tree for the entombed isn't
| novel; what's new here is that these are older samples than
| that's previously been achieved with (and probably they had
| to do some novel things to make it work, hence the paper that
| I haven't read).
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > Most of those found in the tomb were descended from four women
| who all had children with the same man.
|
| > The right to use the site was based on descent from one man.
|
| > But people were buried in different parts of the tomb based on
| the first-generation matriarch they were descended from.
|
| > This suggests that the first-generation women held a socially
| significant place in the memories of this community.
|
| Are we supposed to be surprised now that people were entombed
| with their relatives? When people keep close track of each
| other's ancestry, that's female empowerment?
|
| What societies, by this standard, did not accord women a
| "socially significant place" in their memories? What is this
| supposed to mean?
|
| ---
|
| I don't understand the guy who's marked half-green, half-yellow.
| It looks like he is descended from a male-line yellow father and
| the implied wife of a male-line green father. The wife was
| presumably unrelated to the family. But that makes half-and-half
| guy all yellow and no green.
|
| ---
|
| > There are also indications that "stepsons" were adopted into
| the family, the researchers say - males whose mother was buried
| in the tomb but not their biological father, and whose mother had
| also had children with a male related to the original founder.
|
| Adopted into the family? According to this same paragraph, they
| were already part of the family when the "adoption" occurred.
|
| I've read that societies differ as to whether, when a man dies,
| the dead man's male relatives are forbidden from marrying the
| widow (since that would be "incest") or obligated to do so. It
| looks like this society leaned more toward the second view.
|
| That interpretation is supported a bit in that it kind of looks
| like Yellow Wife was senior to Green Wife (since a gen-3 Yellow
| man mated with a gen-2 Green wife), and Yellow Wife only has
| children with the patriarch of the tomb while Green Wife (and
| Pink Wife) also had children with someone else. Maybe Green Wife
| and Pink Wife were still marriageable when the patriarch died.
|
| > While the tomb reveals evidence of polygyny - men having
| children with multiple women - it also shows that polyandry was
| also widespread: women having children with multiple men.
|
| On the contrary, no evidence has been presented that the women
| had multiple simultaneous partners. We can know the approximate
| age at death -- but can we know the order in which the children
| were born?
|
| EDIT: I notice half-and-half guy was buried in the north of the
| tomb, as befitted descendants of the Green family, and not the
| south as befitted the Yellow family.
|
| His genuinely-Green half-brother was buried in the south, and the
| article notes that some people who should have been buried in the
| north were buried in the south likely due to the collapse of an
| interior passage in the tomb. This would imply that full-Green
| guy died after half-and-half guy.
|
| Sadly, that doesn't really suggest any conclusions about who was
| born when.
| yholio wrote:
| >When people keep close track of each other's ancestry, that's
| female empowerment?
|
| The idea was that offspring of different females were spatially
| segregated in the tomb. If the females were powerless members
| of the patriarch's harem, the social status of their offspring
| would depend only on their relation with the common father or
| some other brotherly ranking. The different family trees that
| emerge suggest that these matriarchs had at least some power in
| the later development of the community.
| toyg wrote:
| Or simply that the community "classified" children by their
| mothers, which is the obvious approach: as the Romans later
| stated, _pater semper incertus est_ , "the father is always
| in doubt". That doesn't involve any power attribution.
| dav_Oz wrote:
| I wonder under which "rules" polygyny/polyandry where tolerated.
| I'd imagine it could be also explained by "changelings" or
| "widowing".
| hnuser847 wrote:
| Given that this family was wealthy and powerful enough to have
| a tomb erected, those cases of polygyny could have been due to
| political marriages. It was pretty common in the ancient world
| for male relatives to offer up their female relatives as a way
| to solidify an alliance, even if the woman was already married.
| TomK32 wrote:
| My bet is not on polygyny but widowing an re-marrying (if that
| was already a thing). Giving birth was a dangerous event back
| then as it is today for many women around the world, including
| large parts of the USA.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maternal_mortality_in_the_Unit...
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Even with ancient childbirth death rates (~1%), that would be
| an unusually high number of deaths.
|
| Could be the explanation, but I doubt childbirth is the
| driving factor.
| kvgr wrote:
| Or rape and infidelity.
| toyg wrote:
| Which are indeed more likely between members of the same
| family, today like back then.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| charcircuit wrote:
| Wouldn't the oldest family tree start with Adam and Eve?
| teekert wrote:
| I don't think anyone seriously working in the molecular biology
| field believes in Adam and Eve, at least not in the strict 6000
| years ago, created by god -fashion. The fictional family
| relations portrayed in the bible can hardly be called "family
| trees", right? If you do think this is valid and being written
| down in an old book is enough for the claim of oldest family
| tree, there are probably older ones, perhaps in hieroglyphs in
| the pyramid? Idk, I'm not an expert.
| adolph wrote:
| _In human genetics, the Mitochondrial Eve (also mt-Eve, mt-
| MRCA) is the matrilineal most recent common ancestor (MRCA)
| of all living humans. In other words, she is defined as the
| most recent woman from whom all living humans descend in an
| unbroken line purely through their mothers and through the
| mothers of those mothers, back until all lines converge on
| one woman._
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrial_Eve
| teekert wrote:
| Western scientists call her Eve because of our culture's
| Judeo-Christian (or Abrahamic?) roots. We could have also
| called her "Ask" if we were Norse mythology inclined.
|
| But I'm just trying to sound intelligent here while I
| should be working on something boring, I'm not even sure if
| OP was serious :)
| adolph wrote:
| My first thought was to write that "Conceptually
| Mitocondrial Eve stood at the eve of humanity." But that
| isn't quite right. MEve was the earliest human whose
| genetic progeny wasn't wiped out at some later point. Not
| the first person, the chicken that came before an egg but
| a person who won a genetic lottery unknown to them.
|
| Explainer: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-
| nature/no-mitochondri...
| richardfontana wrote:
| "Ask" is the first male human in Norse mythology, and
| Embla the first female human.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ask_and_Embla
| mistrial9 wrote:
| that story is permeable, in the realm of Depth Psychology ..
| (teaching of strict capital-T truth are more likely among low-
| literacy people, but not always).
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depth_psychology
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