Talk:Mitochondrial Eve

This is the first time I've ever created an article on a wiki. Please be gentle with it :-) Weirdbeard 15:35, 31 July 2008 (EDT)
 * Seems great to me. An important issue, too. Marginally Less Chaos!Audacity! 15:36, 31 July 2008 (EDT)
 * I like it. Are you sure this is your first go? (envious as mine was a bit crap - in fact it's now a redirect) Totnesmartin 15:44, 31 July 2008 (EDT)
 * Yes, if this is your first go it's very good.--Bobbing up 15:49, 31 July 2008 (EDT)
 * I do have a blog. This is the first time I've started an article on a wiki although I've done fairly minor edits before. I now have to see whether I can cope with people editing my stuff; that's a new concept for me entirely but the folks around here seem friendly enough so I guess I can handle it. Weirdbeard 15:56, 31 July 2008 (EDT)
 * Personally I'm delighted when someone comes and improves my stuff, but yeah, it's daunting when you check the watchlist and see someone's been at it... I'll be nice to it (I was looking for a picture but I can't find a free one). Totnesmartin 16:04, 31 July 2008 (EDT)
 * I was looking for a couple of pictures: one an ordinary looking woman to label 'Mitochondrial Eve' and the other of an amoeba or something to label 'Creationist' but (a) I'm not sure how to add pictures, (b) I couldn't find anything and (c) it would be unkind to amoebae. BTW, I used to know someone in Totnes called Martin but he'd be in his 80s (at least) by now so I guess that isn't you. Weirdbeard 16:16, 31 July 2008 (EDT)
 * Well I feel it some mornings! Totnesmartin 16:54, 31 July 2008 (EDT)
 * I loved the "mitochondrial Doris" part! now why didn't some scientist use *that* name instead of eve.  I can see your blog style... it translates very well into this wiki! --Waiting for Godot 16:06, 31 July 2008 (EDT)
 * Trouble is that I don't get in the mood for writing much these days. Weirdbeard 16:18, 31 July 2008 (EDT)
 * It's not a race against time here, so don't worry about not doing much. Totnesmartin 16:54, 31 July 2008 (EDT)
 * Oh but it is; I want to leave this planet knowing that no one believes in nonsense :-) So, much to do; so little time to do it in. Weirdbeard 16:59, 31 July 2008 (EDT)

English spellings
Mr Human person: you changed my original spelling of 'wilful' to 'willful'. Is there a reason for this? 'Wilful' is, according to my rather old (1976) Concise Oxford (a real book, no less!) the English spelling while 'willful' is the American spelling. In the dictionary on my Mac (based on the New Oxford American) 'wilful' is listedas a variant spelling of 'willful'. No point in my making a big deal, or even a little one, out of this but it does leave me wondering if RationalWiki has a policy of only using American English spellings. Does it or was it simply that 'wilful' looked wrong and so you changed it? I'll shut up now; got one hell of a hangover. Weirdbeard 06:53, 3 August 2008 (EDT)
 * Partly it looked wrong, partly firefox underlined it (mine is set to AmLish, of course). Broadly, we use Commonwealth or US depending on article subject; and on "neutral" articles, run with whatever is already being used.  Didn't mean to muck things up, sorry...  ħ uman  15:29, 3 August 2008 (EDT)
 * 'tis OK. You haven't messed anything up at all; it's only a spelling. I'm still trying to get the hang of the way the community which inhabits this wiki works; reminds me a bit of the communities in Ursula Le Guin's novels. I like it. Weirdbeard 16:34, 3 August 2008 (EDT)

It turns out...
...that mtEve and Y-Adam may have lived in the same time. The earliest dating for Y-Adam is about -140 000. Dates for mtEve go between -150 000 and -100 000. This one criticism:

It is unlikely that Y-Adam and mtEve knew each other, or even lived at the same time.

...may be flawed. They lived in similar areas (the Great Rift Valley) and similar time ranges (140 000 years ago), so it's at least concievable the two may have personally known each other. Do not confuse me with an old-earther: there is no link between mtEve and Y-Adam with Biblical Eve and Adam beyond the name. The Heidelberg Kid (talk) 18:45, 7 February 2012 (UTC)


 * They may have lived at the same time only with the most miniscule of possibilities. But then you could win the Megamillions three times in a row, too. All the dates that I've seen for ycAdam are on the order of the low tens of thousands of years.  The reasons are the much higher mobiliy of males in almost ever society you can name. The statement you site is probably more likely than the sun rising from the east tomorrow. 73.14.30.182 (talk) 01:11, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

Error in interpreting what young earth creationists believe should be fixed
In the introductory paragraph it states "It's important to remember—unless you're a young Earth creationist, of course—that her mate was not the mitochondrial "Adam" (most recent common male ancestor, Y-chromosomal Adam)—in fact, there are some studies going around that Eve is twice the age of Adam."

That statement is incorrect. I'm not a young earth creationist, however I have enough biblical knowledge to know that the statement quoted above is incorrect. A young earth creationist wouldn't assume that Y chromosome Adam was the mate of mitochondrial eve. In fact, the fact that y chromosome Adam is more recent than mitochondrial Eve would be entirely consistent with a young earth creationist view of things given the story of the Noah and the world-wide flood. In this story, Noah and his 3 sons, and Noah's wife and the presumably unrelated wives of the three sons were saved. Thus in this world-view mitochondrial Eve would be the same person as the biblical Eve and mitochondrial Adam would be the same person as Noah. So, other than the dating and the actual events, the concept of a mitochondrial eve, a later y chromosone adam and some sort of major bottleneck catastrophe are all consistent with a young earth creationist view and biblical account.

Sources missing
There are some parts on the debunk part where you make asseverations but don't back them up. Namely where you say "Many of these women will have descendents who are alive today", or "She is not the first female human".