Since we seem to have morphed off into anthropology, genealogy, sulking, skulking, and Rosie
resigning from the list again, and heaven only knows what else to follow, here's an item of
'breaking news' that is both relevant and timely to our new 'off-topic' subject. It's interesting, too.
The following is the blurb from the newsstory:
"New research suggests the human race was nearly wiped out 70,000 years ago, when a crisis reduced
the population to about 2,000 people. The theory has reinvigorated the debate on whether humans really
did come 'Out of Africa', or whether the species evolved in little pockets around the globe."
/Adapted from a report for ABC radio's 'PM' program./
http://www.abc.net.au/news/indepth/featureitems/s876996.htm
In order to get back 'on topic', I'm now wondering whether or not the homo sapiens' close brush with
extinction might have had anything to do with meteorites, asteroids, meteoroids, comets, meteors, death
stars, and/or alien attacks. That should cover relevancy!
'Crawled out of the Odessa crater' Jerry (and may soon crawl back in)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
The most recent data I have seen shows in theory that ALL living modern humans can trace their existence back to no more than 5 individual females and no more that 30 individual males.
Speculation from the really exotic all the way down to perfectly plausible scientific projections are a lot of fun to bat back and forth, but for all practical purposes, it seems to me that the primitive, boring procedure of tracing actual familial lines and figuring out who is demonstrably related to whom is hardly obsolete. Sure, we can all come from the same DNA source and we can all be related to each other if we try hard enough, through clever wordplay or speculative, slightly massaged (perhaps) science, just as meteorites COULD very well take forms other than those we currently recognize. Maybe there are meteorites that look just like ping-pong paddles and are made of brie cheese. But if we're just talking about practical, day-to-day genealogy rather than expansive theoretical canvasses, surely it's still more useful to base it in empirical evidence....rather like using meteoritical science to identify meteorites, rather than posing lots of cool-sounding but unanswerable possibilities. ;-)
Gregory
______________________________________________ Meteorite-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
