I remember a professor at uni telling us that at some time in the future each of us will either be the ancestor of every living human or of none.
Equally, if you go back far enough, you will find a common ancestor with every other living person, thus making us all related.
While that seems unintuitive – what about the members of some remote tribe without contact to civilisation? –, keep in mind that even the most remote tribe has to have contact with some neighbouring people . Otherwise they wouldn’t have enough genetic diversity. And those neighbours are in contact with their neighbours and so on.
I remember a professor at uni telling us that at some time in the future each of us will either be the ancestor of every living human or of none.
Equally, if you go back far enough, you will find a common ancestor with every other living person, thus making us all related.
While that seems unintuitive – what about the members of some remote tribe without contact to civilisation? –, keep in mind that even the most remote tribe has to have contact with some neighbouring people . Otherwise they wouldn’t have enough genetic diversity. And those neighbours are in contact with their neighbours and so on.
Edit: Changed “intuitive” to “unintuitive”… Oops
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrial_Eve
That’s exclusively through the matrilineal line though. The most recent ancestor is much more recent.
But your article linked to what I was referring to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identical_ancestors_point (and the mitochondrial Eve is a cool concept either way)
Agreed about the concept being cool.