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Aug. 17, 2006 I have always been a great fan of mathematics. Ever since I got my first 100% on my first math quiz in the second grade I have been grateful at being able to do totals without needing a scratch pad. The July 2nd AP article: “How deep are humanity’s common roots?” by Matt Crenson reinforced my love of numbers and my faith in God exponentially. The subtitle: “Experts: Everyone shares ancestor who lived less than 5000 years ago” drove me into the story and the numbers. A statistician named Steve Olson, with the aid of Yale statistician Joseph Chang and computer scientist Douglas Rohde of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology went on a mathematical search for the first man. Quoting the article: Whoever it was probably lived a few thousand years ago somewhere in East Asia – Taiwan- Malaysia and Siberia are all likely locations. He or she did nothing more remarkable than to be born, live and die.” Continuing: “Yet this was the ancestor of every person now living on Earth; the last person in history whose family tree branches out to touch all 6.5 billion people on the planet today.” Continuing: “It’s a mathematical certainty that that person existed,” said Steve Olson, whose 2002 book “Mapping Human History” traces the history of the species since its origins.” I love that term “mathematical certainty”. The old saying is that “numbers don’t lie.” Mr. Olson and his colleagues have been working the numbers for several years now. Joseph Chang is the author of a work “Advances in Applied Probability” where he calculated the “mathematical relationship between the size of a population and the number of generations back to a common ancestor.” When Mr. Chang used the current world’s population: “he came up with just 32 generations, or about 900 years.” The article says that Chang knew his answer was wrong but his track was right. His track was adjusted when contacted by James Olson. They added neuroscientist Douglas Rohde into their number crunching and then worked out a series of computer models allowing for “migration”. Quoting: “Allowing very little migration Rohde’s simulation produced a date of about 50000 B.C. for humanity’s most common ancestor [Then] assuming a higher but still realistic migration rate produced a shockingly recent date of 1 A.D.” Mr. Rohde has received responses concerning his simulations labeling some of these “too conservative”. Yet, he says, “Migration is the key.” The article also describes these calculations as “simple math”. Quote: Every person has two parents, four grandparents and eight great-grandparents. Keep doubling back through the generations -16-32-64-128 – and within a few hundred years you have thousands of ancestors.” Continuing: “Keep going back in time and there are fewer and fewer people available to put on more and more branches of the 6.5 billion family trees of people living today. It is mathematically inevitable that at some point, there will be a person who appears at least once on everyone’s tree.” I love that term ‘mathematically inevitable” too. This article could be filed with the “See, I told you so” files. But when science proves scripture the scoffers tune up their harmonicas. When the numbers point to the validity of Moses, the world of science goes quiet and the mathematicians circle their wagons around Darwin. Well, I am not ashamed to claim Adam, Abraham and King David of Israel as an ancestor of mine; seeing as Jesus was born to that line. Do numbers lie? One day we will know. ------------ About the Author: Michael John McCrae has contributed over 500 articles to Useless-Knowledge.com. Email: macswordV@hotmail.com Comment on this article here! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com and are not allowed to be posted on other websites. ARTICLE THIEVES WILL BE PROSECUTED! |
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