I'm a little confused on how evolution works- the mitochondrial eve, was she human, or the mother of the first human, or something else entirely? Also, Y-chromosomal adam lived thousands of year afterward? Was he supposed to be the first male human? And if he was the first male human, how did 'eve' reproduce- with other animals? Then how did she birth humans? I'm so confused. Help please?
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To answer the question 'how did humans become humans' you first have to define what it is to be human. If you define 'human' in a social context then you should remember that even as little as a hundred years ago it was customary in the West to regard tribal peoples as sub-human savages.
In evolutionary terms, the evolutionary line from which modern humans are descended branched from the lineage leading to today's apes some 8 million years ago. From that time to the present, all our ancestors may be regarded to one extent or another as 'human' as distinct from 'apes' or 'ape-like'.
You misunderstand what Mitochondrial Eve and Y-Chromosomal Adam actually were. At the time they lived (many thousands of years apart) the human race was going through a series of 'population squeezes' where there were perhaps only a few thousand living people in the World.
During one of these population squeezes, all surviving descendants were in some way related to just one female. This was proved by examining the DNA in a wide range of human mitochondria. Mitochondrial DNA is only inherited through the female of any breeding pair which is how we know that only one human female is ancestral to all humans. That is not to say that the human population only contained one human female - this would have been impossible, but rather that over the thousands of years subsequent to Eve's life all lineages not related to Eve gradually died out.
A similar situation occurred about 80,000 years later with the male lineage: gradually all humans not descended from Y-Chromosomal Adam died out. The DNA of the Y-Chromosome is only inherited via the male parent which is why he is termed 'Adam'.
In evolutionary terms, the evolutionary line from which modern humans are descended branched from the lineage leading to today's apes some 8 million years ago. From that time to the present, all our ancestors may be regarded to one extent or another as 'human' as distinct from 'apes' or 'ape-like'.
You misunderstand what Mitochondrial Eve and Y-Chromosomal Adam actually were. At the time they lived (many thousands of years apart) the human race was going through a series of 'population squeezes' where there were perhaps only a few thousand living people in the World.
During one of these population squeezes, all surviving descendants were in some way related to just one female. This was proved by examining the DNA in a wide range of human mitochondria. Mitochondrial DNA is only inherited through the female of any breeding pair which is how we know that only one human female is ancestral to all humans. That is not to say that the human population only contained one human female - this would have been impossible, but rather that over the thousands of years subsequent to Eve's life all lineages not related to Eve gradually died out.
A similar situation occurred about 80,000 years later with the male lineage: gradually all humans not descended from Y-Chromosomal Adam died out. The DNA of the Y-Chromosome is only inherited via the male parent which is why he is termed 'Adam'.
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