Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Tuglas. I'm
Speaker 1: actually Eve. Oh really are you? You're channeling the primordial
Speaker 1: mother inside You're getting in your DNA. Yes, it is
Speaker 1: a true statement to say that I could be an
Speaker 1: iteration of Eve. Not the Eve of the story, but
Speaker 1: an Eve. Now who is he? We should probably refresh everyone,
Speaker 1: especially those of you out there who can grow up
Speaker 1: attending Christian Sunday School or Jewish or just immersed in
Speaker 1: world myths. Eve, according to Christian and Hebraic and Islamic tradition,
Speaker 1: was the first woman, right, Adam was created by man
Speaker 1: out of dust, and then he's lonely. He evidently needs
Speaker 1: a friend, someone to do things for him, and so
Speaker 1: he ends up taking Adam's were about and turning it
Speaker 1: into this woman Eve, which seems totally possible. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: then YadA, YadA, YadA, she borrows an apple from a
Speaker 1: snake and it's the downfall of man and then she
Speaker 1: has to suffer through painful childbirth and he has to
Speaker 1: get a job growing crops and it's just a big
Speaker 1: said sob story of the rest of the book, but
Speaker 1: the idea of this primordial mother figure. You see this
Speaker 1: throughout different systems of belief, in different myths and different religions.
Speaker 1: Eve herself her name comes from the Hebrew hallaw which
Speaker 1: means life and life giving feminine power. And in the
Speaker 1: Salmutic tradition of Jewish literature, you have another figure, Lilith
Speaker 1: that shows up as the first wife of Adam, but
Speaker 1: she refused to listen to him and didn't want to
Speaker 1: obey him, and so she was transformed into a demon
Speaker 1: who then becomes this enemy of feminine reproduction and a
Speaker 1: destroyer of infants, so sort of an anti primordial mother figure.
Speaker 1: Then there are other characters such as Kiamet, the chaotic
Speaker 1: primordial ocean goddess of ancient Babylon. There's Astra, the semantic
Speaker 1: mother goddess, and Greek mythology you have Pandora, the first woman,
Speaker 1: who also got into some similar curiosity related. Yeah, in
Speaker 1: Japanese mythology there's is an Armi no Mikoto, and then
Speaker 1: in Hinduism there's Sarupa, the first woman, the daughter of Brahma,
Speaker 1: and she's actually the female portion of Lord Brahma. She
Speaker 1: is the counterpart to manage. Again, you see this idea
Speaker 1: throughout because on one level it's an embodiment of this
Speaker 1: idea of what female power is and the role females
Speaker 1: have in human society. And then on the other hand,
Speaker 1: we're fascinated by our origins. So we've always wondered where
Speaker 1: we came from, what we're our beginnings and was there,
Speaker 1: indeed a most distant ancestor we were to trace back
Speaker 1: our lineage far enough, would we come to a definite beginning,
Speaker 1: would we say, oh, well here here she is, here
Speaker 1: he is. Well, you could never come back to the
Speaker 1: absolute beginning, right, But we can do something here today
Speaker 1: where we can blow ancestry dot Com away and is
Speaker 1: thirty something minutes right by talking about this idea of
Speaker 1: mitochondrial eve. Yes, this first woman. But we'll talk about
Speaker 1: more about what first woman means and in a little bit.
Speaker 1: But first, before we start talking about this mitochondrial eve
Speaker 1: from whom we all sprang this idea of this, let's
Speaker 1: talk about evolution and something called the multi regional hypothesis. Yes,
Speaker 1: so multi regional hypothesis. This is the idea that human
Speaker 1: beings didn't necessarily originate with one particular explosion of evolution,
Speaker 1: but that this evolutionary explosion happened in several different places
Speaker 1: in the same way. You know, you hear about major
Speaker 1: inventions where oh, well, these guys invented the airplane at
Speaker 1: the same time as the right brothers. People were just
Speaker 1: headed this way. The idea that, well, evolution was headed
Speaker 1: this way towards humans, and it just happened at several
Speaker 1: different points across the globe. It's far from the popular
Speaker 1: theory at this point. It's more the exception rather than
Speaker 1: the rule. But prior to seven, this was the prevailing
Speaker 1: idea that our predecessor, Homo erectus had left Africa two
Speaker 1: million years ago and spread out around the entire world,
Speaker 1: and then these different populations adapted to their new environments
Speaker 1: by evolving into Homo sapiens, and although there was constant
Speaker 1: gene flow and interbreeding between these different populations, that everybody
Speaker 1: remained part of the same species. So they thought this
Speaker 1: model was the best way to explain all of those
Speaker 1: Homeorectus fossils that they kept finding throughout Africa, Eurasia, and Australia.
Speaker 1: The most widely accepted model today though, is the recent
Speaker 1: African origin of modern humans model, or also known as
Speaker 1: the out of Africa model. It's also sometimes known as
Speaker 1: the out of Africa to model. And this is why
Speaker 1: this holds that Homo sapiens evolved in Africa and between
Speaker 1: fifty six thousand and two hundred thousand years ago migrated
Speaker 1: into these other lands. The reason some people call it
Speaker 1: out of Africa two is that it involves a previous
Speaker 1: African exodus by tribes of Homo erectus. So following the
Speaker 1: scattering of the Homo sapiens, they eventually outlived the previous
Speaker 1: Homo erectus excursion and become the dominent. And the explanations
Speaker 1: for the older fossils discovered elsewhere are basically representing hominid
Speaker 1: lineages that had since gone extinct a long time ago.
Speaker 1: So the idea with the recent African origin of modern
Speaker 1: humans model the out of Africa model, is that human
Speaker 1: evolution explodes once and that explosion consumes the globe, as
Speaker 1: opposed to numerous explosions. Right. So, and the reason why
Speaker 1: we mentioned seven is because in January of seven, Rebecca can,
Speaker 1: Mark stone King, and Alan Wilson published a paper in
Speaker 1: nature that dropped a bombshell, this bombshell of the recent
Speaker 1: African origin model on our evolutionary doorsteps, so to speak.
Speaker 1: The researchers examined the mitochondrial DNA taken from one forty
Speaker 1: seven people across all of today's major racial groups, and
Speaker 1: the researchers found that the lineage of all people alive
Speaker 1: today falls on one of two branches in humanities family tree.
Speaker 1: One of these branches consists of nothing but African lineage.
Speaker 1: The other continued into all other groups, including some African lineage.
Speaker 1: So that was one revelation that they had, and I
Speaker 1: should also say to that the two distinct branches they
Speaker 1: discovered contained the mitochondrial DNA found in five populations Africa, Asia,
Speaker 1: European populations, Australian and New Guinea. And they found that
Speaker 1: in the branch that was not exclusively African, racial populations
Speaker 1: often had more than one lineage. For example, one New
Speaker 1: Guinea lineage finds its closest relative and a lineage present
Speaker 1: in Asia, not New Guinea. So this is all new
Speaker 1: information to them. But here's the kicker. All of the
Speaker 1: lineages and both of the two branches can be traced
Speaker 1: back to mitochondrial eve, everyone can trace back his or
Speaker 1: her lineage back to a single common ancestor who lived
Speaker 1: around two hundred thousand years ago in East Africa. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's pretty mind blowing. I mean, it's important to stress
Speaker 1: that we are not talking about even the actual like, oh,
Speaker 1: there was this single woman and she was made from
Speaker 1: a rib kind of a thing or anything of the sort.
Speaker 1: There were women before mitochondria eve. There were other women
Speaker 1: at the same time. But just do the luck and
Speaker 1: the way things fell together, statistically, she ends up being
Speaker 1: the primordial mother figure for everyone that is alive today. Right,
Speaker 1: she was an ordinary woman for that time who became
Speaker 1: extraordinary because basically her genetic material is what actually survived. Right.
Speaker 1: And there's this idea that the reason why her genes
Speaker 1: subsisted while others died away is because of a theory
Speaker 1: called evolutionary bottleneck. And this is a situation when a
Speaker 1: large majority of a member of species suddenly die out,
Speaker 1: bringing the species to the verge of extinction. So there
Speaker 1: could be a major catastrophic event, there could be an earthquake,
Speaker 1: some sort of special set of conditions that would whittle
Speaker 1: the population down. So it's possible that after a few
Speaker 1: generations that have experienced this catastrophic event, that the mitochondrial
Speaker 1: DNA of other women died out. And we'll talk about
Speaker 1: this in a moment in a little bit more detail,
Speaker 1: But if a woman produces only male offspring, her minochondrial
Speaker 1: DNA will not be passed down. Since children don't receive
Speaker 1: mitochondrial DNA from their father. This means that while the
Speaker 1: women's sons will have her minochondrial DNA, her grandchildren won't
Speaker 1: in her line will be lost. But we know that
Speaker 1: with mitochondrial eve this did not happen. Now, you mentioned
Speaker 1: bottlenecking there earlier, and this is something I found particularly interesting,
Speaker 1: just about the way populations change as humans expand out
Speaker 1: in ancient times. Two thousand seven, Cambridge researchers were looking
Speaker 1: at fifty three different human populations from around around the world,
Speaker 1: and specifically they're looking at skull shapes and genetic diversity,
Speaker 1: and they found that the farther the population was from Africa,
Speaker 1: the less varied its genetic makeup. The reason being that
Speaker 1: its humans spread out from the cradle civilization, their population
Speaker 1: size is dropped, and as their population size is dropped,
Speaker 1: that means less genetic diversity to go around. In other words,
Speaker 1: if you were to migrate to this one area outside
Speaker 1: of Africa and there's not it's a long trip, we're
Speaker 1: going to die and there's a small group, you're going
Speaker 1: to marry your cousin probably. And also nature is going
Speaker 1: to select the strong, the individuals that are suited for
Speaker 1: the new environments that are being encountered. Those are gonna
Speaker 1: be the ones that are going to survive. But if
Speaker 1: you were to have state in Africa, then you would
Speaker 1: have many more people to choose from to create more
Speaker 1: offspring with. So let's take a break and when we
Speaker 1: come back we will talk a little more about it.
Speaker 1: So mitochondria DNA, what's the difference here? Okay, So DNA,
Speaker 1: located within the nucleus of each of your cells, determines
Speaker 1: your eye color, your racial features, susceptibility to certain diseases,
Speaker 1: and other defining characteristics. I think of it that way.
Speaker 1: Mitochondrial DNA, on the other hand, contains codes for making
Speaker 1: proteins and carrying out other proces. Tessays mitochondria undertake. And
Speaker 1: this I wanted to talk about two because I think
Speaker 1: it's very interesting to see how DNA is replicated in
Speaker 1: the context of something like this when we're talking about
Speaker 1: two hundred thousand years ago. DNA is very long linear molecule.
Speaker 1: It's a coded version of how to make another copy
Speaker 1: of you. Basically, it's your your blueprint. Right. It's composed
Speaker 1: of four subunits A, C, G, and T, and the
Speaker 1: sequence of those subunits that is basically the material that
Speaker 1: defines the blueprint. If you took all the DNA out
Speaker 1: of every cell in your body and you stretch it
Speaker 1: and to end, it would reach from here to the
Speaker 1: moon and back thousands of times. Okay. So now think
Speaker 1: of copying the sequence and repeating it, and this incredibly
Speaker 1: long sequence you would see every once in a while
Speaker 1: a typo of sorts would occur, and that would account
Speaker 1: for the variation that we find with d N A okay.
Speaker 1: So another interesting note about DNA when you're thinking about
Speaker 1: mitochondrial DNA. In mitochondrial eve, that DNA is then changed
Speaker 1: once again once it's combined with another set of DNA. Right,
Speaker 1: So when parents come together and they create offspring, they're
Speaker 1: merging their DNA. Mitochondrial DNA, on the other hand, is
Speaker 1: derived almost exclusively from your mother, and this is because
Speaker 1: the egg of a female human contains lots of Mt
Speaker 1: DNA mitochondrial DNA, while male sperm contains just a little
Speaker 1: bit of mitochondria. And the reason for that is it
Speaker 1: because it helps it propel it basically, it gets it
Speaker 1: the energy, it propels it towards its race towards the
Speaker 1: egg for fertilization, and once it enters the egg, that
Speaker 1: mitochondria is destroyed after the sperm for Eliza's eggs, so
Speaker 1: any traces of that mitochondrial DNA from the sperm gone.
Speaker 1: The only thing left is the female mitochondria in that egg. Okay,
Speaker 1: So that that's why mt DNA could be passed on
Speaker 1: only from mother to my Well, it can be passed
Speaker 1: onto the sun, but the sign can never pass it on, right,
Speaker 1: So that's why it's so tenacious, is because only the
Speaker 1: mother side of this actually survives and passes on. Right.
Speaker 1: It's matrilineal, and it's easy to track, right, and it's
Speaker 1: not as variable as d n A because it doesn't
Speaker 1: have to go through these recombinations, right, It's just sort
Speaker 1: of like this pure packet that gets passed down at
Speaker 1: least on the female line. So that's why we have
Speaker 1: this mitochondrial Eve. That's why these researchers said, Okay, we've
Speaker 1: been looking at d NA, let's look at mitochondria and
Speaker 1: see what sort of story it can tell us about
Speaker 1: our own origins and why they can then track our
Speaker 1: own lineage to this woman, to to mitochondrial eve who
Speaker 1: provided the blueprint for us. And again, I just want
Speaker 1: to go back and say that she was not the
Speaker 1: only woman on earth living at this time there, As
Speaker 1: you said, there were women before her after. She probably
Speaker 1: didn't chat with snakes and eat strange fright, no more
Speaker 1: than the rest of us to right right, But she
Speaker 1: just gave us the little packet of life that all
Speaker 1: of us haven't common, which comes to this whole point
Speaker 1: that we've talked about before, that we are all related
Speaker 1: and much more so than we have ever thought. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think that's ultimately the beautiful thing about it.
Speaker 1: I mean, we love the idea of there being an Eve,
Speaker 1: or there being any of these primordial original women Pandora
Speaker 1: or Satarupa, because it's the idea that is something that
Speaker 1: we have in common with everyone. And that's what this
Speaker 1: ultimately drives home, the story of human migration that at
Speaker 1: least ancestrally speaking, we are all Africans, and ancestrally speaking,
Speaker 1: a large portion of us are ancestrally Indian. These are
Speaker 1: roots traced back through these migrations and really unitis as
Speaker 1: as a species well, and it really sort of makes
Speaker 1: the term race obsolete. And also, I want to read
Speaker 1: this bit to you from an Ionine article. It's called
Speaker 1: how mitochondrial Eve connected all humanity and rewrote human evolution.
Speaker 1: They say, okay, this is a game of numbers, but
Speaker 1: really interesting. So let's say that you were born in
Speaker 1: and both of your parents were born in nineteen fifty,
Speaker 1: and your four grandparents were born in nineteen twenty five,
Speaker 1: your eight great grandparents in nineteen hundred, and so on
Speaker 1: and so on and so on. In other words, your
Speaker 1: number of ancestors doubles every twenty five years. Further back
Speaker 1: in time you go. So if you take this back
Speaker 1: just one thousand years, simple math demands that you have
Speaker 1: well over because this is crazy. Five hundred billion ancestors
Speaker 1: in a single generation, considering that there's fewer than seven
Speaker 1: billion people on this planet, and even that is far
Speaker 1: far more than any other point in human history. There's
Speaker 1: something seriously wrong here. Okay, So this is where this
Speaker 1: really gets interesting. In this article, they say, the solution,
Speaker 1: of course, is that you don't have five hundred billion
Speaker 1: distinct ancestors, but rather a much much smaller number of
Speaker 1: ancestors reappear over and over again in your family tree.
Speaker 1: So these are not doublegangers or anything. So instead of
Speaker 1: lots of different proto humans evolving separately over millions of years,
Speaker 1: the story of humanity is much shorter and much more
Speaker 1: elegant and more interconnected than scientists had ever imagined. And
Speaker 1: this is a quote from Joseph T. Chang, Douglas lt Road,
Speaker 1: and Steve Olsen from their two thousand and four paper
Speaker 1: on something called m R c A. They say, no
Speaker 1: matter the languages we speak or the color of our skin,
Speaker 1: we share ancestors who planted rice on the banks of
Speaker 1: the Yanksoo, who first domesticated horses on the steps of
Speaker 1: the Ukraine, who hunted giant sloths in the forest of
Speaker 1: North and South America, and who labored to build the
Speaker 1: great Pyramids of Cufu. And within two thousand years it
Speaker 1: is likely that everyone on Earth will be descended from
Speaker 1: most of us. It really widens what you can be
Speaker 1: proud of you know, you can be like the Pyramids,
Speaker 1: that was me. Yeah, it was me, giant sauce arrow, Arrow,
Speaker 1: I had great ero skills. I have great Erroo skills,
Speaker 1: probably encoded in my d n A. Seriously, it is
Speaker 1: beautiful and I think it's something that we would all
Speaker 1: do well to keep in mind as we get through
Speaker 1: our daily lives and everything from observing how the next
Speaker 1: he is behaving on the train to what's going on
Speaker 1: the news around the world. You know. Yeah, we've talked
Speaker 1: about this for this idea that we're all breathing these
Speaker 1: same molecules that have existed for millions and millions of years,
Speaker 1: and we're breathing each other's foot odor and that should
Speaker 1: connected some level and make us feel closer to one another.
Speaker 1: But really, this is this is extraordinary to know that
Speaker 1: we are this much smaller pool that we all came
Speaker 1: from that we originally thought of in terms of these
Speaker 1: ancestors that appear over and over again, these patterns of
Speaker 1: our lineage. There we go, Well, let's call the robot
Speaker 1: over and let's do it. Just a quick listener mail here,
Speaker 1: all right. We heard from a listener by the name
Speaker 1: of Mike Mike right sentences, Hi, Robert and Jewling. Got
Speaker 1: into your podcast last year and haven't stopped since. Great
Speaker 1: stuff to accompany a run on the treadmill, a long
Speaker 1: drive to work, or a road trip. Thanks for keeping
Speaker 1: my brain occupied. I listened to your Contact Lenses of
Speaker 1: the God's episode today and it reminded me very much
Speaker 1: of a great anime called Dinno Coil, in which a
Speaker 1: fictional Japanese city in the not too distant future has
Speaker 1: been having fun introducing augmented reality into the world. The
Speaker 1: story revolves around the happening so have a bunch of
Speaker 1: kids with a R glasses augmented reality glasses and the
Speaker 1: adventures they get into, especially since a lot of the
Speaker 1: things they can do in the a R portion of
Speaker 1: the world is considered illegal. For example, they are frequently
Speaker 1: hunted by an oversized anti BUYERUS software that formats illegal
Speaker 1: cyber information. In several episodes, students are seen typing on
Speaker 1: entirely virtual keyboards, composing emails and messages, as well as
Speaker 1: sending each other pop ups to bother them in class.
Speaker 1: The strange thing, as you might imagine, is that only
Speaker 1: people with a AIR glasses can see any of these things.
Speaker 1: In the off chance that you're into Japanese animation, you
Speaker 1: should check the show out. So there you go. The
Speaker 1: Shain It is called Dinno Coil, and we also heard
Speaker 1: from a listener by the name of Austin about it
Speaker 1: as well, so it is apparently a fairly popular and
Speaker 1: I don't know if I mentioned it in the article
Speaker 1: or not. Some other science fiction properties that involve augmented
Speaker 1: reality or an augmented reality contact lenses. William Gibson has
Speaker 1: in a few different books that involved virtual light. Specifically,
Speaker 1: Spook Country has a lot of with the concept, and
Speaker 1: Fire upon the Beat by Vernon Vinge, which I've not read.
Speaker 1: It's on my two read lists. Supposedly, highly advanced contact
Speaker 1: lenses play a crucial role in that as well. Hey,
Speaker 1: what do you think about Let us know if you
Speaker 1: find this information as you know, Lightning and hopeful as
Speaker 1: the rest of us do. Let us know. You can
Speaker 1: find us on Facebook where our handle is stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind, and you can find us on Twitter
Speaker 1: where our handle is blow the Mind. And you can
Speaker 1: always drop us online at blow the Mind at Discovery
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