Wed, 13 Oct 2004

'Common ancestor' of all living humans surprisingly recent

This is a quite old piece (from September 29, I believe) but I'd hesitated to comment until now, when I can be reasonably assured that the models used are more or less accurate. I went back and found the baseline work (available here), and yeah, you know, the guy's onto something here.

There is a strong component of ancestor "worship" in Heathenry, so much so that heathens usually (but not always) divide themselves according to ethnicity. Hence, Japanese heathenry is known as Shinto, Asatru and Druidry are the Northern European varients, there are Native American heathens and Austrailian aborignal heathens. Every group of people has it's own heathen path. To be sure, there are variations in the belief sets of these various subgroups of heathens, but all of us venerate the ancestors, and none believe that there is only one god for the entire universe, if we believe in gods at all.

The implications of this research should be obvious: this is the kind of scientific "proof" that heathenry could use to unite, to regroup across our different ethnic variations, and to finally recognize that we are all root and branch of the same tree. If this research presents an accurate picture of human demographics over time, then every heathen ceremony that honors those who have come before us, no matter what ethnic flavor it carries internally, is at some level honoring the same person or small set of people.

If this new knowledge is accepted and disseminated, it could open the way to a sea-change in the practice of heathens world wide: we are in fact the global majority religion, and this could help us recognize that simple fact.

In this week's issue of Nature, a Yale mathematician presents models showing that the most recent person who was a direct ancestor of all humans currently alive may have lived just a few thousand years ago. ''While we may not all be 'brothers,' the models suggest we are all hundredth cousins or so,'' said Joseph T. Chang, professor in the Department of Statistics at Yale University and senior author on the paper. Chang established the basis of this research in a previous publication with an intentionally simplified model that ignored such complexities as geography and migration.

(link) [Science Blog]

/Asatru | 1 writeback | permanent link

On 3/3/2006 05:55:15
Mark wrote

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