The Times
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,27713,00.html

TUESDAY OCTOBER 31 2000
Even early man was late for first date
BY NIGEL HAWKES HEALTH EDITOR

WOMEN were the complete article long before men, a new study has shown.
Geneticists have found that female genes acquired their modern form 143,000
years ago but the male version was not up and running for another 84,000
years.

The result overturns the Biblical description of women being created from a
spare rib left over from a man, and suggests that if Eve ever did meet Adam
she was slumming it, genetically speaking.

An international team led by Peter Underhill of Stanford University studied
the Y chromosome, which confers maleness, of more than 1,000 men from 22
parts of the world. By creating a family tree of genetic variations, it is
possible to trace it back to a putative ancestor from whom all varieties of
today¹s Y chromosome originated.

Similar studies have been made of mitochondrial DNA, which is passed down
unchanged through the maternal line. These studies have shown that we are
all ultimately descended from an ³ancestral Eve² who lived in Africa about
143,000 years ago.

But ancestral Adam, measured by the Y chromosome clock, was alive a mere
59,000 years ago. So it is clear than ancestral Eve never met ancestral
Adam, though she must have met some sort of male in order to have begotten
all those descendants. Dr Underhill and his team report in Nature Genetics
that the perfect DNA for men simply took longer to emerge. There must have
been thousands of generations of men whose maleness was provided by
different, less perfect, versions of the Y chromosome.

Over the millennia, the advantages of the modern Y chromosome ‹ possibly
greater fertility ‹ asserted themselves and eventually the whole male
population came to share it. The results also suggest that modern human
beings expanded out of Africa some 44,000 years ago, which fits the
archaeological data.

Apart from being a blow to the Genesis theory of one man, one woman, a
garden, an apple and a snake, the research might also help studies into male
fertility. The team has developed ³markers² on the Y chromosome that could
prove valuable in tracing the genetic basis of variations in male fertility.

Copyright 2000 Times Newspapers Ltd.

Kindly appreciate that Brenda Lana Smith R.af D. had no editorial input
whatsoever in the above...
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