In a groundbreaking new study, scientists from The Rockefeller University in New York City and the Biozentrum at the University of Basel in Switzerland have concluded that each and every human alive today descended from just one couple who lived from between 100,000 to 200,000 years ago.
As the Daily Mail reports, scientists came to this dramatic conclusion after studying the genetic bar codes, or snippets of DNA, of over 5 million animals taken from a whopping 100,000 different species and determined that all people living on Earth are the byproduct of just one couple who managed to survive a major catastrophe that nearly killed off the human race.
These small snippets of DNA have also suggested that it’s not just humans who descended from this one pair of human beings, but that nine out of 10 animal species also do as well. Mark Stoeckle and David Thaler were the two main scientists behind this major study, and the pair has made the startling claim that each and every animal species in existence today are descended from parents that started off the cycle of birth under 250,000 years ago, which drastically changes the concept of human evolution.
As Thaler confessed, “This conclusion is very surprising, and I fought against it as hard as I could.”
All humans have SAME ancestors: Every man and woman was spawned from a single couple living up to 200,000 years ago, scientists claim https://t.co/uJGaevrfZT pic.twitter.com/aQdYuEh53M
— Caitlin Oliver (@Caitlin14958101) November 24, 2018
To reach the conclusions that they did, Stoeckle and Thaler used every bit of data that they could from genetic databases while also studying evolutionary theories written by scientists like Darwin. Stoeckle summed up the new research by noting that while human beings take great pride in being different from each other, perhaps they should be focusing more on their similarities after this study.
“At a time when humans place so much emphasis on individual and group differences, maybe we should spend more time on the ways in which we resemble one another and the rest of the animal kingdom.”
The research conducted by Thaler and Stoeckle has led to many questions, not the least of which is why did life need to begin again between 100,000 to 200,000 years ago. This is especially the case as the last extinction event that scientists are certain about is when dinosaurs were wiped out 65 million years ago.
It is therefore plausible that there may very well be some kind of unknown and mysterious evolutionary process built into the human race where we are doomed to die out at a certain point, only to begin again, which is one possible explanation for how we could all be descended from just one couple not that long ago. According to Stoeckle, “Culture, life experience and other things can make people very different but in terms of basic biology, we’re like the birds.”
Stoeckle further elaborated, “One might have thought that, due to their high population numbers and wide geographic distribution, humans might have led to greater genetic diversity than other animal species. At least for mitochondrial DNA, humans turn out to be low to average in genetic diversity.”
It should be pointed out that some religious groups may believe that this study suggests that humans first came into existence 100,000 years ago after some major event like the Big Bang, yet this is not at all what the new research suggests. Instead, the new study points to the idea that human beings may need to regroup from time to time and begin life anew.
The new study which reveals that human beings have all descended from one couple that lived between 100,000 and 200,000 years ago has been published in Human Evolution.