Here is the quote from the Fox News story about our common ancestry:
You would have to go back in time only 2,000 to 5,000 years — and probably on the low side of that range — to find somebody who could count every person alive today as a descendant.
Furthermore, Olson and his colleagues have found that if you go back a little farther — about 5,000 to 7,000 years ago — everybody living today has exactly the same set of ancestors
So basically, Moctezuma lived about 4500 years too late to be our common ancestor and furthermore, the theory does not state that every person alive at that time was our common ancestor, but rather, that there was a person alive at that time who can count everyone alive today as a descendant. Obviously there were people alive then that can count a far smaller percentage of the population as descendants.
The second claim I don’t buy. Early migrations (prior to the ice age) and subsequent genetic isolation due to receding ocean levels would make this impossible from what I know of anthropology. The aborigines in Australia and Native Americans who crossed into continents long before 7000 years ago that remained isolate for some time would make it impossible that the descendants of these people shared the exact same ancestors as the people who remained in the Asia/Africa/Europe landmass.
Here is the quote from the Fox News story about our common ancestry:
You would have to go back in time only 2,000 to 5,000 years — and probably on the low side of that range — to find somebody who could count every person alive today as a descendant.
Furthermore, Olson and his colleagues have found that if you go back a little farther — about 5,000 to 7,000 years ago — everybody living today has exactly the same set of ancestors
So basically, Moctezuma lived about 4500 years too late to be our common ancestor and furthermore, the theory does not state that every person alive at that time was our common ancestor, but rather, that there was a person alive at that time who can count everyone alive today as a descendant. Obviously there were people alive then that can count a far smaller percentage of the population as descendants.
The second claim I don’t buy. Early migrations (prior to the ice age) and subsequent genetic isolation due to receding ocean levels would make this impossible from what I know of anthropology. The aborigines in Australia and Native Americans who crossed into continents long before 7000 years ago that remained isolate for some time would make it impossible that the descendants of these people shared the exact same ancestors as the people who remained in the Asia/Africa/Europe landmass.
