A pair of scientific studies using the latest genetic evidence are seeking to identify the very first man to walk the Earth, but identifying the very first Y chromosome of a genetic “Adam” would not mean scientists had located the Biblical figure Adam, Werner Arber, the Vatican’s top scientist, told FoxNews.com. “Scientific investigations have no means to identify Adam and Eve and to sequence their genomes. Therefore, identification of Adam and Eve remains a matter of religious belief.”
Scientists call the most recent common ancestor MCRA or A00 — it’s misleading to call the bearer of that chromosome Adam, noted Joe Pickrell from the New York Genome Center.
“At some point, a population geneticist had the clever idea of calling this common ancestor ‘Adam,’” he wrote on the Pickrell Labs website. “This is a biblical allusion, of course, and it probably was good for a bit of amusement a couple of decades ago. But it’s time to retire this metaphor–not only because it confuses the public … but because it confuses even practicing human population geneticists.”
Read the full, original article here: Who was ‘Adam’? Genetic ‘man’-hunt catches eye of Vatican scientists
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