It's that darned evolution thing...

[honormac]

Some time ago, I posited a theory among friends that there were key consistencies in purely superficial traits between basically all other subgroups of humans that were notably different in the European subgroup

Comments

[mythchief]

You've got me curious now. What did genetic science say was right instead of your theory? While I hadn't thought much about the results myself, I've always kinda figured that homo sapiens and neaderthals got a little zug-zug action in from time to time.

[honormac]

Basically thT referred to the first version of the "Eve" genetics experiment that indicated that "all living humans descended from a single female not too very long ago, and by the way, no Neanderthals in the mix." kinda findings.

Mitochondria just specify the maternal side

[putaro]

I think a lot of that kind of work is based on mitochondrial DNA. Mitochondria come from the egg only so and have their own DNA separate from the rest of the cell so any mitochondria that you have are strictly from the maternal side, going back through history. However, saying that the mitochondria can all be traced back to one ancestor does say there were no Neanderthal (or other) fathers.