Controversies in Science/Was there a mitochondrial Eve?/A Critique Of

(Review Paper) Cited in

Points Made
- Evidence for African origin is ambiguous. Inappropriate tests were used to confirm, and when appropriate tests were done, results could not provide significant support for African origin.

- The time of origin was originally calculated without incorporating key sources of error, so there is much uncertainty about when this "Eve" is said to have lived. Despite this uncertainty, it has been found that she was very likely much older than 200 000 years.

- The out-of-Africa replacement theory is rejected by cladogram data and nuclear DNA patterns. The data and patterns are consistent with population-expansion events and gene flow.

Methods
Cladograms were examined and compared to the potential roots of humanity. No significantly conclusive results were found, so we do not have certainty that there was one location from which humans originated. The time to coalescence is seen as a variable as there is much potential for deviation.

Results
The article asserts that by one millions years ago humans were widespread in the Old World and had genetic contact with each other for much of the one million year time period. Concluding humans with regional subdivisions are from one evolutionary lineage, and can be traced using mtDNA. Cann, Stoneking, and Wilson, in their 1987 efforts to find the maxium parsimony tree failed because only one data order was tried. .