On the Relative Lack of Genetic Diversity in our Species.
Posted by John on January 19th, 2009 at 11:52 am · 8 Comments
Just learned that human genetic diversity is pretty low compared with many species, especially other homonids. It is said that one chimpanzee tribe has more genetic variation than the entire human species. One possible cause for this was a catastrophic supervolcanic event some 75,000 years ago, which may have reduced our own species to as few as a thousand breeding pairs and helped to wipe out all human branches except for h. sapiens and h. neandertalis.
This raises all sorts of questions and concerns, from the philosophical to biological:
- This really makes the differences we see in each other due to race, culture, ideology seem very superficial.
- Do we have enough diversity to survive a highly virile and fatal disease?
- And what about these supervolcanoes? Apparently Americans have one right in our backyard–rather, in our living room: the Yellowstone Caldera, which is active and erupts once every 650,000 to 700,000 years or so. From what I can gather from the US Geological Survey site, if the last one, from 640,000 years ago, were repeated, it would obliterate (for human purposes) most of Wyoming, Montana, Idaho and northern Utah and cover the states West of the Mississippi River in at least a couple of inches of ash.
- If there is a divine creator, this would add more evidence to the “god sucks” category. But you know, now that I think about it, this isn’t much different from the whole Flood thing (how many breeding pairs accompanied Noah?)
Anyhow, I find this both scary and fascinating. Does this knowledge provoke any questions or thoughts in you?
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