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Interesting article, but the part about everyone having a common ancestor 3,400 years ago is questionable, at best. Recent studies have shown that some populations have been isolated for 10,000 years or (much) longer, such as aboriginal Australians.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/jul/19/dig-f...




Thought the same. However, consider that it requires a single person of european descent mating with a single person of aboriginal descent to give to the offspring all european and aboriginal ancestry up to a few hundred years earlier. If the offspring mates again within the aboriginal population it starts spreading this ancestry. In a few hundred years it might have spread it to the whole population (even if not a single european gene is actually still present in the dna).

The point is: we consider ancestry a purely additive mechanism; in fact at each generation the amount of dna actually received from a specific ancestor halves, so that you can be of european, or asian or african descent and yet have practically no genes from that side.




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