Basically he has a graph from a 1999 PNAS paper that looks at African hominoid genetic diversity: He presents this graph:
and says:
What is very obvious from this paper figure is how genetically homogeneous we are compared to our closest relatives. I’ve heard it stated that a single chimpanzee tribe has as much genetic diversity as is found in the entire human species. So next time you feel fit to make fun of us southerners for kissin’ cousins remember that chimps are laughing at you.
And I’ll agree- there is either
- A shit load of genetic diversity in chimps, or
- Very little Human diversity
My question is this: Is the lack of human diversity related to our ability for long (global) distance migration? Would human diversity have looked so pitiful say 100 years ago?? Has the homogenizing effect of gene flow done this?
I bet its been a really long time since a “western chimp” bred with an “eastern chimp” and as a result, they have been on their own evolutionary trajectories for a really long time….
Anybody have a thought about this?
2 responses so far ↓
1 Meirav Rath // Oct 31, 2007 at 10:39 pm
Ah, but have you taken into consideration that we kill ourselves muchly in the two little hobby only we came up with; genocide and war?
Can you really, genetically, study an animal when 11 million of its own are wiped out in six years (to take WW2 for example) for example?
Actually, while we’re on the subject of WW2 as an example, it’s a very good one (if I do say so myself *bats eyelashes*). Think about the genetic database that was lost from the German human population, the Russian population, the American, the British, and let’s not forget the massive holes bitten into hunted communities like the jews of Europe, or the gypsies or the Polish.
These days we worry about endangered species not being able to recover their lost gene pools because clever humans brought them to the brink of extinction, well how about us? We bring drain huge amounts out of that pool with every war!
Also, we have xenophobia and racism to keep us from mixing with others of our own kind just because they’re got a tinch more melanin than we in their skin…
2 Gary // Nov 8, 2007 at 9:28 pm
I think xenophobia would actually diversify the total human gene pool as groups of genes would stay seperate.
I think it is also important to remember that while humans are all over the planet, most of our evolution was in Africa until about 65,000 years ago. That’s not a very long time for a species to diversify, no matter how far it’s travelled.
Other than that, I don’t know why the genepool would be so small, unless perhaps there was one set of traits that particularly allowed homo sapiens to poliferate, or our ancestors were a small group. Perhaps survivors from an epidemic, disaster, or other occurence.
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