Is RTBs Model Sole Progenitor?

[John_Harshman]

This?:

Mosaic Eve: Mother of All (Part 1)

One of the big revelations of the RTB-PS workshop on human origins was @AJRoberts’s speculation on “mosaic eve.” Of course, this has an interesting history in the conversation, tracing some history back to Jerry Coyne (Jerry Coyne's Adam and Eve Contest). Thanks @Andrew_Loke, @NLENTS and @glipsnort for participating in the workshop. I wonder what you make of it. Starting from our first principles, we set presuppositions about human population genetics that may be tested for consistency with evidence within scientific analyses, including population genetics. In my previous blog, I referenced a presentation by S. Joshua Swamidass that helped clarify how others have misrepresented the human population genetics data in order to rule out the possibility of a sole progenitor pair. In scientific terms, they have ruled out a population bottleneck (of two) prior to roughly 500 kya. Another paper (published the same day as Swamidass’s presentation) by Ola Hössjer and Ann Gauger draws parall…