Talk:Y-chromosomal Adam

message: The edit stating "His other male contemporaries also have descendants alive today, but not, by definition, through solely patrilineal descent" should not be changed to "could also have." Either form needs a citation, ultimately, but the form without "could" is logically certain. First, since Y-chromosomal Adam, by definition, has descendants, so do at least one of his sexual partners. Since at least one of these has descendants, so too does her father. Therefore, one or more of Y-chromosomal Adam's father(s)-in-"law" (no known law at the time) has descendants. Even if that "father-in-law" is also "Adam's" father--partner being sister, that's still a non Y-MRCA man who is a contemporary ancestor of humans. Second, and more importantly, Y-chromosomal Adam existed long, long before the identical ancestors point. Any human who lived before the identical ancestors' point either became an ancestor of everyone living today, or of no one living today. As humans do not show a population bottleneck of 2, but rather of ~10,000, there must have been many male contemporaries of "Adam" who are not only the ancestor of some, but of all humans. I agree that a citation would make this better, but please note that this is not WP:OR any more than deleting the "could" is WP:OR Satyadasa (talk) 04:56, 9 October 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:   Other male contemporaries' non-patrilineal descendants 

message: In the article we read: "While their descendants certainly became close intimates, Y-chromosomal Adam and mitochondrial Eve are separated by tens of thousands of years." I have a hard time understanding why "their descendants certainly became close intimates". If it is true for some mathematical reason or based on some genetic evidence, it is not obvious to a layman (like myself) why it should be so. 
Couldn't Eve and Adam have been from two separate and isolated communities that merged only much later but men of Eve's community left no strictly patrilineal descendants and women of Adam's community left behind no all-female-line descendants? 
I might be missing some obvious point here. Otherwise, it would be great if the article cites a reference for this sentence. Smirarab (talk) 03:24, 20 October 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Descendants of Adam and Eve =

message: Now we have Y-chromosomal Aaron -- those interested may wish to comment on the vfd page. Dunc|☺ 10:43, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: We've had this article for quite some time, and despite skepticism - the phenomenon is there. Vfd has been withdrawn, by the way. JFW | T@lk 14:12, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)

text: I do not support the deletion of the Aaron article. It strikes me as one of the crankier things in Judaism, but it's fair enough to give it its article. I do oppose the linking of Aaron from here. "Y-chromosomal Adam" is just a pet name. It has nothing to do with Genesis. "Y-chromosomal Aaron", otoh, is completely arbitrary, we might as well have "Y-chromosomal Smith" tracing the common ancestor of all people called Smith. this link says "The name Eve, in retrospect, is perhaps the worst possible name to give to the entity in question" for mitochondrial Eve. The same might be said for Y-Adam. It was chosen as a funny and suggestive name, without thinking that it may stir interest in religious or racist circles. Y-Adam is significant and interesting to trace the origins of humanity. Y-Aaron may or may not be of interest to questions about the jewish diaspora. A link from "Aaron" to "Adam" is in order, in the interest of making clear the concept. Nothing is gained by the link from Adam to Aaron than to shed a dubious light on the whole thing altogether. dab 13:04, 7 Nov 2004 (UTC)

text: fine. at least, let me move "Aaron" to the end of the see alsos. Oh, and I don't suggest we rename "Adam" to something else. It's what it's called now. It may have been an unhappy choice, but we're stuck with it now.  dab 13:16, 7 Nov 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: [[Y-chromosomal Aaron]]

message: I have one question to ask.
Since men have XY would it be correct to assume we can trace his mothers maternal line and his fathers paternal line
AND
Since women have XX would it be correct to assume we can trace her mothers maternal line and her fathers maternal line?
From: Australia. 15/01/06
:Yes, you can trace a man's maternal line, not because he has an X chromosome, but rather because he has his mother's mitochondrial DNA.  The same is true of a woman, but you can't trace a woman's father's maternal line on the basis of her own DNA - to do so you need mitochondrial DNA from her father, his siblings, descendants of his mother via maternal lines, or some other suitable candidate. - Nunh-huh 17:57, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  FINDING OUR LINEAL ANCESTORS 

message: 90.000 years, fair enough. But 35.000? whose estimate is this? This would be significantly younger than e.g. immigration to Australia or the Americas. This would imply that there have been some *very* mobile males during the Neolithic that weeded out all earlier Y-chromosomes in these continents. dab 16:28, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: since nobody answered this, I did a websearch and came up with the figure 60,000. I don't have any hard evidence to back this up, but I insert it for the moment, as it fits human migration much better than th 35,000 figure. dab 13:14, 7 Nov 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: age

message: what is this "hypothetical"/"If such a person existed" business, btw? Y-Adam existed by definition. It may not be possible to identify him positively, but if we define him as the mrca of the Y-chomosomes present in the world population alive today, this defines a particular man who must have been alive at some point. Why hypothetical? If I define "dab**100" to be my father's father's.... father, 100 generations removed, that doesn't make dab**100 a hypothetical figure. rather dab**100 is uniquely defined, even if I cannot tell you his real name. ("mrca of the Y-chomosomes present in the world population alive today", otoh shows that Y-Adam is defined relative to a particular time. I.e. 2004-Y-Adam is not necessarily identical to 1800-Y-Adam (in all probability he isn't). Y-Adam may even change overnight, i.e. if the last bearer of a particular Y-mutation/male line were to die. 
If nobody explains how Y-Adam is hypothetical, I will rephrase the article according to what I just said. dab 15:23, 7 Nov 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: 2004-Y-Adam is probably identical to 1800-Y-Adam, given that world population has risen so fast and there have been relatively few extinctions of long-lived subgroups.  Since the individuals concerned cannot be indentified, all you are left with is a definition and a time estimate: the definition alone does not even guarantee that Y-Adam was human. Some people would call this a hypothetical man based on a hypothetical definition.  --Henrygb 17:46, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: it's hypothetical alright, but the 'long-lived subgroups' are not the groups responsible for the population rise. The groups with the longest isolated Y chromosomes are likely stone age people in Papua or African Bushmen, and it is not unlikely that there are a few single indivduals  in the jungle somewhere with whose deaths the date of Y-Adam will be postponed by millennia. We just don't know. dab (ᛏ) 08:45, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: hypothetical?

message: Would he necessarily have been human?  --LakeHMM 23:24, 6 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: strictly speaking, not a priori; in stochastic simulations, there would always be a finite chance that a paternal line dating to pre-Homo times (more than 3 Mya) survives, but this chance will be astronomically small. Similarly, empirical evidence seems to preclude this, but of course not every person on the planet was tested. When I say "astronomically small" I imagine a number like 10^-20, which is to say "we are sure he would have been human". dab (ᛏ) 19:23, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

text: Yeah, and then  we hear about Albert Perry of South Carolina, who had hos male ancestry checked and caused a small furor because his markers weren't found.  After some diddling around, they found he descended through a small obscure group of people in west Africa who had never been tested.  This discover set y-Adam back about 100,000 years or more.  See http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2289492/The-family-tree-test-rewrote-human-history-Researchers-stunned-DNA-submitted-online-service-dates-338-000-years.html for a news article about it.  SkoreKeep (talk) 05:55, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Human? 

message: In the sister article on mt-Eve there was an explanation on why mt-Eve can't be compared to "Noah's wife". The reasoning being that according to the tale about Noah's arch he took his wife, his sons and their wives with him. Unless his sons married their sisters, Noah's wife could therefore not be mt-Eve by analogy.
Does the Noah example work for Y-Adam nevertheless? All males onboard the arch would be his direct offspring, though the females (apart from Noah's wife) would not. I'm not very savvy when it comes to bible details (I never read through the entire Lord of the Rings either, though I found it more enlightening and relevant </sarcasm>), so it'd be nice if I could have some "authorative" word on this. — Ashmodai (talk · contribs) 14:38, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Nice observation. Just from the biblical description you've written above, then yes, according to the bible, Noah would be the Y-chromosomal "Adam" until a later Adam came along after another male-bottlenecking event (or, for example, if only one of Noah's sons gave him a grandson, then that son would become he new "Adam".. Although the Y-chromosomal DNA would likely be indistiguishable from his father's.) For the record I never read Lord of the Rings either, except for the Hobbit, but then they brought out a movie of all the others so I never had to :) —Pengo  talk · contribs 22:28, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Noah? 

message: I added a link to , a diagram I put together. I think it will be helpful to people interested in this topic. 
JoeCasey 13:44, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  New external link 

message: Why is the creation according to Genesis listed as a myth when it is believed by many people, when a myth is not factual.
- Even though I DO think it's (along with religion) a myth, I find that calling it so is non-neutral POV. But I don't know how to reword it to not be biased towards either side.
24.68.65.244 04:30, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: please look up myth, religion and mythology and :wikt:myth for the meaning of the term. dab (𒁳) 09:38, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

text: You are trying to make sense of inconsistent accounts of various bible passages, some borrowed from Mesopotamian myths and others edited by later generations.  According to the bible, Adam and Eve were the only people God created, as explicitly stated.  If that were truth, Y-chromosomal Adam and mt Eve should be dated to the same time.  In fact, genetic Y Adam and mt Eve should be dated to Noah and (very possibly) his wife (there were only a few women left in the Ark).  And guess what, we should also find a population bottleneck for ALL animals that live today, at the time of the flood.  But unfortunately, that is not the case, scientifically.  So, I do not believe we need to further complicated things by trying to add more clarifications to this article.  Also check out the numerous first men and first women; why talk about the Christian tradition only? Fred Hsu 02:38, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Noah's daughters-in-law were (probably) not descended from his wife. Koro Neil (talk) 03:08, 19 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Myth! 

message: I'm reading this now.. and, IMHO, some graphical presentation of the concept would be good for better understanding. Something akin to a "family tree", maybe animated, showing lines being cut with a new Adam appearing? Best regards, --CopperKettle 20:09, 19 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Graphical presentation

message: "In scholarly literature first "Adam" or rather first paternal ancestor date was estimated at 270,000 years ago.[4][5] Later new set of markers was chosen and the age was adjusted to mostly cited value.[6] The dates calculated on new markers was 37,000–49,000 years ago [7] to 51,000–411,000 years ago [8]" - So does this mean that the first guesstimate was wrong or that the evolutionists pressured them to change their results to fit the establishments accepted theories?--Degen Earthfast (talk) 00:28, 18 September 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Age?

message: I put a question relevant to Y-chromosomal Adam at the Science RefDesk. It is important because it raises the possibility that Y-chromosomal Adam could have lived one million ybp. Mathew5000 (talk) 03:52, 18 July 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: It's a possibility, but no evidence yet.  If they do discover some extremely divergent Y-chromosomes or MtDNA then it would change the dating of Y-Adam or Mt-Eve, but until such a discovery these exclusively maternal or paternal lines must be presumed extinct.-- cheers, Michael C. Price talk 06:37, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

text: My understanding is that homo sapien y-Chromosomes have been molecularly dated to no more than 140,000 years ago.  That means that *all* modern y-Chromosomes fall under this umbrella, in a sense.  If there had been any long terms surviving y-Chromosome mixing between archaics and modern homo sapiens, then there should have been  a ~500,000 year measurement of difference between at least some pair of human y-Chromosomes.  That said, a Neanderthal toe bone has been discovered in the Denisova cave (not a Denisovan, but a Neanderthal.)  It apparently contains a y-Chromosome (the others have not), so we will know for sure very shortly (probably end of the year latest). Qed (talk) 22:44, 12 April 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Recent findings on Neanderthal and Denisovan contribution to genome of modern humans 

message: Same with eve, no women before her have any descendants?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.104.98.252 (talk) 18:17, 9 August 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: How could there be any people if that was the case! -- cheers, Michael C. Price talk 18:38, 9 August 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: THERE WERE HUMANS BEFORE Y-Chromosomal ADAM, since all males are descended from him, does it mean humans other than Y-Chromsonal Adam have descendants?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.104.97.12 (talk) 13:54, 26 August 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually, all humans now living, but not by the paternal line. -- cheers, Michael C. Price talk 16:50, 26 August 2011 (UTC)
replies: text:  To rephrase 88.104.98.252's question, since by definition, all males now living are descended from Y-Chromosomal ADAM by the paternal line, but there were other humans not descended from Adam (descended from Adam's uncles for example), does this mean that some humans now living could be descended from Adam's uncles by a different paternal line and not be descended from Adam by his paternal line?  The answer is no, by definition, but there could have been many males descended by a different paternal line from Adam's uncles and who all died years ago and hence are excluded from "all males now living" in the definition of Y-Chromosomal ADAM.  Greensburger (talk) 18:38, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

text: No it means that all males who were neither ancestral to y-Adam nor descendant from him have a descendant sub-trees whose surviving lineage at the leaf nodes are solely females. Qed (talk) 23:52, 6 March 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Does this mean all men before Adam have no descendants? 

message: The page says that the date of 59,000 years ago for Y-chromosome Adam, proposed by initial studies such as Thomson et al. 2000, "meant that Y-chromosome Adam lived at a time very close to, and possibly after, the out of Africa migration".  In good faith I removed the words "and possibly after", with the explanation "Y-chromosome Adam cannot have lived after the out-of-Africa migration".  Another user has restored the words, also in good faith, with the explanation "No, your logic is false - it is possible".
I am not an expert, but I thought I understood this.  On the Recent African Origin model (which the sentence in question presupposes by using the phrase "the out of Africa migration") members of one branch of Homo sapiens left Africa by between 125,000 and 60,000 years ago, in what may be called the earliest successful "out of Africa" migration (the earliest migrants with living descendants), and over time these humans replaced earlier human populations such as Neanderthals and Homo erectus.  Surely then Y-chromosomal Adam, who is defined as the most recent common patrilineal ancestor, must in all but the most absurd scenarios have preceded the migration?  When I say "the most absurd scenarios" I am thinking for example about a scenario in which the earliest successful out-of-Africa migration came to the point of extinction, there being only females (and possibly infertile males) left, and was saved by males from a subsequent wave of migration finding them and breeding with them; does anyone seriously put forward such a scenario?
On the major competing hypothesis, the multiregional origin of modern humans, which envisions a wave of Homo sapiens migrating from Africa and interbreeding with local Homo erectus populations in multiple regions of the globe, the date of Y-chromosomal Adam can only be pushed further back, not pulled forward.
Elsewhere on the same page there is the assertion: "The defining mutations separating CT (all haplogroups excepting A and B) are M168 and M294. These mutations predate the 'Out of Africa' migration."  No "probably" there.  And that assertion entails that Y-chromosomal Adam preceded the migration.
Can anyone who knows about these things confirm what I have said, or explain why I am wrong please? Prim Ethics (talk) 01:37, 22 November 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: The scenarios don't have to be that absurd.  Suppose a favourable mutation occurs on the Y-chromosome in a male that confers an advantage to all his male descendants.  Even a very slight advantage will cause the Y chromosome to dominate within a surprisingly short time, without having to suppose a sudden decimation of other males.  It doesn't matter whether this male (Y-chromosomal Adam) lived before or after a particular out-of-Africa migration, inside or outside Africa, since there were later back-into-Africa waves.  -- cheers, Michael C. Price talk 06:53, 22 November 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: The confusion over dates arises because the time frames suggested for when Y-Adam lived overlap with the "out of Africa" migration. Typically the Out of Africa migration is dated to between 50,000 -80,000 years ago. If Y-Adam lived 59,000 years ago, as had been suggested by , then it could in theory mean he lived after the out of africa migration. But the final sentence in the section Y-chromosomal_Adam#Time_frame states "According to Cruciani et al., the much older date is easier to reconcile with models of human origins". Basically recent dates have been published, but as Prim Ethics has mentioned, they don't chime well with models of human origins. Wapondaponda (talk) 09:03, 22 November 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks, Michael.  I am comfortable with your revert now. Prim Ethics (talk) 12:52, 22 November 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks.  However, I must grant, that whilst it is possible that Y-Adam lived outside Africa, it does seem most unlikely, from the haplogroup data.-- cheers, Michael C. Price talk 17:59, 22 November 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Timing of Out-of-Africa migration relative to Y-chromosome Adam 

message: The article initially asserts that Adam is the 'theoretical' MRCA. Although (according to the article) the existence of Y-chromosomal Adam follows from the theory of molecular evolution, the actual wording of the initial sentence gives the reader the impression that Y-chromosomal Adam exists only in theory, but not (necessarily) in practice. Although few specifics can be given about Adam (and MRCAs in general), those specifics apply to a human that actually walked this planet - unless one rejects the entire scientific theory of (molecular) evolution. As such I am removing the word. Otherwise _anything_ that established scientific theory predicts as existing can be labelled 'theoretical', like a 'theoretical' heavier-than-air aircraft. Please revert the edit only after justifying it here. Thanks. Lklundin (talk) 22:17, 23 January 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Adam (and the MRCA)  is not 'theoretical' 

message: The term "initial sequencing" is apparently used in the article to refer to some early study that (apparently) was the first to identify the haplotyopes using the letters A through T and which (apparently) found that "Adam" is 60,000 years old. I edited the article to identify "initial sequencing" with (Karafet et al., 2008), based on the figure. However, I don't think this is correct. Can an expert please provide a date and a reference for "initial sequencing?" It's really quite important from a history of science perspective. As teh article ages, we tend to lose sight of history as more recent studies are reported. -Arch dude (talk) 16:21, 10 March 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Initial sequencing?" 

message: The Mendez et al. article states 
:Genotyping of a DNA sample that was submitted to a commercial genetic-testing facility demonstrated that the Y chromosome of this African American individual carried the ancestral state of all known Y chromosome SNPs.
Table S1 of the supplementary data provides a list of some of these SNP's, but it is not clear how all this data fits in with the previous y-chromosome phylogeny. Wapondaponda (talk) 09:46, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Does this diagram help? HelenOnline (talk) 10:29, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Mendez et al. 2013 

message: Y-chromosomal Adam is the most recent common patrilineal ancestor, not the most recent common ancestor (MRCA). 
Since the Y-chromosome is inherited paternally (and recombination is either rare or absent  ??), it is relatively easy to track the ancestry of the lineages back to a MRCA; however this MRCA is valid only when discussing the Y-chromosome. An approximate sequence from newest to oldest can list various important points in the ancestry of modern human populations:
*The Human MRCA.  All humans alive today share a surprisingly recent common ancestor, perhaps even within the last 5,000 years, even for people born on different continents.
*The Identical ancestors point. Just a few thousand years before the most recent single ancestor shared by all living humans was the time at which all humans who were then alive either left no descendants alive today or were common ancestors to all humans alive today.  In other words, "each present-day human has exactly the same set of genealogical ancestors" alive at the "Identical ancestors point" in time. This is far more recent than Mitochondrial Eve.
*Y-chromosomal Adam, the most recent male-line common ancestor of all living people.
*"Mitochondrial Eve", the most recent female-line common ancestor of all living people, currently appears to have lived long after Y-chromosomal Adam.
::I am doubtful whether a section on misconceptions is required. The first 3 are already covered in the article and a misconceptions section would duplicate what has already been said. The distinction between Y-chromosomal Adam, most recent common ancestor and Identical ancestors point is worth pointing out, but I think far more briefly as they are not directly relevant, and the links will give interested readers the chance to follow up if they wish. 
::I am particularly dubious about including the mathematical model suggesting a recent common ancestor only a few thousand years ago since, as pointed out here, the authors have not simulated the possibility that there are populations which have been genetically isolated for a long period, so its value is far from clear. Dudley Miles (talk) 23:32, 18 March 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: Not the most recent ancestor shared by all humans

message: Consider the forth sentence:
:Some of his male contemporaries have descendants alive today through a mixed male and female line, but none produced a direct, unbroken male line to anyone living today."
Is puting {fact} there ok?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.90.197.87 (talk) 15:02, 4 June 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: The 2013 study is referenced at the end of the section. Vsmith (talk) 14:08, 6 June 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes it is down below, but. But it does not make, the false sentence, you restore, any more true. Will you argue or explain why (80 =? 300) you deleted the true to restore to false. Perhaps as a time saving compromise, versus deleting all, except one sentence from this section, it will be to rename the section 'Time frame' to History of research. Then the already falsified theses, no longer considered as true science state, may rest, remarked, in the article. As usually some new discoverries invalidate older held conception and the wiki arts should follow. I going to make the changes tomorrow i you have more time or better idea edit or talk.99.90.197.87 (talk) 19:50, 6 June 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: I would agree that the section should be retitled. History of research or something similar would be fine with me. Vsmith (talk) 21:02, 6 June 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  true or rather false? 

message: Lets be honest with ourselves, I'm not sure I can pull DNA out of a body 100 years in a wooden or pine box, let alone anyone from a dirt sand dune in dry an arid conditions, and I'm at least partially understood that is how you should date mitochondrial cells too?  You must compare Adam or Even or Apples or Oranges provided Apples and Oranges are people alive.  My factual understanding of this dating process from XY chromosomes is based on mutated cells in a lab and as such should be thrown out or made to admit the science is very strange, to say the least very little of the actual science is reliable.  Regarding first peoples these are myths alone an more so they were probably edited by 1850.  I have no idea why we are discussing something called Adam or Even or Genesis or anything from a Bible that was handed down for a millennium by word of mouth, made into small texts on parchments and directed into a huge Latin version by 1650, but at least paper existed then and we can't even find those bibles - or if we do the accuracy of the copyright date is not verifiable.  I have no regard for this article, I have nothing to contribute than this is absolute bunk or crap.  Adam and Even were fictional, and so is the re-creationist versions of mythology including Jesus and the bible - paper did not exist in or around Rome - even if it did it would not survive 80 years on a shelf from the poor quality, and if we don't find a more accurate way of portraying our history, then people that read this are eternally lost and devout to the factual basis of history as it was re-discovered later on written down.  Stop inviting history with dates that won't work with any credibility, and continue on with science from today.  Leave your calendar alone please. Fatum81 (talk) 01:13, 10 June 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: The names 'Adam' and 'Eve', although taken from the biblical characters, are intended to be somewhat jocular.  There is no suggestion that they actually were characters from Abrahamic mythology. Martin Hogbin (talk) 19:54, 10 June 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: Talk page should be about truth 

message: There is an ongoing edit war, relating to external links, but no discussion here.  Can someone explain what it is about please. Martin Hogbin (talk) 09:35, 2 September 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Block evasion - see here for scale. I've semi-protected for a bit. Vsmith (talk) 12:07, 2 September 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: I was more wondering what the objection to the added text was. Martin Hogbin (talk) 15:36, 2 September 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: The ip didn't add text to the article - just external links. I don't see any reason that the Science News article (or the research it was based on) couldn't be used to update the article content. In fact it appears the content is there already based on a different news blurb (current ref #17) in the section: Divergences discovered in 2013 and nomenclature. Vsmith (talk) 16:19, 2 September 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Fine. Martin Hogbin (talk) 16:48, 9 October 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Current edit war 

message: Every time I visit this page, it seems to be lost in tangents explaining the concept of "MRCA". Most of the time it is also rife with uncaught misconceptions. 
The fact that any population has an mrca, and that this mrca will move forward in time as the population itself moves forward in time is a trivial aspect of the definition of mrca and has nothing to do with the topic of "Y-mrca" in particular.
It may be helpful for uninformed readers to quickly point them to these relevant facts, but as soon as this article develops entire paragprahs of rhetorics trying to push these points home, it has lost its focus. 
Any population (just assuming sexual reproduction) has an unambiguous patrilinear mrca. This is the article on research into the time depth of the patrilinear mrca of all currently living humans, with "currently" taking the value of the date of publication of each paper (actually, "currently" just meaning "since we developed the tools to sequence Y chromosomes", assumed ot be negligible over a timescale of the order of 1E5 years). 
I realize this page keeps being edited by well-meaning contributors who have not understood what "mrca" even means, but such edits cannot be helpful, and instead of developing the page into a rhetorics piece intended to prevent ill-advised edits (which will never work), it should just be protected against bad edits like any other article on Wikipedia. 
tl;dr: this is not the MRCA page, so don't keep trying to explain what the term means!
--dab (𒁳) 11:41, 22 January 2015 (UTC)
thread_title: topical tangents over-explaining basics

message: Interestingly, the evolution of age estimates looks like this,
*1990s: 200 to 300 kya
*2000s: below 100 kya
*2010: 120 to 160 kya
*2014/5: 200 to 300 kya
So we are more or less back were we were 20 years ago. 
Admittedly, the discovery of a previously unkonwn lineage "A00" is partly responsible for this, but not for all of it. 
But this is far from definite, I gather that nobody really knows how to calculate these ages because nobody knows the correct mutation rates.
In any case, it seems to look as if Y-MRCA was at least as old, if not older than mt-MRCA. 
Also, it looks as if out-of-Africa migration after about 50 kya was pretty much over, and all non-Sub-Saharans mostly have an Y-MRCA of about that age. --dab (𒁳) 12:17, 15 March 2015 (UTC)
thread_title: 2015 "bottleneck" paper

message: In one place, the article says that humans emerged ".2 to .3 million years ago;" in another place, it says that current thinking is that the Y-MRCA is "about 200,000 years old" (or something like that). I think 200,000 years is the easier term for many readers to understand, so they don't have convert parts of millions of years, so recommend that the estimated age of the Y-MRCA be expressed as hundreds of thousands of years, in numerals.Parkwells (talk) 21:53, 27 March 2015 (UTC)
thread_title: Suggest using same terms

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified  on Y-chromosomal Adam. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
*Added archive http://web.archive.org/web/20150118002345/http://www.sci-news.com:80/genetics/science-y-chromosomal-adam-01709.html to http://www.sci-news.com/genetics/science-y-chromosomal-adam-01709.html&rct=j&frm=1&q=&esrc=s
When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true or failed to let others know (documentation at ).
Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 19:06, 21 July 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified 

message: User:Theonlyoxymoron, please explain this edit. Why would you change notation without as much as a hint for your reasons? --dab (𒁳) 10:45, 23 October 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: subscripts

message: I have the A00, here's my family tree, this should answer a lot of questions.
https://discover.familytreedna.com/y-dna/Q-M242/tree Alphamoses (talk) 15:11, 8 January 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  living A00 Human