Why it might be time to rethink the human family tree
17 points by Anon84 3 days ago | 11 comments
m3047 2 days ago
Research is coming out specifically regarding the COVID genome which suggests missing sequence data was routinely filled in from baseline reference sequences. In turn, the reference sequences suggest during later analysis constant reversion back to the baseline. These gaps are the (dot) product of limitations of PCR * computer processing algorithms. No reason to believe the problem is limited to COVID.
replyBigTTYGothGF 12 minutes ago
I haven't heard anything about this, could you drop a couple references?
replytrollbridge 35 minutes ago
Does this explain the conspiracy theories about “insertions”? When I looked into it, many other virus species had similar “insertions” - the problem seeming to be the sequencing itself not being accurate (as opposed to every viral disease being cooked up in a lab for the last 5,000 years)
replybibimsz 3 days ago
isn't it kind of suspect that there was all this diversity and branching conveniently right up to today and then it stopped. seems ideological.
replysokoloff 2 days ago
On a chart section spanning around 5 million years, are you asking about the millions of years where there was “all this diversity and branching” as contrasted with the last ten thousand years or so where there is less observed branching?
replyAround 15 branches in 5,000,000 years and 0 in the last 10,000 years seems more likely statistical than ideological to me.
jsbisviewtiful 5 minutes ago
Totally agree. Unfortunately we are living in an age of mass stupidity’s volume overtaking critical thought and analysis by those who are truly educated. The amount of moon landing conspiracy theories I see online is deeply disturbing - some even going as far as suggesting space doesn’t even exist. Truly disturbing times.
replytrollbridge 34 minutes ago
If a group of humans gets isolated in an island, the moon, etc., experiences a population bottleneck and bigtime selection pressures, a new species might emerge after 500 generations (about 10,000 years).
replyThrowawayTestr 2 days ago
Are you not aware of the multiple genetic bottlenecks homo sapiens have gone through?
replyguywithahat 2 days ago
I don't think anyone can look at the incredible diversity of humans we have now and say they're all the same species, while looking at birds or other animals and say they deserve to all be different species. One of those trains of thought are wrong, and humans seem to be the outlier.
replyThat said, I don't want to be the one to have to tell people they're another race. I think calling all humans the same race simplifies a lot of life, and there's no reason we can't treat ourselves differently.
ryoshoe 2 days ago
I feel like you're conflating race/ethnicity with species when the two are completely separate concepts. There's a great amount of diversity between dog breeds, including wolves, but little disagreement that they are the same species. Variation between members of a certain species is expected
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