If Homosapiens survived the last mass extinction how is there almost 8 billions Humans now? Are we all related? Is every human related in some way?
In: 80
As far as we know, life arose only once in Earth’s history. That means that not only is every human related, but every human is related to every animal, plant, and bacterium on Earth if you go back far enough.
Humans are obviously much more closely related to each other than we are to bacteria, or even than we are to our very near relatives, chimpanzees and bonobos. In fact, some researchers have estimated you only need to go back about 5,000 – 15,000 years to reach the point where all living humans had exactly the same ancestral pool.
That is to say, if you could trace every human’s genetic tree back that far, somewhere around 10,000 years ago, they would all link up to the same group of individuals who are the ancestors of every living human today.
Keep in mind that populations who live near to each other are *much* more closely linked even than this. An absurd proportion of Europe can all trace their descent somewhere along the line to Charlemagne only 1300 years ago, for example. One study concluded, in fact, that on average people’s close friends tend to be as genetically related to them as fourth cousins!
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