New research has discovered that the “first father” of humanity may be much older than previously thought.
The discovery came when a South Carolina man’s DNA showed that he was unrelated to the ancient man believed to be a common ancestor of all humanity.
Genealogical sites like Family DNA offer services that will analyze a person’s DNA and determine where their family came from. But when a female relative of Albert Perry, a deceased African-American man from South Carolina, submitted his DNA to Family DNA, the genealogical service discovered something strange about Perry’s DNA. He was not related to the ancient man believed by scientists to be the common male ancestor of all of humanity.
Geneticists formerly believed that all human men are related to a genetic “Adam” who lived 60,000 to 140,000 years ago. All modern men inherited their Y-chromosome from this common ancestor. But Perry’s Y-chromosome was unlike any the Family DNA researchers had seen before: it would not place Perry’s lineage on the Y-chromosome family tree.
When Perry’s DNA was passed along to Michael Hammer of the University of Arizona in Tucson, the geneticist discovered something incredible: Perry was not related to the genetic Adam. Perry’s DNA was so distinct that his male lineage separated from the rest of humanity’s about 338,000 years ago, reports New Scientist.
The oldest human fossil specimens have been dated as 195,000 years old. This means that Perry’s Y-chromosomal lineage dates back to before the human species appeared. Does this mean that the recently-deceased Perry was not human? Not at all. But it does mean that the man Perry and his ancestors inherited their Y-chromosome from may have been an archaic species of human that died out long ago. Perry’s ancestors most likely interbred with the species that became modern humans.
