Talk:Eurasian Adam

article already exists

Please note that an article already exists about this as a scientific subject Haplogroup CT (Y-DNA), so this article is an article about an out-of-date speculation, which is not well known.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:04, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

Once again Andrew, you're completely lost. The term "Eurasian Adam" does not imply that M168 originated in Eurasia. It simply reflects the fact that it gave rise to all Eurasian haplogroups. The article clearly states:

Eurasian Adam (also known as Australian/Eurasian Adam) is the name researchers have given to the man who is defined as the common ancestor of all non-African people living today. Eurasian Adam is defined by a single mutation: M168. According to current research, he was an African man whose descendants migrated out of Africa and became the only lineage to survive away from Africa. He was Haplogroup CT (formerly Haplogroup CR).

Try actually reading and understanding articles before you propose they be deleted. ---- Small Victory (talk) 13:20, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

First, once more please, as has been asked of you many times by myself and pretty much everyone, learn write in a civilized and constructive manner. I was quite aware that the article could be argued not to be only about that theory. But if so then why does this article exist? There is already a CT article. Here are the reasons for deletion as I posted it:

• 1. WP:NOTABILITY The name of this subject is not common, and there is only one source cited for this term.
• 2. WP:UNDUE The notion that M168 was Eurasian is out of date since this major review by leaders in the field: Underhill and Kivisild (2007), "Use of Y Chromosome and Mitochondrial DNA Population Structure in Tracing Human Migrations", Annu. Rev. Genet. 41: 539–64, doi:10.1146/annurev.genet.41.110306.130407.

I should have added for completeness that the subject already has its own article: Haplogroup CT (Y-DNA). If as you claim this article is just about a "term" for the subject of that article, then putting aside the question of whether this is really a well known term, then it still should not exist as a SEPERATE article. Please give a clear answer which responds to the above without changing the subject, or else let's please finish this article.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 11:51, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

I think it should exist as a separate article. If you want to know what the term "Eurasian Adam" means, you should be able to go to the Eurasian Adam article and read the explanation. You should not have to mire through a discussion of what a human Y-chromosome haplogroup is. Hence the separate article. The two articles can refer to each other, but should both be kept individually. — User:Reinyday, 03:35, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

This is not a logical reason for keeping this article. What is the point of having an article all about Haplogroup CT which avoids mentioning haplogroups? If you do not understand what a "bird" is then you are not going to be able to properly understand an article on "the ancestral bird", and indeed insisting that people should be allowed to try to understand the latter without understanding the former is going to mislead and confuse, which is precisely what this little article does now for anyone who does not understand the bigger subject. The problem you mention of wanting to have a way on Wikipedia for people to look a term is easily solved by placing a redirect here to the Haplogroup CT article, which could potentially mention the term if the term can be sourced properly.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 07:49, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Oh my God. You can't be for real. The article is not about "that theory" at all, because "that theory" doesn't exist. You made it up yourself. Eurasian Adam does not imply that M168 is Eurasian. It never has and it never will. It only means that M168 is the (African) ancestor of all Eurasian haplogroups. Do you understand that? ---- Small Victory (talk) 11:56, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

I asked you, concerning the question at hand, if this article is just about a term for Haplogroup CT, and nothing else, why then does it deserve a separate article. I believe we have to assume based on how you keep responding that you have no answer to that.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 12:28, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Get this through your head, Andrew: Nobody uses "Eurasian Adam" to imply that M168 is not African. That's just your own made-up straw man. Here are some examples of how it's actually used:

Thus, the Australian/Eurasian Adam (the ancestor of all non-Africans) was an east African man. His descendents ended up colonizing the rest of the world.

http://books.google.com/books?id=-r7qw54okwMC&pg=PA187

The very widely dispersed M168 marker can be traced to a single individual-"Eurasian Adam." This African man, who lived some 31,000 to 79,000 years ago, is the common ancestor of every non-African person living today. His descendants migrated out of Africa and became the only lineage to survive away from humanity's home continent.
http://lvb.net/item/2123

It is known rather prosaically as M168, but this marker can be traced back to a single male individual, the ancestor of all living males not of African descent living on our planet today. This African man, our Eurasian Adam, lived very roughly about 55,000 years ago, at a time when the entire human species numbered only about 10,000 but was proving to be quite successful.
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~robert/TheFirstPeople.htm

Map showing that the Eurasian Adam (M168) was African

You nominated this article for deletion based on a complete misunderstanding of what it's about. Now be a man and own up to it. ---- Small Victory (talk) 13:23, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

It seems that the term "Eurasian Adam" is a more of a "pop culture" term than an actual scientific term. Biblical analogies tend to work well when trying to sell books, I have seen it used in a couple popular science books. If Eurasian Adam is notable as a pop culture term, then an article may be warranted. From a scientific perspective, Eurasian Adam is inadequate for a variety of reasons and this is why it is not used in scientific literature. One problem is that Eurasian Adam includes a majority of Africans. I guess the term was popular when some thought that Haplogroup E was a result of a back migration from Asia to Africa, which is no longer thought to be the case. I have also seen some use the term "Out of Africa Adam". This term is broader, because in reality Eurasian Adam also includes the MRCA of Indigenous Australians and Native Americans, who are not Eurasians. From a purely scientific perspective, I support merging into Haplogroup CT, though save for haplogroup D (Y-DNA), haplogroup CF (Y-DNA) could also qualify as an almost Eurasian Adam. Wapondaponda (talk) 19:48, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Small Victory, please see WP:IDIDNOTHEARTHAT. To repeat my question: if this article is just about a term for Haplogroup CT, and nothing else, why then does it deserve a separate article? If you refuse to make any response except a silly one, the result seems inevitable.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 19:19, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Whether this subject should be in Wikipedia (putting aside the question of which article)

I have looked at the examples of usage posted by Small Victory. I was actually quite surprised. Every reference to this term seems to define the term as referring to BOTH the man who first had the M168 mutation AND is "the common ancestor of all Eurasians". If this term were supposed to be parallel to "Y chromosome Adam" then it should refer to the most recent common male line ancestor of all M168+ men alive today. What we can say from mainstream science without any shadow of a doubt is that "the man who first had the M168 mutation" is most certainly NOT "the common ancestor of all Eurasians". There is no such theory, not even by the authors who've made these definitions. So the term is being defined as something which does not exist. So in terms of judging WP:notability we are not dealing with mainstream science, but rather with a popular, or sort of popular, misconception. How popular does a misconception have to be before it is notable enough for Wikipedia? I'd say it should be a bit more common than just appearing on a few personal genealogy webpages plus the original one or two sources.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 12:40, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

Unfortunatly Andrew, commonly held myths are notable.Adam_and_Eve. If it is a misconception then one needs to describe the theory and then, why it is misconceived.PB666 ^yap 16:57, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

I guess so, if it is commonly held. But if so then I hope we'll be able to agree on how to explain it. I doubt we'll find a recent source that has bothered to point out the problems with the way this term is defined. We can't simply leave the definition as cited by Small Victory out of the original sources (so it seems?) because it refers mistakenly to something which does not exist in science.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 17:21, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

Regarding Andrew's question, How popular does a misconception have to be before it is notable enough for Wikipedia?, it would be nice if there were a way to check the wikipedia server logs to see how many times a given term has been entered into a search box. For all I know, there is, and I just don't know how to access that. If we looked at the logs and found nobody ever searched for the term, we could conclude it's not notable. If we found that there are 100's of searches a day for it, we would conclude it is notable. Reality is, I suspect, somewhere in-between, but your guess is as good as mine as to exactly where. -- RoySmith (talk) 18:59, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

I'd also be interested. BTW, does anyone claim to know who coined the phrase. Lurgan and Stone write as if it was just a passing fancy, but if it is on the National Genographic page maybe it is older? It would be nice to have a collection of all the versions, barring the personal webpages.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 19:04, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

A little binary search with date ranges in google came up with this as the earliest citation. The page itself is not dated, but google claims to have indexed it on 1/31/2001. It also shows up in [1], which has a 2002 copyright. -- RoySmith (talk) 19:57, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

Wells popularized it and because he is associated with the genographic project it found its way into Natgeo. The older source is indicative of the type of place where one will find references to "Eurasian Adam". The website actually doesn't discuss anything concerning Eurasian Adam. I don't think Wells used the term in a way that it is used in blogs, but it is easy for people to be misled by such a catchy title. In any case when Wells published his book in 2002, there was still a lot of uncertainty concerning the Y-chromosome, and back then it was believed that there was a back migration to Africa. Wapondaponda (talk) 20:25, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

What appears in blogs is non-notable. The subject should be limited to that which has professional media exposure.PB666 ^yap 01:02, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

That page you referenced it does not have a date, and it is on a fringe site. I think you are asking for trouble if you lead with that concept. If I recall correctly circa 1997-1998 harpending group was look for variants of Y and found that the origin of Y was in Asia....it was never published because not soon afterwards they are someone else found deeper branches in Africa.

This is basically what I am getting at:

• The Afd is not likely to succeed
• We have to deal with the history of Y chromosomal science, which basically hits the radar circa 1993 with a TMRCA around 25,000 years ago and proceeds along a rather erratic course until the present.
• In that backdrop the concepts of Eurasian Adam, that goes from the concept that all Y may have evolved from Eurasia, to a Subset of Y that coalesce to a believed type in Africa ......And then, one needs to discredit both of these ideas as Jumping the gun conclusion and explain the observations.

To set the argument up as a Human genetic history project perspective, we got to un-break the article by getting exact quotations by these genetic sooth-sayers and discuss the context in which they were said, and then discuss why they are wrong with more recent in light of more recent results.

Hey, you guys have fun with this, I don't mean to rescue and run but I want to get some maps corrected.PB666 ^yap 01:25, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

My understanding is that blogs etc might not be notable as a source for a scientific fact, but it might sometimes help Wikipedians decide if a subject is getting discussed a lot. Of course a handful of blogs does not hot gossip necessarily make.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 05:58, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

I keep going back to the dawn of the internet and bulletin boards, I was a frequent poster on the USENET for many years, as the number of people who had that ability to access the UseNet went up, the quality of the discussion went down until it was nothing more than a backbiting session, blogs and twitters. You should see what last weeks Science issue says about excess multimedia and peoples ability to focus. The deal here that as more people blog, the quality of what is blogged goes down, what works well on the internet are the places that are structured. I don't that the blogosphere anything more than a passing fad. (sort of like the UseNet).PB666 ^yap 01:25, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

This source is indeed a fringe source, the problem here is that when people search "Eurasian Adam" it is popular on the web, but only 8 hits on goole books and 5 on google scholar, which are basically the same hits from google books. Such a low hit count from books and scholar, for me is very borderline and in some cases would not meet the notability criteria. What is troubling is nobody has even assessed the quality and amount of detail devoted to Eurasian Adam in these sources. For the most part "Eurasian Adam" is only casually mentioned alongside the exact details that we would find at Haplogroup CT. My feeling is yes the article will not be deleted, but merging is still an option. Wikipedia is WP:NOTFORUM and WP:NOTBLOG should apply. Just because it is famous on Blogs doesn't mean that Wikipedia should be the place to popularize a misconception or a fad. Let us consider, what is the future of an article on Eurasian Adam. Any new information is likely to relate to haplogroup CT, and not to a "Eurasian Adam" Though there is a theoretical possibility that there was a back migration from Asia to Africa that brought DE lineages. The recent genomewide studies make such a scenario very unlikely, as they all show gradients centered in Africa with diversity moving away from Africa, eg Tishkoff 2009. If there was a back migration, we would expect two overlapping gradients, with one centered in Asia and extending back to Africa.Wapondaponda (talk) 03:35, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

Some additional redirects

This article's very first sentence says, also known as Australian/Eurasian Adam or Out of Africa Adam. That says to me that Australian/Eurasian Adam and Out of Africa Adam (along with the all-lower-case versions of those) should all exist as redirects to here. Comments? Note, making a redirect doesn't say anything about the scientific validity of the term. It's purely a navigation aid to guide people to the right article when they type in a search term. -- RoySmith (talk) 03:59, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

Roy, you may have misunderstood something. I have been changing both involved articles quite a lot while this discussion has been going on. I have not put aside editing in order to request deletion, but rather I started editing this article when I found it, and have continued editing it. In fact, my original point in suggesting a deletion (or merge + redirect, to make it sound nicer) was that, as you improve both of them, they start to look like to versions of the same article. And both of them are very short and close to being a stub.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:22, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

BTW, concerning the redirects you propose I do not think that is controversial enough to use a talkpage? Just make them? I guess the only question open is whether they should redirect to Eurasian Adam or Haplogroup CT.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:24, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

Redirects are pretty non-controversial (at least they should be) and low-cost. I'm guessing that the outcome of the AfD will be "merge and redirect", in which case the logical thing would be to have the additional terms be redirects straight to Haplogroup CT. Double redirects (i.e. A redirects to B which in turn redirects to C) are generally frowned upon for technical reasons. It probably makes sense to wait for the AfD to be done with before making any final decisions about redirects. -- RoySmith (talk) 12:36, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

Afd results

The closing admin of the AFD stated

The result was Keep. There is very substantial and well-argued support for a merge or redirect to Haplogroup CT, and further discussion along these lines can take place on the relevant articles' talk pages; but from an AfD closure point of view, what this debate has established is that Eurasian Adam should not be a redlink on Wikipedia. It should, at minimum, be a redirect. A closure as "keep" does not prevent a merge or redirect. It merely means that deciding exactly how to proceed from here does not require administrative tools, so the normal talk page procedure is the way forward.

I still support a merge of the articles but will wait for further input from the community. Wapondaponda (talk) 17:30, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

I reckon we have two stubs right now, so merging makes sense to me also. Of course there should be a redirect.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 06:06, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

Dubious assertion

"This second scientific "Adam" would not have been the same man made who first had the M168 mutation. M168 is simply the mutation first discovered that distinguishes his male line from those in Haplogroups A and B."

If this "Eurasian Adam" was not the first man who had this M168 mutation, then how do we know he was the last one to create the mutation ? The proposition that all Eurasian males descend from this individual surely requires that the mutation arose once. Otherwise how do you know that some of the people with the mutation are not descendants of an unrelated subsequent man to have the mutation. Eregli bob (talk) 11:13, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Please check if this helps: All M168+ men today DO descend from the first man to have the M168 mutation. But they also descend from many other common male line ancestors. The "Adam" who is the topic of this article is the MOST RECENT common ancestor.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 15:44, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

By the way, this might also help. The mutations like M168 which are used to define bigger clades are ALWAYS one among many. We refer to the one which was discovered first just as a simple convention. Everyone with M168 also has M294 and P9.1 for example, and who knows how many thousands of other UEPs. Why is this relevant? Because it maybe helps put M168 in perspective. M168 was just one of many mutations which the last common ancestor inherited from all his ancestors. Not so many direct male lines survive from such early times just because that is the way probability works. So it is not a coincidence that each of the few haplogroups which survive to today with unbroken male descent have a whole bundle of unique SNPs, and not just one.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 14:35, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Merge

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

After over two years of open discussion, there is no consensus to merge these two articles. WTF? (talk) 01:04, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

---

I oppose a merge with Haplogroup CT (Y-DNA). If someone wants to know what the term "Eurasian Adam" refers to, they should be able to go to the Eurasian Adam article of Wikipedia to find out. They should be able to understand that this term is used for a particular genetic ancestor in human history. They should not have to understand what a Haplogroup is or mire through a Haplogroup article. The two articles should obviously link to one another but should remain separate. — Reinyday, 20:14, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

When one subject has several associated terms, isn't normal Wikipedia policy to use redirects rather than to create a series of substantially overlapping articles? But the argument being proposed here seems to be that every key term needs its own article? What is wrong with redirects?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 20:50, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm kind of with Reinyday on this, and that's the point I made in the recent AFD. I see value in two different articles which approach the subject at different levels of sophistication and cross-reference each other. Human genetics is a highly technical subject. I doubt that it's possible for a single article to do justice to the topic for the scientifically astute reader, and still be approachable to a lay audience. -- RoySmith (talk) 01:39, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

Almost all the information in Eurasian Adam is relevant to Haplogroup CT (Y-DNA) and vice-versa. AFAIK, there isn't any information that distinguishes the two. In the literature cited, Eurasian Adam is always mentioned alongside M168( haplogroup CT). I believe the only reason why Eurasian Adam exists is because of presentation or aesthetics. Biblical analogies are a lot easier for people to identify with. The generic term "haplogroup CT" is ugly and impersonal. It might as well be called "haplogroup 123" to the reader who is unfamiliar with the subject. However when we look at the substance of the articles, Haplogroup CT is actually more informative, more accurate, requires no caveats and leaves no misimpressions. From a substantive perspective, merging into the haplogroup CT is the most appropriate thing to do as haplogroup CT has all the necessary information. I wouldn't oppose a popular culture/popular science article "Eurasian Adam" if there was enough independent information on "Eurasian Adam". Furthermore "Eurasian Adam" is somewhat "eurocentric" given that 80-90% of African males and all non-African males have y-chromosomes that descend from M168 and that M168 mutation occurred in Africa and not Eurasia. As a result a "Eurasian Adam" article would have to be filled with caveats. Wapondaponda (talk) 05:23, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Perhaps this man should be called Noah

Why not use biblical references? It's already being done with "Adam." — Preceding unsigned comment added by Amymcblane (talk • contribs) 16:33, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

See WP:NOR. We are not intended to be trying to insert anything original.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 17:16, 11 May 2013 (UTC)