That’s the implication of a group of news stories
but they don’t really explain what this means. Reporters today just rewrite press releases for the most part and skipped science class – that’s how we wind up with the global warming hoax.
The basis of this conclusion is “Y” chromosome tracing, which is being used quietly behind the scenes as a law enforcement tool – it’s why governments are so keen to capture DNA samples from everyone.
The DNA of every human is made up of 23 pairs of chromosomes. One piece of DNA called the Mitochondrial DNA which are not in the center of the cell called the nucleus are a direct copy of the ones your mother had. The nuclear chromosomes are combination of the random selection either half of the ones from your mother and your father. Because of this randomness for each chromosome, the children of creatures that have sexes are not identical.
One of the chromosome pairs determines whether you are male or female (not the U.S. Court system). The chromosome that determines if you’re an innie or an outie (and a lot more) is very different depending on which one the sperm that wins the race contains. If the sperm has the “Y” chromosome, the child is male. If the sperm has the “X” chromosome, the child is female (ignoring cases where the process goofs up and has none or two)
The VERY IMPORTANT thing this means is that for every male, the “Y” chromosome is an exact duplicate of their father’s “Y” chromosome. It also means that their grandfather’s “Y” chromosome is also identical ad nauseam. Over lots of generations, small mutations occur, but in general as you climb the male family tree, you find identical Y DNA. If you climb the female tree, you find idential mitochondrial DNA.
IF (and this is a big “IF”) people use the western style of naming children and marrying, every male child with the same last name would have identical “Y” chromosome DNA. Given a sample and perfect world, the DNA would tell police the last name of the man who they are looking for. Even at a more general level, it gives you a look back in history to the point where the line of males became different genetically.
Whether you believe in creation or evolution, current humans have existed at least 10,000 years. You had 2 parents, you had 4 grandparents, 8 greatgrandparents, 16 great great grandparents…. and so on. Each one of those ancestors contributed a part of their DNA to you. If you assume about 25 years average per generation, then over 10,000 years, there have been at least 400 generations of humans that created your DNA – 2 to the 40th power = about 1 billion ancestors.
But that isn’t correct. The further back in time you go, the more likely it is that some of that family tree was the same person. There were a lot fewer humans 9,000 years ago than there are today. Generations may also have overlapped. You might have DNA from both the father and son through different paths.
They don’t have Adolph Hitler’s DNA, at least the story doesn’t say that. What they do have is closely related relatives – the males of which should all share the same “Y” chromosome -IF- Adolph Hitler’s father was actually the man married to his mother. Hitler had no children, so that is not knowable for sure. This examination of the Hitler family tree is all based on that assumption that Hitler’s father was a Hitler.
With that assumption, the “Y” chromosome that the Hitler family carries is relatively rare in Europe, but its origins trace back to the middle east. Ultimately all DNA tracks back to Africa if you can backtrack it far enough, since that’s where humans started.
But the conclusion the news media seems to want you to understand is completely erroneous. This “Y” chromosome came from father’s father’s father’s…. DNA going back probably 40 or more generations and makes up 1 billionith of the heredity history of his DNA. At most you can say “1 out of a billion of Hitler’s genetic ancestors may have come from an area where Jewish people originated”.
Science believes that humans actually started showing up 200,000 years ago, not 10,0000 – in which case we each have 2^8000 DNA contributions patterns, which is so huge a number it is just about infinite.
