Human Family Reunion

Regardless whether you believe the human race was started by Adam or a pile of electrified primordial goo, there’s one thing we all agree on: we’re all related. One big happy family! Yeah, maybe not all that happy, ’cause we fight a lot. We sue each other and…kill each other…

Yeah, we’re all related – but it’s distant. Very distant, if you know what I mean.

Actually, it might not be as distant as you’d think. It’s called the MCRA, or “Most Common Recent Ancestor.” It’s a person in the past who’s an ancestor to everyone living today.

The concept isn’t too hard to grasp; going backwards, you had two parents, your parents each had two parents, and their parents each had two parents…everybody’s got two parents, so it doubles every generation. You can’t make a new you without two of you. I mean, a new one of us without two of…us. It takes two. And in thirty-three generations, that means over 8.5 billion people. Smarty that you are, you’re thinking, “No way! There weren’t eight billion people on the planet thirty-three generations ago!” Exactly! At some point, every family tree has to start growing back in on itself. It’s a statistical certainty that you and I and everyone you meet are related to the same people – just not in the same way. ’cause that would be the inbred family tree.

Let me simplify: your real family tree is actually a diamond-shape. It expands with parents and grandparents until it maxes out, and then it all comes back in to where it all began.

Estimates vary about when the MCRA lived, but the general consensus seems to be between 1000 A.D. and 3000 B.C.That’s kind of a broad range, but it’s still within recorded history. Recorded history? That means we may actually know his name! He could’ve been famous! Then again, he could’ve been the village idiot, or the guy who cleans up after Pharaoh’s chariot. “Put this in your special jar and take it to the afterworld with ya…”

If the world population were free and inclined to intermingle, the MCRA would actually be much earlier. One of the reasons the range is so broad is because they’re trying to account for the uneven mixing and distribution of small isolated populations. Like, mixing Congo Africans with Eskimos. Kind of a space problem.

Now this new understanding’s gotta make some of you feel uncomfortable. I mean, you’d never date your second cousin, but you can’t really avoid dating your tenth or twelfth or fifteenth cousin. And that means the girl I just took out could be my niece, three times removed. That’s kinda creepy. It’s even more uncomfortable for all the racists in our family. I mean, think about it: Hitler’s related to the Jews, and the Grand Wizard of the KKK has the same forefathers as the blacks, the Chinese, the Hispanics…could go on and on.

If you go back far enough, which is a lot closer than they’d like to think, we’re all related.

Transcribed by: Danielle G.

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