June 28, 2005

Search for Adam

From National Geographic here. Blog entry here:
His latest adventures have led him to discover that Thomas Jefferson’s ethnic background is not quite as one would expect. He has hunted down possible descendents of Solomon, the third king of Israel. And, he has entered a world where science and religion converge—the search for what he calls the “scientific Adam,” the man who gave rise to all men today and the “trunk” of the human family tree. Wells has used DNA to trace this common ancestor back to Africa and perhaps to the very plains where he may have hunted. He has even identified a living tribe with an ancient lineage that offers a window into the life of “scientific Adam”—and, the face of one of the tribe members served as a model to determine what he may have looked like.

According to some people who have watched the TV special, Spencer Wells has indicated that Thomas Jefferson's Y-chromosome was "Phoenician", which probably means that it belongs to one of the haplogroups entering Europe from the Near East in the Neolithic and later. The "Face of Adam", according to Animetrics:

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