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SpecialistAd5537 t1_ja9sl7j wrote

You're wrong OP, current science outs it around 300-400 generations, nowhere close to 10k nevermind tens of thousands.

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batsofburden OP t1_jaa93md wrote

That's not true at all, that's possibly the amount of generations since the dawn of human civilization, but humans existed before civilization.

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SpecialistAd5537 t1_jaa9ous wrote

There have been a number of evidences recently that the human race is very young. For example, a recent issue of Science (Collins, F., M. Guyer, and A. Chakravarti, "Variations on a Theme: Human DNA Sequence Variation," Science 278:1580-1581, 28 November 1997, page 1581) said that the age of the human race is roughly 1,000 to 10,000 generations: ... 1000 to 10,000 generations old, which is roughly the age of the human population, ...

We review some of this evidence for the youth of the human race, including recent findings concerning mitochondrial DNA mutation rates which give even a much younger age than 1,000 generations. Age estimates are obtained by observing differences between the DNA of different individuals, and are calculated using estimates of mutation rates. Mitochondrial DNA is often used for this; it is separate from the bulk of the human DNA, which is found in the cell nucleus. Mitochondrial DNA has about 16,000 base pairs and mutates, apparently, much faster than the nuclear DNA. Human mitochondrial DNA has been completely mapped, and all the coding regions are known, and the proteins or RNA for which they code. Some of the mitochondrial DNA does not code for anything, and is known as a control region. This region appears to mutate faster than any other region, because the variation among humans is greatest here.

Recently, mitochondrial DNA mutation rates were measured directly (Parsons, Thomas J., et al., A high observed substitution rate in the human mitochondrial DNA control region, Nature Genetics vol. 15, April 1997, pp. 363-367). The mutation rate in a segment of the control region of mitochondrial DNA was directly measured by comparing mitochondrial DNA from siblings and from parents and their offspring. Mitochondrial DNA was found to mutate about 20 times faster than previously thought, at a rate of one mutation (substitution) every 33 generations, approximately. In this section of the control region, which has about 610 base pairs, humans typically differ from one another by about 18 mutations. By simple mathematics, it follows that the human race is about 300 generations old. If one assumes a typical generation is about 20 years, this gives an age of about 6000 years.

I guess your opinion discredits DNA science all together...

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batsofburden OP t1_jaaauox wrote

Your random unsourced comment doesn't mean anything to me. Either way, you've missed the entire point of the post.

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SpecialistAd5537 t1_jaac5xw wrote

My comment contains sources lol. I didn't miss the point, I just argue because you assume with your post that people are as ignorant as you are.

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