Is it possible to create all the genetic variations just from Adam and Eve?

WellCookedFetus said:
no, mitochondiral testing put the first women back much further then 75,000 when people began to leave africa, let alone 7500 years! Though those result are controversial the most important fact was that it was not a single women but a group of proto-homo sapiens (homo erectus?) that we can trace back to, so there most likely never was one women that could have been label as the first human women (mitochondrial eve).
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It appears you don't know what the 'mitochondrial eve' theory is about.

The hypothesis in no way implies that a single woman left Africa and founded the rest of us, it merely means that of all the mtDNA lineages that left Africa between 100,000 and 200,000 years ago, only one currently remains. The rest of the lineages, through genetic drift, independent of selection, have gone extinct.
 
Alpha said:
With only two members of the species, every instance of breeding after the first generation would be inbreeding. There simply isn't enough genetic diversity to continue a species from two members.
Genetic anomalies? If you admit evolution then why are you defending the Adam & Eve story?
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Ah, in theory you're correct. The theory being genetic load, i.e. the amount of deleterious recessives maintained in a population. If this population becomes very small, then one sees inbreeding depression (a decrease in fecundity due to inbreeding) because of the expression of deleterious recessives.

But, if a population has always remained small, or if it had undergone a series or periodicity of population bottlenecks, then the genetic load can be very small, and can rebound very nicely from very small population abundance.

It has now become a conservation strategy for breeding in captivity of endangered species, forced inbreeding, to eliminate the recessives. An example is Spek's gazelle.

So, it is possible to rebound from population numbers as low as 2. For example, think about island colonizations, Hawaii for example.
 
WellCookedFetus said:
Actually how a new species arise is still a controversial and debatable phenomena in biology.
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What do you mean? Speciation is a well studied aspect of evolution. In what way is it controversial?
 
As low as 2? I seriously doubt that. I'd need some evidence or support to believe that claim. There's a reason species are becoming extinct after dropping below a certain population.
 
Alpha said:
As low as 2? I seriously doubt that. I'd need some evidence or support to believe that claim. There's a reason species are becoming extinct after dropping below a certain population.
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Actually, one.

A single pregnant female could be enough.

Read Island Biogeography by MacArthur.
 
Alpha said:
That's still two.
What species? I still find it difficult to believe.
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That's the theory of Island Biogeography. No one's asking you to believe it, but now you know of it.
 
I don't find island speciation very hard to believe. Some islands are just too isolated for 50 members of a single species to arrive there at the same time.
 
Don't worry Alpha excepting that a fertile pair of perfect individuals can produce a viable population does not mean that god exists. Most animals are perfect. If not this world would be a barren world.
 
Don't worry Alpha excepting that a fertile pair of perfect individuals can produce a viable population does not mean that god exists.
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Obviously. I just find it difficult to believe. I always thought you needed at least 50 for a viable gene pool. Perhaps it depends on the species.
Most animals are perfect.
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I disagree there. I'd say most are not perfect. Actually, I might even say none; perfection is relative.
If not this world would be a barren world.
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That doesn't follow.
 
Perfection is the ability to survive thus all living species are perfect. This is just my criteria for perfection. Or should perfection mean some existential nonsense.
 
Most organisms actually are not perfect at all, but just function well enough to survive and reproduce.

There are spectacular adaptations, but that doesn't mean that organisms are perfect.

EDIT- I came in too late. You explained your definition of perfect.
 
Well, under that definition it's different. Note: that definition can't be applied to Adam & Eve as they are individuals.
 
The really hard part to believe is that Adam and Eve could have given rise to are present diversity in just what 7000? years (creationist date please).
 
Oh Adam and Eve, totally hypothetical situation. 50 thousand to 100 thousand years at least for the human diversity, excluding controlled breeding, with large dispersed populations.
 
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