Most recent common ancestor

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The Most Recent Common Ancestor (MRCA) is an individual which is the ancestor of all of any set of beings. The term is most frequently used of humans; Joseph T. Chang's "Recent Common Ancestors of All Present-Day Individuals" suggests that the MRCA of all humans now living was a human within historical times (3000 B.C. - A.D. 1000), while other studies suggest the MRCA of those living in Western civilizations is as recent as 1000 A.D.

The "most recent common ancestor" accounts for male forebears interspersed with female forebears; comparable notions such as Mitochondrial Eve and Y-chromosomal Adam account for either a purely matrilineal line or a purely patrilineal line, traceable through only uniparental inheritance (mitochondrial DNA for matrilineal inheritance or Y-chromosome-DNA for patrilineal inheritance), and so yield common ancestors that are more ancient. (Hartwell 2004:539)

References

• Genetics: From Genes to Genomes by Leland Hartwell et al (2004).

See Also

• Identical ancestors point -- (link (http://www.nature.com/news/2004/040927/pf/040927-10_pf.html) explaining the relationship of "most recent common ancestor" and "identical ancestors point.")
• Mitochondrial Eve
• Y-chromosomal Adam

External Links

• Family Tree DNA - Understanding MRCA (http://www.familytreedna.com/faq2.html)
• Nature - 30 September 2004 - Modelling the recent common ancestry of all living humans (http://www.nature.com/doifinder/10.1038%2Fnature02842)
• Joseph T. Chang's "Recent Common Ancestor of All Present-Day Individuals" (.pdf file)

(http://www.stat.yale.edu/~jtc5/pubs/Ancestors.pdf)

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