Our ancestors left traces everywhere, and not just in bones or DNA. They survive in the animals we domesticated, the diseases we resisted, the languages we still speak, and the strange little quirks our bodies never fully lost. From vanished human relatives and ghost lineages to songs, myths, and mutations that still shape modern life, these facts show how the distant past keeps showing up in the present.
1 Africa Preserved Human Evolution
Africa is the only continent that preserves fossil evidence for both modern humans, Homo sapiens, and the major ancestral stages that came before them. Paleoanthropologists have found remains across eastern, southern, and northern Africa that document key points in human evolution over millions of years.
2. Geneticists use the name Mitochondrial Eve for the most recent woman from whom all living people descend through an unbroken maternal line. She lived in Africa roughly 150,000 to 200,000 years ago, not as the only woman alive then, but as the one whose mitochondrial DNA lineage survived to the present. Over time, other maternal lines died out, leaving hers as the only one still shared by nearly all humans today.
3. Genetic research points to a man called “Y-Chromosomal Adam” as the most recent male ancestor from whom all living men inherited their Y chromosome through an unbroken paternal line. A 2014 report summarized new research estimating that he lived about 208,300 years ago. That doesn’t mean he was the only man alive then; his paternal line is the only one that survived.
4. Ancient wildcats drifted toward early farmers and mariners because human settlements attracted rodents, giving the animals an easy food supply. Instead of being heavily reshaped by selective breeding, cats stayed genetically very close to their wild ancestors and lived alongside people largely on their own terms. Research discussed in 2021, drawing on a 2017 genetic study of more than 200 cats and ancient remains, found that domestic cats came from Near Eastern and North African wildcats and changed little for thousands of years. That long stretch lasted until the Middle Ages, when selective breeding finally began to produce more distinct cat types.
5. In 1933, Black linguist Lorenzo Dow Turner recorded a woman named Amelia Dawley in Georgia, USA, singing a song her family had passed down from their ancestors for generations. Neither Dawley nor her relatives knew the language, but Turner later identified it as Mende, a language spoken in Sierra Leone. In 1990, researchers found a woman named Baindu Jabati in southern Sierra Leone singing a nearly identical version of the same song. The match showed that the memory of Dawley’s enslaved ancestors had preserved one song across the Atlantic for nearly 200 years.
6 Aurochs Survived Until 1627
The aurochs, Bos primigenius, was the wild ancestor of modern domesticated cattle, and it survived far longer than most people realize. Although humans had already domesticated cattle thousands of years earlier, wild aurochs still lived in Europe into the 17th century. The last known aurochs died in 1627 in Poland, ending a lineage that had shaped human agriculture from the beginning.
7. Biologists no longer favor the phrase “missing link” in discussions of human ancestors because it wrongly suggests that evolution moved in a straight, simple chain. Human evolution did not unfold as one form neatly replacing the next, so the term creates a misleading picture of how species changed over time. Scientists instead prefer terms like “last common ancestor,” which better describe shared ancestry without implying a single linear ladder.
8. Dogs and cats often circle before lying down because that behavior likely comes from their wild ancestors. In the wild, turning around helped an animal position itself with the wind, catch the scent of predators, and choose the best angle to watch the surrounding area.
9. DNA testing has shown that apples are native to Kazakhstan. Researchers traced modern apples back to wild populations growing in the mountains of Central Asia. The common ancestor of the apples people eat today still survives there as Malus sieversii.
10. Camels once lived in Canada’s far north, not just in the deserts of Asia and Africa. Scientists identified the Yukon giant camel from fossils dating to about 3.5 million years ago, showing that this ancient animal was an ancestor of the camels living today. The discovery pushed camel history deep into Arctic North America, where these animals survived in a very different environment from the one modern camels now occupy.
11 Blue Eyes Share Ancestor
Researchers have found that every blue-eyed person alive today shares a single common ancestor who lived roughly 6,000 to 10,000 years ago. Before that mutation appeared, humans had only brown eyes. Scientists linked blue eyes to a genetic change that reduced brown pigment production without completely shutting it off.
12. The Melungeons emerged in the colonial era as a mixed-ancestry community rooted in Tennessee, Virginia, and North Carolina, with ancestors tied mainly to free people of color and white settlers. Historical records and later research describe ancestry that was primarily European and African, while some families also claimed or showed Native American and East Indian connections. Because racial classification in the United States carried serious legal and social consequences, many Melungeons and their ancestors passed as white over time.
13. A 2011 report said King Tutankhamun belonged to the Y-chromosome haplogroup R1b1a2, a lineage also found in about half of Western European men but in less than 1 percent of modern Egyptian men. This means these Europeans and Tut shared a much older common ancestor who may have lived in the Caucasus about 9,500 years ago.
14. It is estimated that humans and mushrooms shared a common ancestor about 1,150 million years ago, while humans and bananas shared one much earlier, about 1,624 million years ago.
15. Scientists believe Saccorhytus to possibly be the earliest known ancestor of humans (and many other animals) after finding its fossils in China. The creature lived about 540 million years ago, was only about a millimeter wide, and probably moved between grains of sand on the seafloor. It had a very large mouth compared with the rest of its body and, surprisingly, no anus.
16 Plague Ancestors Passed Resistance
If your ancestors survived major epidemics in Europe, they may also have passed down a mutation called CCR5-Δ32 that helps block HIV from entering white blood cells. About 10 percent of Europeans carry the mutation, and repeated plague outbreaks from the Black Death onward helped drive it to higher levels over time.
17. Much of the human genome carries DNA left behind by ancient viruses that infected our ancestors millions of years ago. Scientists estimate that about 5 to 8 percent of human DNA comes from endogenous retroviruses, which are viral sequences that became permanently embedded in the genomes of ancestral humans and were then passed down through generations. Some broader estimates say an even larger share of the genome may have a viral origin when other repetitive elements are included.
18. In 2010, Belgian researchers tested saliva samples from 39 living relatives of Adolf Hitler to examine his paternal ancestry. They found that the family’s most common Y-chromosome haplogroup was E1b1b, a lineage found in North Africa and also in some Jewish populations. That led the researchers to suggest that Hitler may have had Jewish and African ancestors somewhere in his family tree.
19. Ancient ancestors in northern Europe feared bears so much that they avoided speaking the animal’s original name aloud. According to the account, the ancient ancestors believed that saying the original name might summon the beast, so they used a safer euphemism that meant “the brown one” instead. Over time, that substitute evolved into the English word “bear.” The original name disappeared so completely that the word used by those ancestors remains unknown today.
20. In Maori tradition, Hawaiki appears as the homeland from which their ancestors came before reaching Aotearoa, New Zealand. The name also appears across Polynesia in related forms such as Hawaii, Havaii, and Savaii, which helped fuel later speculation that the ancestral homeland might connect in some way to Hawaii.
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21 Irish Ancestors Reached Jamaica
About 25 percent of Jamaican citizens claim Irish ancestry, making it the second-largest reported ethnic background in Jamaica after African ancestry. That legacy began in the 17th century, when Irish people arrived on the island through forced transportation, indentured labor, and later voluntary migration.
22. When the Mayflower reached New England in 1620, only 26 passenger families are known to have left descendants. Genealogists have since estimated that more than 30 million people, and in some modern estimates about 35 million, can trace their ancestry back to those surviving Mayflower ancestors.
23. The Black Death that struck Europe from 1347 to 1351 did not kill at random, because research on London skeletons found that it disproportionately killed frail people of all ages. People who survived the epidemic often lived longer than their pre-plague ancestors, with many reaching their 70s or 80s. So the Black Death powerfully shaped mortality patterns for generations after the epidemic ended, leaving descendants of survivors tougher than the population that came before.
24. American ethnobotanist and author Terence McKenna proposed the controversial “Stoned Ape” theory, arguing that psilocybin mushrooms helped drive the evolution of human consciousness, language, and culture. In his version of the idea, primate ancestors consumed psychedelic mushrooms and gained cognitive advantages that pushed human development forward. It never became accepted mainstream science, but it survives mostly as a famous and disputed theory tied to McKenna’s psychedelic worldview.
25. A 2012 genetic study suggested that Madagascar was settled about 1,200 years ago by a minimal founding group of roughly 30 women, most of them of Indonesian ancestry. Those women then became the maternal ancestors of much of the native Malagasy population living today, while later African ancestry also entered the population through subsequent mixing.
RE: Fact #28 (Steppe Ancestors Passed Milk Digestion) – About 95% of Irish people are lactose tolerant, and they drink 138 liters of milk annually, which is double the EU average.
I have no clue where my family is from, but I can down a half gallon of milk at 2 a.m. and feel perfectly fine the next day.
RE: Fact #24 (McKenna’s Stoned Ape Ancestors) – I appreciate his thoughts on dying: ‘I always thought death would come on the freeway in a few horrifying moments, so you’d have no time to sort it out. Having months and months to look at it and think about it and talk to people and hear what they have to say, it’s a kind of blessing. It’s certainly an opportunity to grow up and get a grip and sort it all out. Just being told by an unsmiling guy in a white coat that you’re going to be dead in four months definitely turns on the lights. … It makes life rich and poignant. When it first happened, and I got these diagnoses, I could see the light of eternity, a la William Blake, shining through every leaf. I mean, a bug walking across the ground moved me to tears.’
RE: Fact #19 (Bear’s Original Name Vanished) – It was probably something like “Urk-tah.” In Ancient Greek it was “arctos” and in Latin “ursa”. All three language families share Indo-European roots.
King Arthur gets his name from both, with “Arct-urse” eventually evolving into Arthur. On another note, the Arctic was named that because it’s home to polar bears, essentially “Bear-land.” Conveniently, the Antarctic has no bears, living up to the literal meaning of “bearless-land.” Edit: actually, the Arctic and Antarctic are named after the bear constellations, not the animals.
So, he had the energy of a bear that has the energy of two bears?
I fell for that Arctic/Antarctic claim for years too, but it isn’t accurate. Those names actually relate to the Ursa constellations, not literal bears.
As far as I know, if you follow the Proto-Indo-European sound shifts all the way to Modern English, you end up with something like “Rought.”
Wait, how would you even say “Rought”? Oh, I see, wait, HELP! A BEAR JUST SHOWED UP AND IS EATING MY FAMILY!
The Sanskrit word is riksh. That term was specifically for black bears, known as reechh in Hindi.
Exactly what I was going to say. We possess the ancient, original words; we just don’t have the intermediate versions before they were swapped out for things like “bear.”
RE: Fact #39 (Women Made More Ancestors) – I remember reading about this in a biology class. The basic idea is that sperm is cheap to produce, while eggs are a massive energy investment for a female. Because of that, females are more selective about choosing a genetically fit mate. Since it takes so much time for a woman to have a child, the men are left to compete, which explains why a higher percentage of women reproduce compared to men.
RE: Fact #21 (Irish Ancestors Reached Jamaica) – It’s strange how “African” is treated as a single, uniform ethnic category on par with “Irish.”
That’s likely because many of their ancestors were enslaved, making it impossible to trace exactly which country they came from.
RE: Fact #20 (Hawaiki Guided Maori Ancestors) – The true location of Hawaiki is still debated, but it remains the legendary homeland for us Maori before reaching Aotearoa. Ancestry is so vital to us; we learn the names of our ancestors and the canoes they traveled on. When we meet, we often discuss our Iwi, Hapu, and Waka. It’s so significant that there’s a belief that when we die, our souls travel to Cape Reinga, the northernmost point, mourn our departure from Aotearoa, and then return to Hawaiki to join our ancestors.
RE: Fact #21 (Irish Ancestors Reached Jamaica) – My wife has a friend named Shaniqua who is a Jamaican woman of Chinese heritage. She grew up in Louisiana, so she has a Cajun accent. Seeing an Asian woman from the Caribbean with a Southern drawl is definitely a mind trip.
There are many Jamaicans with Chinese ancestry, much like in parts of Texas. Since many of the original Chinese laborers were men, they ended up marrying women of African descent. Naomi Campbell is actually a well-known example of someone with that heritage.
I once had a manager of Chinese heritage who was raised in Jamaica and kept the accent. He was over six feet tall and definitely didn’t fit any stereotypes. He used to think all babies were ugly, so whenever I think of him, I just hear him saying “that’s an ugly baby” in his Jamaican accent.
RE: Fact #36 (Face Mites Trace Ancestors) – Scientist: ‘Where is your human from?’ Mite: ‘France.’
That’s where I draw the line. They can feast on my skin oils, hide in my pores, and mate on my face all they want, but the second they start revealing my family history, they are cut off.
RE: Fact #49 (Ancestors Had Stronger Skeletons) – I knew a powerlifter who mentioned that many younger guys try to bulk up too quickly, sometimes using performance enhancers, and end up snapping their bones. It seems like bone density needs time to build up naturally and gradually.
RE: Fact #31 (Viking Ancestors Entered Blades) – That sounds ridiculous. They definitely knew about steelmaking, since people had been doing it for thousands of years by then.
RE: Fact #16 (Plague Ancestors Passed Resistance) – “You got a condom?” “No, but my great-great-great-great grandfather survived the plague. Let’s do this.”
RE: Fact #43 (Plantaris Became Obsolete) – I have this muscle in one leg but not the other, and it really is basically useless. When I was 15, I felt a pop in my heel while I was standing around, it felt like someone had kicked my shoe. The doctor explained that the muscle had snapped and retreated into my calf. Walking was tough for about two weeks, but 15 years later, I couldn’t even tell you which leg it happened to. Just thought I’d share.
RE: Fact #5 (Amelia Dawley’s Mende Song) – Oral traditions are wild. They’re actually responsible for how we have descriptions and behavior patterns for ancient, extinct species.
RE: Fact #8 (Wild Ancestors Taught Circling) – Apparently, it’s to clear away any hazards they might lie down on, like snakes or bugs, and to flatten out the area.
Yeah, that’s what I assumed when I read this. I thought they were just checking out the ground before settling in to sleep.
RE: Fact #43 (Plantaris Became Obsolete) – It’s worth noting that many scientists have found this muscle provides a lot of proprioceptive feedback, which likely helps stop people from suffering from ankle sprains.
Yeah, people keep finding actual uses for so-called vestigial organs. The appendix is the classic example, we know now that it’s definitely not useless.
RE: Fact #13 (King Tut’s Caucasus Ancestor) – The weird part is how that DNA shows up in Western Europe, South Asia, and Nigeria. I have no idea how it ended up in that isolated spot in West Africa.
I had no idea about that. It’s pretty strange, are there any theories why that is?
RE: Fact #9 (Kazakhstan Grew Apple Ancestors) – Wow, I had no idea. Kazakhstan is known for wild horses, apples, coffee, and Borat. What a place!
RE: Fact #44 (Elephant Ancestors May Swam) – And their bone structure basically looks like a human foot wearing high heels.
Exactly. Their leg bones are column-like, which is similar to humans and totally different from most other mammals. That’s why people used to find mammoth bones and mistake them for giant humans.
RE: Fact #13 (King Tut’s Caucasus Ancestor) – Keep in mind this is just about a specific Y-chromosomal haplogroup, not someone’s entire DNA profile. Those are two very different things.
RE: Fact #1 (Africa Preserved Human Evolution) – Isn’t this common knowledge? Humans evolved in Africa way before we shared ancestors with other great apes. We migrated and branched out multiple times, so other cousins finished their evolution elsewhere, but our own species still developed in Africa.
RE: Fact #4 (Cats Domesticated Themselves First) – Humans with dogs: “Let’s breed this strong and loyal animal for specific tasks, leading to all these distinct breeds!” Humans with cats: “It’s cute and kills vermin. Let’s leave it alone.”
My parents have a cat who is a total jerk, but they live in an old house and she’s like SEAL Team Six when it comes to mice. I’ve watched her stalk one all day. She’s absolutely relentless.
I’d love to hear more stories about this little assassin.
My cat is usually an overweight sissy, but we had a mouse a few years back and he turned from a couch-bound blob into an agile warrior overnight. Once the mouse was gone, he went right back to being a blob.
I had a cat who would catch a mouse, stick one claw in, let it squirm and bleed, then let it run before catching it again. He just tortured it for fun.
Dogs are genetically unique because they are so easily bred for physical traits like size, much more than other domesticated animals. Also, cats started out as perfect killing machines. No reason to mess with that.
Fixed it for you: Cats with humans: “Let’s breed this simple animal to do a bunch of specialized chores!”
RE: Fact #28 (Steppe Ancestors Passed Milk Digestion) – It’s annoying when people claim, ‘Humans are the only species that drinks milk after infancy’ to sound insightful. We are also the only species that beats Doom 64, so maybe stop acting like that’s such a profound observation.
My cat would disagree. He is obsessed with cow’s milk and will chase me or climb up me to get some. I try to keep it away from him, but when I slip up, he never has any issues with it. He won’t touch goat milk, though.
RE: Fact #49 (Ancestors Had Stronger Skeletons) – So, as humans moved from physical labor to using our brains, our bodies weakened while our minds got sharper? There might be something to that.
RE: Fact #19 (Bear’s Original Name Vanished) – It’s not just English, either. In Slavic languages, the word is “medved, ” which means “the one who likes honey.”
In Finnish, a bear is called “karhu”, which comes from “karhea”, meaning coarse. The older name was “otso”, a diminutive of “oksi”, which might have been the original name. This is from a Master’s thesis, so take it with a grain of salt.
Finnish isn’t an Indo-European language, though, so it doesn’t really help with that particular puzzle.
It’s funny how similar “otso” is to the Spanish “oso”, while Romanian uses “urs”.
My wife just told me that “medved” actually translates closer to “knows where to find honey.”
That’s actually false etymology. The second part of “medved” looks like it means “to know, ” but it actually comes from the verb “to eat.” It used to be “medoed.”
RE: Fact #31 (Viking Ancestors Entered Blades) – Vikings even had their own version of rap battles called ‘flyting, ‘ which was a ritualized way to trade insults between the 5th and 16th centuries. They were really something else.
Most of their prose is just bragging about killing people, performing heroic deeds, or how rich and massive they were. It’s basically MTV Cribs, but with violence. Take this excerpt from the Prose Edda about Valhalla: ‘So when he came into the burg he saw there a hall so high that he could hardly look over it. Its roof was thatched with golden shields as with shingles… In the door of the hall Gylfe saw a man who played with swords so dexterously that seven were in the air at one time.’ It’s like a modern rapper filming a video with gold-plated guns, completely over the top.
One of the oldest culturally significant things we have is just a runestone that reads “Halfdan is a cuntmuncher.”
RE: Fact #22 (Mayflower Families Made Millions) – Back in middle school, we had to write a report on an ancestor who immigrated to the U.S. It completely blew my mind when one of my classmates ended up writing their report on the exact same Mayflower passenger as I did.
Back in elementary school, my brother had to write a report on a family member who moved to America. Since we trace our roots back so far, none of our living relatives had actually immigrated. His teacher failed him, which really upset him. My dad spoke with the teacher to explain the situation, but she insisted the assignment required a living relative. Even though there were plenty of immigrants in our area, he had to clarify exactly how long our line had been in the US, and she finally changed his grade once she understood we didn’t have any living immigrant family members.
That’s such an odd requirement. When I was a kid, I didn’t have any living family members who had immigrated to the US either, even though most of my ancestors arrived in the late 1800s and early 1900s. They were all gone by the 80s, so it’s not exactly unique to have no living immigrant relatives.
I’m a descendant of Warren, too! It really is a small world.
How do people track their lineage that far back? I get lost after three generations. My family just never really kept those kinds of records.
RE: Fact #35 (Jeti Ata Counts Ancestors) – So you need more than seven degrees of separation? Is that even possible in small communities?
It’s only on the paternal side. The parents of a friend of mine were fifth cousins on the maternal side and they had no issues getting married. Marriages between close cousins are forbidden, but beyond the fourth degree, only the paternal relationship matters.
RE: Fact #43 (Plantaris Became Obsolete) – I use my feet to grab things off the floor all the time. If a hanger drops, I’m not bending over; I just pick it up with my toes and bring my foot up to my hand.
That’s because you have other muscles working your toes. The point here is that this specific muscle used to provide the kind of dexterity and grip strength our hands have.
RE: Fact #24 (McKenna’s Stoned Ape Ancestors) – ‘Hey Jaime, pull this up real quick, Terence McKenna Stoned Ape Theory. This guy believed psilocybin mushrooms are the reason humans evolved from apes. Yeah man, crazy stuff and it’s legit. He used to do CRAZY amounts of Ketamine and just sit in his flotation tank.’
You’re now picturing Joe Rogan tripping naked in a flotation tank with his mouth full of pot brownies while getting a coconut water enema.
That’s Onnit O-N-N-I-T. Use the code word ROGAN to save 10% on all supplements. Queue the music, young Jamie.
RE: Fact #33 (Taíno Ancestors Survived Conquest) – It’s interesting, but how can you know the genetic makeup of a group if they’ve been extinct for 500 years?
RE: Fact #20 (Hawaiki Guided Maori Ancestors) – Growing up in Hawaii and learning about the different South Pacific cultures, you can see a “bread crumb trail” of how people populated the islands. Hawaii stands out because it’s so incredibly remote, yet those amazing nautical Polynesians still managed to reach it.
The navigation methods they used are mind-blowing. They crossed the world’s largest ocean in open boats to find tiny specks of land. I’ve even heard there’s evidence that Maori explorers reached Antarctic islands and returned with stories of massive icebergs.
The navigation is impressive, but I’m just as amazed by how they kept everyone fed on such long voyages.
People often view the ocean as a barrier, but for these explorers, it was a highway. Finding an island wasn’t just blind luck; it was pure knowledge. A change in the current, a specific bird, or floating debris all served as beacons once you were within a couple hundred miles.
RE: Fact #48 (Polar Bears Share Irish Mother) – I find this hard to believe. I don’t think polar bears have the cognitive ability or the resources to track their lineage back thousands of years.
RE: Fact #33 (Taíno Ancestors Survived Conquest) – Life for the Taino really went downhill fast when that Columbus guy landed on what they called Ay-ti, which means “land of mountains.”
RE: Fact #25 (Thirty Women Founded Madagascar) – All current peoples speak an Austronesian-based language. The theory that Madagascar was settled 1, 200 years ago by a small group of Indonesian women suggests it wasn’t a large-scale planned colonization, but maybe an unintended transoceanic crossing. It supports the Polynesian-Indonesian connection, which seems backed up by DNA evidence.
Austronesians were incredible. Madagascar is their westernmost point, and while Easter Island was thought to be the furthest east, we now know they reached South America. They navigated entire oceans using canoes, star maps, and by reading swells. The Moriori even invented a boat with an inflated kelp bottom for stability. They were a fascinating people.
People rarely give indigenous populations enough credit for their innovations.
RE: Fact #38 (Songbun Punishes Bad Ancestors) – It’s always going to be messed up to punish people for what their ancestors did.
This is honestly how poor people are treated in a lot of places, even if it’s not written down as an explicit rule.
Wait, so it isn’t literally the same? Generational poverty is definitely real and tough to overcome, but we have government programs in the US designed specifically to help people break that cycle.
It reminds me of the senatorial class in Rome. They were the descendants of the original Romans and held onto all the power and wealth for over a thousand years, just because of who their ancestors were.
RE: Fact #16 (Plague Ancestors Passed Resistance) – I’m not sure I actually want to test if my ancestors survived the plague or not.
RE: Fact #17 (Ancient Viruses Shaped Ancestors) – There is a novel called Darwin’s Children by Greg Bear that explores a virus that forces human evolution, it kills some people but modifies the unborn.
RE: Fact #3 (Y-Chromosomal Adam’s Surviving Line) – I caught a show on NatGeo or Discovery about him. They portrayed him as an African guy who was skilled at archery.
I bet he rode around on a hoverbike back when the world was grand.
RE: Fact #11 (Blue Eyes Share Ancestor) – After doing more research, scientists figured out that this common ancestor was… the bad man… the sad man.
RE: Fact #6 (Aurochs Survived Until 1627) – I believe these are the first documented case of an extinction.
The extinction of silphium is recorded and actually happened about a thousand years before the last aurochs died. The aurochs are certainly among the first animals to be driven to extinction, though.
One major issue with religion is that after humans caused an extinction, many people just waited for those animals to come back, assuming God wouldn’t allow a species to vanish entirely. When early paleontology started, it caused a real crisis of faith for people who realized those populations weren’t coming back. Also, forget that one merchant who had some thugs kill the last two Great Auks just to make extra money.
Thomas Jefferson really thought they might find living mammoths in the Louisiana Purchase territory. In his defense, it’s easy for your imagination to get carried away when you’re looking at land that’s completely new to you.
I wouldn’t call it a failure of religion so much as a result of the limited worldviews people held back then. It really took a huge amount of data and inference for humans to even accept that extinction was a possibility.
RE: Fact #39 (Women Made More Ancestors) – So basically, the men who were reproducing were doing so with multiple partners.
RE: Fact #1 (Africa Preserved Human Evolution) – Isn’t that just because that’s where we originated before spreading across the globe?
True, but we only “know” we originated there because Africa is the only place providing this specific evidence, just like the fact mentions.
RE: Fact #18 (Hitler’s Ancestors Raised Questions) – Don’t we all technically have ancestors from Africa? Or are current DNA tests just unable to trace back that far?
RE: Fact #26 (Okefenokee Ancestors Kept Elizabethan English) – It’s similar for the Ozark hillbillies, too. I’m not sure if it still persists, but back in the 70s, before TV and radio really penetrated the area, many people still spoke that way. Researchers from Southwest Missouri State University even came out to study it.
RE: Fact #5 (Amelia Dawley’s Mende Song) – I didn’t realize you could actually have a career as an ethnomusicologist. That sounds like a fascinating field to work in.
RE: Fact #14 (Mushrooms Beat Bananas Genetically) – Your fact would be way more interesting if you mentioned that fungi are actually more closely related to animals than to plants.
RE: Fact #36 (Face Mites Trace Ancestors) – I just spent five minutes yelling at my face mites, but they refuse to tell me where my ancestors came from. What am I doing wrong?
They can tell researchers where your ancestors came from, but that doesn’t mean they’ll ever talk to you.
RE: Fact #27 (German Ancestors Dominated America) – ‘African-Americans’ are listed second only because they’re lumped into one category, regardless of whether their ancestors came from present-day Guinea, Malawi, or elsewhere.
The diversity of Africa is downplayed in almost every part of American culture and education. It’s treated as one homogeneous lump, even though it’s actually one of the most culturally and ethnically diverse continents, and the second largest after Asia.
I think that’s how Americans treat most ethnic groups, except for those from Europe. We view Russia as Russia, but the rest of Asia is lumped into one group, and all of South America is treated the same. Maybe it’s because we have more European roots, but acting like Africa is the only continent treated this way isn’t right either.
The truth is, most African Americans don’t know which part of Africa they’re from because slavery erased their history.
That’s because many African Americans lack direct cultural connections to their ancestral homelands. They were taken into slavery and assimilated into Western culture over generations, though African American identity certainly represents its own distinct set of shared experiences and cultural ideas.
I’m from Brazil, and my great-grandfather was born into slavery in the late 1870s. After he was freed as a child, there were no records kept of my grandfather’s birth, so my family has no knowledge of our heritage beyond that point. My father never knew his own grandfather, and I truly wish there was a way to trace our roots and learn those stories, but unfortunately, it seems impossible.
This also covers descendants of people who moved to the U.S. voluntarily from Africa, like Obama.
RE: Fact #22 (Mayflower Families Made Millions) – My ancestors who arrived on the Mayflower passed away pretty soon after. They had left an adult son back in England who came over later, so I suppose I’m technically descended from Mayflower passengers?
The classic Mayflower experience: starving and freezing to death because you’re a miserable sinner in the eyes of God.
RE: Fact #30 (Dingo Ancestors Arrived Twice) – Exactly, and Aboriginal Australians also didn’t arrive in just one wave; they came in multiple ones.
RE: Fact #9 (Kazakhstan Grew Apple Ancestors) – Malus sieversii is the ancestor mentioned in the fact.
I’m a little disappointed that it just looks like a regular apple. I was hoping for some bizarre transformation like the grass ancestor of maize.
RE: Fact #26 (Okefenokee Ancestors Kept Elizabethan English) – That sounds like some islands on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. They’ve been isolated for so long that they still sound like they’re from the 1700s. It’s like they mumble every word; it’s really hard to understand them.
RE: Fact #32 (Hadza Ancestors Remember Deep Time) – If I recall correctly, most Africans are genetically more closely related to Europeans and Asians than they are to Hadza or Khoi populations. It really changes how you look at the whole race and phenotype debate.
It’s even more interesting when you consider all the non-human DNA we carry. All humans have between 1-4% Neanderthal DNA, and most have some Denisovan DNA too. We even know of a third hominid species we’ve identified through genetics, even though we haven’t found any fossils for them. Despite how different we look on the outside, a South American aborigine is more closely related to someone from the Hadza tribe than two chimpanzees taken from opposite sides of the same river are to each other.
I have a question. Where can I learn more about this? I’m really into amateur anthropology and am always looking for books or other ways to dive deeper. I’ve already read Harari’s books and A Short History of Progress, but I’d love some more suggestions if anyone has any.
Only Europeans and Asians have that Neanderthal DNA.
RE: Fact #4 (Cats Domesticated Themselves First) – The ancient Egyptians worshipped cats as gods, and the cats never really moved past that attitude.
“One of my ancestors was a god, so there’s that”, a modern cat, probably.
RE: Fact #42 (Monkey Ancestors Rafted Atlantic) – There’s a sci-fi book called Evolution by Stephen Baxter where every chapter is written from the perspective of a different creature in our ancestry. One of the chapters covers an early primate getting swept away to the New World like this and starting the line of New World monkeys.
RE: Fact #12 (Melungeon Ancestors Passed White) – These are my people! My mom’s side of the family are Ganns, one of the original Melungeon families. The name Gann is a variation of surnames like Goins, Gowenn, or Goen. The headline misses how geographically isolated these folks were for about 150 years until the first census. When census workers finally found them, they discovered a group of dark-skinned people who didn’t look specifically white, Black, or Native American. They had tan skin, European facial features, and jet-black hair. They claimed to be descendants of shipwrecked Portuguese sailors, but anthropologists think they were actually descendants of the first Irish and Black indentured servants brought to Virginia who later migrated to Appalachia.
Whoa. My mom’s side are Ganns too. I’m going to have to do some research into this.
How cool! My Gann grandparents were really involved in the Gann society and its genealogy research. It turns out there are two main branches of Ganns, the Melungeons and a group of French Huguenots. The society was founded by both groups to explore their history, and they realized the name had actually developed twice! They kept meeting every year even after they discovered that.
RE: Fact #2 (Mitochondrial Eve’s Surviving Line) – There’s a great podcast called Let’s Learn Everything that has an episode covering this. It’s my favorite, so if you enjoy learning, you should definitely check it out.
RE: Fact #16 (Plague Ancestors Passed Resistance) – I told my brothers about this. I asked them, “You know what this means?” and they all immediately shouted, “All the unprotected sex we want!”
It’s a joke, but the more boys a mother has, the more likely they are to be gay.
Statistics show that having two sons almost doubles the likelihood that she has a gay son.
RE: Fact #46 (Mystery Ancestor Hides in DNA) – My favorite part of the article is when the evolutionary geneticist Mark Thomas says that this starts to look like a world from Lord of the Rings, where many different hominid populations existed at once.
RE: Fact #15 (Saccorhytus Had Only Mouth) – I don’t really buy the idea that this is necessarily a direct human ancestor. All they can say is it’s the earliest known record of a deuterostome. That doesn’t mean we descended from this specific species, just like we didn’t descend from chimpanzees, we just share an old, unidentified common ancestor. It seems like the further back the fossil record goes, the more scientists stretch their claims about our specific lineage.
RE: Fact #46 (Mystery Ancestor Hides in DNA) – It’s not all humans, though. People of sub-Saharan African descent don’t actually carry Neanderthal or Denisovan DNA. Evolution is still going on for us, too.
RE: Fact #27 (German Ancestors Dominated America) – I attended a Lutheran college in Nebraska where this history was a big deal. Some classes and services were held in German until war was declared, at which point they immediately switched to English and put up a massive flagpole for the American flag. It’s interesting how rural Nebraska towns were so distinct based on where people came from. My hometown was heavily German, while the neighboring town was Polish, and there were Swedish and Irish ones nearby as well.
RE: Fact #24 (McKenna’s Stoned Ape Ancestors) – Most of this theory relies on Lamarckian evolution, the idea that traits acquired during a lifetime can be passed to offspring. That’s a major issue because Lamarckism is generally rejected as ‘not how evolution works.’ If it were true, we’d all have to keep taking psilocybin just to remain human instead of reverting to apes. The only part of the wiki that doesn’t seem to lean on Lamarckism is the idea that the mushrooms ‘dissolved boundaries’ and promoted group bonding and sexual activity, leading to more genetic diversity. But even that doesn’t explain the massive gap between humans and apes.
RE: Fact #30 (Dingo Ancestors Arrived Twice) – This is actually fascinating. While the eastern population has a lineage linked to New Guinea singing dogs and China, the western population doesn’t have the same traceable history. They actually share more DNA with European dog breeds, which suggests they might have come from somewhere like India. This makes sense given that all modern dogs can be tracked back to five main lineages.
I’ve had a feral-born Carolina Dog, or American Dingo, for twelve years, and he’s an incredible animal. He’s incredibly smart and acts more like a cat than a dog. He’s terrified the local squirrels and even treed a black bear once without a second thought. If I visited Australia, I’d probably get attacked because my first instinct would be to try to pet every dingo I saw.
RE: Fact #29 (Native Ancestors Shaped Mexican DNA) – I’m from Mexico, and my DNA test results showed I’m 49.6% European and 44.9% Indigenous, with smaller amounts of Filipino, African, and other undefined heritage. I also have 98% more Neanderthal DNA than the average user on that site.
My family is from Mexico, and my ancestry breakdown is 60% Indigenous, 31% European, and 9% African.
I suspect the African portion is actually North African, dating back to when the Moors occupied parts of Spain.
Was your European ancestry mostly Southern European, like Spanish and Portuguese?
It was 43.6% Spanish and Portuguese, 2.3% Italian, 2.2% broadly Southern European, 0.9% Ashkenazi Jewish, and 0.6% broadly European.
RE: Fact #21 (Irish Ancestors Reached Jamaica) – They sound like they are from Cork while in Montserrat.
RE: Fact #34 (Ancestors Lost Vitamin C) – That gene wasn’t needed anymore because our ancestors were getting plenty of Vitamin C from their diet.
I’d rather say our ancestors were able to survive despite the mutation because of their diet.
RE: Fact #37 (Charles Curtis’s Kaw Ancestry) – Vice presidents usually don’t get much attention, so I’d never heard of this guy. It’s an interesting life, though. One weird thing: it says his father was half-English, a quarter Scottish, and half-Welsh. That adds up to 125%, which is a neat trick.
RE: Fact #29 (Native Ancestors Shaped Mexican DNA) – Let me ask you something: have you ever wondered where the skin tone came from? Because that wasn’t from Spain.
A lot of Indigenous people in the Americas have brown skin, which might be more common in warmer climates.
The Spanish also enslaved Africans there. You find many of their descendants in places like Veracruz and on the west coast, though many people there still carry Indigenous DNA as well.
RE: Fact #47 (Ancestors Survived Near Extinction) – The lesson I take from this is that our species is incredibly resilient. We survived such a massive population collapse without any modern technology or science. It makes me wonder what else we are capable of enduring.
RE: Fact #13 (King Tut’s Caucasus Ancestor) – That’s largely because “modern Egyptians” refers to the Arab populations that arrived around 740 AD. I’d be much more interested in seeing a study focused on the Coptic population.
RE: Fact #9 (Kazakhstan Grew Apple Ancestors) – Fun fact: the name of Almaty, the former capital city of Kazakhstan, is thought by some to come from the Kazakh word for apple.
Unrelated fun fact: the French word for potato is “pomme de terre, ” which translates to “apple of the ground.”
I’m not sure about the dispute part, but the word “alma” literally means apple in Turkic languages. Almaty, originally written as “Alma-Ata, ” translates to “Apple-Father.”
RE: Fact #45 (Higgs Bison Hybrid Ancestor) – I thought the definition of a species was that two different types couldn’t produce viable offspring?
RE: Fact #38 (Songbun Punishes Bad Ancestors) – Before the Korean War, Pyongyang was actually known as the Jerusalem of the East. Even Kim Il Sung’s father was a Presbyterian elder and his grandfather was a minister.
RE: Fact #40 (Drunken Fruit Shaped Ancestors) – I’ve heard it explained that about 10 million years ago, Africa was dense with forests and fruit was plentiful, so there was no real need to eat rotting stuff unless you wanted to get buzzed. As the climate shifted and forests turned to savanna, food became scarce and spread out. That change is supposedly what drove us to start walking upright and developing a better way to process ethanol.
RE: Fact #12 (Melungeon Ancestors Passed White) – “Demon Copperhead” by Barbara Kingsolver is such a great read about a young Melungeon boy; I’d highly recommend it. Even though his background isn’t the main focus, it’s woven deep into the story.
That’s a good one. It’s basically a modern retelling of David Copperfield.