Talk:Mitochondrial Eve

Naming?

"The name "Mitochondrial Eve" alludes to the biblical Eve, which has led to repeated misrepresentations or misconceptions in journalistic accounts on the topic."

And not just journalistic accounts, but among the religious who hold a very belief in Biblical "Adam & Eve" of paradisiacal garden fame. If this is so confusing for such a large group of people, why do these names persist? Surely other, less provocative, names could be applied. Thank you for your time, Wordreader (talk) 18:03, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

Ooops! Make that: "...among the religious who hold a very FIRM belief in Biblical "Adam & Eve" of paradisiacal garden fame." Sorry, Wordreader (talk) 18:05, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

Not the place to fix that type of problem. On Wikipedia we follow the publications.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 21:41, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

Note 3 typo

"neighbourhood of 15 ka" should read 150 ka 99.59.182.228 (talk) 19:45, 8 September 2023 (UTC)

Date range typo

How can the estimated range begin before the overall given range? "As of 2013, estimates for the age Y-MRCA are subject to substantial uncertainty, with a wide range of times from 180,000 to 580,000 years ago[6][7][8] (with an estimated age of between 120,000 and 156,000 years ago" The wider range should begin with 120,000 rather than 180,000 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 107.13.131.219 (talk) 20:25, 17 November 2023 (UTC)

I agree that this is a problem. Would anyone object to trimming the content about Y-MRCA age to just

As of 2015, estimates of the age of the Y-MRCA range around 200,000 to 300,000 years ago, roughly consistent with the emergence of anatomically modern humans.

It's what's in the main article. The level of uncertainty is better left to the body of this article or the lead of the Y-MRCA one. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 20:40, 17 November 2023 (UTC)

I went for it. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 15:25, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

Duplicate and missing references

References 39 and 46 are currently duplicates, both refer to "The Real Eve: Modern Man's Journey Out of Africa by Stephen Oppenheimer (2003)", just to two different editions (which there is no need for). At the same time, there is no reference for the statement that this book "was adapted into a 2002 Discovery Channel documentary" (it seems that reference 46 is for this, but it just takes us to the Google Books page for the 2003 edition of the book and has no information on a documentary). 98.128.246.108 (talk) 09:23, 9 May 2025 (UTC)

Extinction of lines

I removed an unsourced comment from the article that implied that mitochondrial lines stopped being lost after the agricultural revolution because of population growth. It is well established that surnames, which may be taken as a proxy for mitochondrial and Y-chromosonal lines, have been lost at a high rate while population expanded (see the Galton–Watson process). We need solid sourcing for any claim that population growth since the agricultural revolution has slowed the loss of early branches of the mitochondrial tree and the advancement of the age of the last common ancestor. Donald Albury 14:26, 10 April 2026 (UTC)