Okay, let's go, so you can all make it today/tomorrow (American/German time) ?? I'll be there ..
Yes Ceashel I'm trying hard to cherish my school years, but now in the final year with the final exams in only 3 months time, I just "wanna get out of this place" ...Maybe I'll travel to the US next summer and hope that I can make it to one of his concerts..Wè'll see what 2002 will be like..
So see you all in hmmm 9 hours ??

I'll be here. 8:30pm ET -- and don't worry, Cea. I won't get a chance to cram either.

sorry folks...i have been feeling under the weather and didnt realize i was missing a meeting....

looking forward to hearing about what i missed...i'm starting to think i just wasnt meant to discuss harry potter!

did you folks pick the next book?

and 'comments' aside....the holidays are a very difficult time to meet and prior to this particular book we were meeting on a fairly regular basis, thank you very much!

Here's one for the booklist:

I'm about 3/4 way through The Seven Daughters of Eve by Bryan Sykes. He's a professor of genetics at Oxford who's used mitrochondrial DNA to discover a living descendent of the Alpine Ice Man, to track the origins of the Polynesians, etc. The book is about tracking the origins of all native Europeans to seven real women and figuring out the geographical locations of those seven women. It's kind of a mystery/some "gentle" science (not hard to follow)/Jean Auel-type descriptions of these seven women's environments and possible lives. Good read.

There was something on Discovery recently (or on some informational program, anyway -- incipient alzheimers is kicking in) about how there had to have been some kind of bottleneck in the human population. It seems that we should have more than one human species on earth, and a whole lot more variety in our DNA. The fact that we don't, apparently points conclusively to a time in the not so distant past (comparitively speaking) when all but a handful of humans died out. A cataclysmic event is seen as being the culprit, and as I recall, there is even geological evidence that determines prescisely what the nature of the cataclysmic event was.

So far as I know, no new book or date to discuss it has been chosen -- but thanks for the reading suggestion. Sounds fascinating. Maybe it's even the basis for the show I'm talking about?

Muffy, it's probably not the basis for that show; nothing about a cataclysmic event. That would probably be much, much earlier than this is about. This is about a new way to trace genetic lineage over a very long timespan (10 to 40,000 years), and arrive at a real, once-living common ancestor to a "clan" (clan mother). There are seven female ancestors for all native Europeans, and it's kind of neat, the way it's mixed up--not like all of one clan is in England or Germany or Spain. They've done the same thing for Polynesians and Native Americans, and are working on other parts of the world. This is kind of the ultimate "Roots," going back 40,000 years. And, the clans have been mixed geographically for so much longer than anyone thought, it seems to me it's going to force a new, critical look at the concepts of nationality and race. You can have your DNA tested and find out who your clan mother was (if research on her clan is completed, as it is for Europe and Polynesia). It sounds "dry," but isn't at all--a good read.

Any idea where you do this DNA testing?

I can't tell you what the time frame for the show I saw was -- only that all living humans go back to a handfull of people who all had similar DNA, and that it wasn't in the terribly distant past (as these things are figured).

Muffy, maybe it was the same. I just finished the book, and near the end, he makes a big point that it wasn't only these people alive at the time, but that since mitrochondrial DNA is only passed from the mother and not from the dad at all, lineages from the other women living then "petered out" (no pun intended) if any woman in the line had only sons, or no children.

Anyway, it's a really good read and I recommend it. And Muffy, I'm going to start a Web search today to see if I can find out where to be tested. Apparently, it's just a swab inside the cheek, or a bit of hair. I'll keep you posted.

I have started (finally!) The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan. I remember it was proposed for the BBC in the fall, before HP was chosen for our blunderly 2-session session.

Cea, it sounds fascinating, and I'd love to read it -- but I think the show (or event) that I'm referring to goes back to 100,000 years or so. There have been inhabitants in the Americas for 80,000 haven't there? (I get so confused when I run out of fingers and toes ...) Any near extinction of humans had to have taken place before that.

No -- I have no figures here in front of me at this particular moment, so bear with me. (Plus I'm still on the first round of mrning coffee.) I'm totally interested in all this stuff. For myself, I couldn't be traced to just one clan. I know, because I am too much of an American mix. I don't know if anyone else has also seen that there is also some evidence that there were already inhabitants in South America when the first peoples came down from the North. Apparently they didn't stop at Australia and New Zealand, but kept going until they came to Tierra del Fuego. However, the newer arrivals were considerably more warlike than the original settlers -- and may have killed most of them off.

As for a cataclysmic event, that's simply the usual reason for the mass and sudden extinction of entire species. The archeological evidence points to several species of humans, not just races, and then suddenly there's just one -- who all have the same DNA, and all are from one (small) area of the world.

Speaking of cataclysms -- anyone else hear about the "super volcanos," and how we're about due for the regular eruption of one of them in Colorado? Brrrrr.

This is to the late pleistocene. Every person now alive is just from one maternal clan, because mitrochondrial DNA doesn't recombine during fertilization--it only comes from the mother, and its rate of mutation is very low. I just can't explain it as well as the book does; it would turn into another book. <img src="http://www.arlo.net/ubb/smilies/smile.gif" width=15 height=15>

He also has solved and continues to solve, seemingly to the scientific community's hard-won satisfaction, many of the questions about movement of peoples like the South America question.

Darn, guess I'd better rethink the Colorado vacation I've been wanting to plan.

Yeah, I've heard about the one mother DNA trace too. Of course, in the long and checkered history of the human race, we're bound to find different things at different times. When I say I couldn't be traced to just one clan, I mean the seven clans you're speaking of. I don't come from one race on the maternal side and one on the paternal side. I come from several on both sides -- and even if you just do maternal all the way down, at several points there are women involved who are of various different races -- or of mixed racial heritage themselves.

OK, maybe I could be traced to just one clan. I'm not an expert, and can't even preend to an educated guess here. It doesn't seem to me like I coud be, is what I should have said. <img src="http://www.arlo.net/ubb/smilies/uhoh.gif" width=15 height=15>

BTW, I use the term "race" in the loosest sense possible -- as a gegraphic term more than anything else. I just figure it must be easier to trace you DNA back to one spot if your ancestry is mostly traceable to one spot, is all. To be Icelandic would be a piece of cake, IOW ...

I forget to explain stuff sometimes, and sometimes my choice of words is poor indeed. While I'm at it, I should mention that my cookie eating neighbor is a nice guy as a rule, too.

(I'm quite sure that I asked to be perfect when they were passing out the attributes. I have no idea what happened. <img src="http://www.arlo.net/ubb/smilies/wink.gif" width=15 height=15> )

Well, lucky me! The Discovery show about the super volcanos came back on, so I got check the info.

Seems that about 70,000 or so years ago the human race may have become nearly extinct, according to some of these geneticists who are tracking the DNA back. The world population suddenly went down to just a few thousand people. It's still considered to be a radical theory, but it does happen to coincide with another recent discovery, and that's the presence of super volcanos. It seems that super volcanos are a rare phenomena, but are of such cataclysmic proportions, that whenever the one under Yellowstone Park goes, it blankets all of the US with ash several feet thick, lowers the average world temperature, and generally wreaks havoc with the environment.

Yes, there is one under Yellowstone that erupts on a regular basis. (Every 600,000 to 800,000 years is as close as they can get to an exact time frame so far.) The last time was about 600,000 years ago, and -- begum and begorrah -- geologists have realized that the park is steadily bulging upwards at one end. Which means that that magma is quite possibly building up, as we speak, for another Big Blow. We don't know what to look for as signs go, and we only know that at some particular point within the next 200,000 years, it's likely to go again. These super volcanos don't create cones, BTW, like regular volcanos. They create calderas.

Anyway, it seems to tie in nicely with the book you're talking about Cea. It explains rather neatly why there were so few "clan mothers", for starters. Given the length of time humans have been around, there should be more diversity in hujan DNA, but also, there should have been more people around a long time ago. Seems that there were, but apparently, we're lucky to be here at all.