Researchers came up with 27 million ancestors, using modern and ancient genomes:
Per Will Dunham of Reuters, the research study helps show the scope of human genetic diversity and establishes how people around the world are related to each other. Researchers have confirmed that the human species started in Africa before migrating to other parts of the globe.
“The very earliest ancestors we identify trace back in time to a geographic location that is in modern Sudan,” Wohn tells Reuters. “These ancestors lived up to and over 1 million years ago—which is much older than current estimates for the age of Homo sapiens—250,000 to 300,000 years ago. So bits of our genome have been inherited from individuals who we wouldn’t recognize as modern humans.”
David Kindy, “Largest Human Family Tree Identifies Nearly 27 Million Ancestors” at Smithsonian Magazine (March 22, 2022)
But wait. According to the usual evolution story, didn’t all of our genome come from individuals we would not recognize as humans? Moving on here…
One curious find, if it holds up (much appears to be guesswork), is that humans were in the Americas much earlier than thought:
“Our method estimated that there were ancestors in the Americas by 56,000 years ago,” Wohn tells Times Live. “We also estimated significant numbers of human ancestors in Oceania—specifically Papua New Guinea—by 140,000 years ago. But this is not firm evidence like a radiocarbon-dated tool or fossil.”
David Kindy, “Largest Human Family Tree Identifies Nearly 27 Million Ancestors” at Smithsonian Magazine (March 22, 2022)
There should now be renewed interest in finding very early tools and fossils in North America.
You may also wish to read: What? Paper on human mutation admits to “fundamentally challenging” neo-Darwinism. But Darwinism about human beings is the bread and butter of pop science media! If that’s under threat now, what will become of, for example, evolutionary psychology?