Because mothers pass unchanged DNA to daughters, and likewise, fathers to son, Human DNA can be traced through history back to the origin of the common male and female lines. Tracing this history back has told the story of humanity. We can see where groups split and spread the globe. Some left Africa, colonizing the middle East. Form there, they split again. Some headed to the far East along the coast, and later into the Americas. Some went into the mountains of central Asia, and later split off into Europe. Today, your DNA can tell the story of where your ancestors have been. No matter where you are and how you got there, the instructions that make you who you are, ultimately trace back to Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve were very much real, but I think there is a lot of misinformation spread about them. Meet Y Chromosomal [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y-chromosomal_Adam]Adam[/url], and mitochondrial [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrial_Eve]Eve[/url]. The man and women whose genetic signature can be found in every human alive. A lot of misinformation has been spread about them over the years. Popular literature tends to paint Adam and Eve as the first two humans, light-skinned, living 10,000 years ago in Mesopotamia. That just doesn't do justice to the genetic mother and father of our species. [i]Common Misconceptions:[/i] [b]Adam and Eve were not white[/b] when you search google images for Adam and Eve, you can find centuries worth of artwork dedicated to them. In thousands of results, there is one common theme. Adam and Eve are very fair skinned. Now, as far as I know, there is no biblical reasoning to assume they are white, perhaps this is because darker skinned people weren't really considered people for most of known history. Living in the heart of Africa, the real Adam and Eve would have much darker skin. Fair skinned humans wouldn't come about until humanity reached central Asia and Europe many tens of thousands of years later. [b]Adam and Eve were not the first humans[/b] Defining the exact time modern humans split for our ancestors is a bit of a moving goal post. Defining species get cloudy when you talk about such gradual change. SO, we don't really know how long modern humans existed before Adam and Eve, but we do know that Adam and Eve aren't the first humans, but the first to produce an unbroken chain of genetic heirs (female for Eve, male for Adam). Many human lines have vanished prior to them. [b]Adam and Eve weren't from the Middle East[/b] Adam and Eve most likely came from sub-Saharan Africa. There is some doubt about where exactly Adam was from, but certainly not outside of Africa. While Mesopotamia was the first destination for humans out of Africa, and gave rise to Western civilization, it took us tens of thousands of years to get there, and was not the origin of our species. [b]Adam and Eve didn't live 10,000 years ago[/b] Eve dates to somewhere near the first known modern humans, 200,000 years ago. Adam's DNA puts him about 50,000 years older than Eve, having lived ~150K years ago. [b]Adam and Eve didn't know each other[/b] Females produced a line of unbroken heirs some 50,000 years before males did. Meaning Eve was long, long dead before Adam came around. Personally, I didn't realize how complete our genetic picture was until I recently saw a documentary on the [url=https://genographic.nationalgeographic.com/about/]National Geogrphic and IBM genographic program[/url]. I find it remarkable that human genetic markers can tell such a clear story. It's also pretty neat how ancient, isolated tribes have come to give us so much modern understanding of human history by giving us perfect control groups to sample.