Bestselling author, political adviser and social and ethical prophet Jeremy Rifkin investigates the evolution of empathy and the profound ways that it has shaped our development and our society. View the full video of Jeremy Rifkin's talk at the RSA. Download a transcript of this video (pdf).
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This video seems to be implying that Y-chromosome Adam was the partner of Mitochondrial Eve. This is an improbable (and potentially dangerous) suggestion to make. While there is evidence from mitochondria that all modern humans are descended from a single female ancestor, and evidence from Y-chromosomes that we are all descended from a single male ancestor, there is no evidence that these two individuals ever met, or indeed, that their lifetimes coincided. See River Out of Eden by Richard Dawkins for more on this; our best guess is that Y-chromosome Adam lived at least several thousand years after Mitochondrial Eve (and neither of them need to have been particularly prolific breeders, they were just ordinary individuals whose descendants happen to include everyone currently alive). To suggest otherwise tends to play into the hands of creationists, who would very much like Mitochondial Eve and Y-chromosome Adam to have lived together at the same time.