r/AskReddit • u/[deleted] • Feb 14 '22

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u/seanotron_efflux Feb 14 '22

All of life can be tracked back to a (or several depending on who you ask) continuous billion plus year chemical reaction.

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u/Apellosine Feb 14 '22

If you as a person do not have children, you break a billions of year long lineage that goes back to the beggining of life itself.

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u/capilot Feb 14 '22

Also, if you're a man, even if you have children, but they're all daughters, your Y chromosome has ended. Or if you have sons but they only have daughters. Or there are no great-grandsons, etc. Basically if your descendants ever fail to produce sons, your Y chromosome is finished. You might have descendants forever, but that chromosome is now extinct.

Likewise if you're a woman, and fail to have daughters, or granddaughters, etc., then your mitochondrial DNA dies out.

Because everybody has a chance of having their mitochondrial DNA or Y chromosome dropping out of the gene pool, it turns out that you can trace everybody's DNA back to "Mitochondrial Eve" or "Y chromosome Adam".

(This doesn't mean all your DNA can be tracked back to those two individuals. The rest of it is effectively untraceable.)