Roots of the human family tree are remarkably shallow

Whoever it was probably lived a few thousand years ago, somewhere in East Asia -- Taiwan, Malaysia and Siberia all are likely locations. He -- or she -- did nothing more remarkable than be born, live, have children and die. Yet this was the ancestor of every person now living on Earth -- the last person in history whose family tree branches out to touch all 6.5 billion people on the planet today.

That means everybody on Earth descends from somebody who was around as recently as the reign of Tutankhamen, maybe even during the Golden Age of ancient Greece. There's even a chance that our last shared ancestor lived at the time of Christ.

"It's a mathematical certainty that that person existed," said Steve Olson, whose 2002 book "Mapping Human History" traces the history of the species since its origins in Africa more than 100,000 years ago.

It is human nature to wonder about our ancestors -- who they were, where they lived, what they were like. People trace their genealogy, collect antiques and visit historical sites hoping to capture just a glimpse of those who came before, to locate themselves in the sweep of history and position themselves in the web of human existence.

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