Article: In search of the real Adam Are we really descended from one man who lived in Africa 60,000 years ago? Yes, says Dr Spencer Wells, who presents his evidence on television tonight. 'We're all one extended family,' he tells David Thomas

Dr Spencer Wells, 33, the telegenic face of evolutionary genetics, sips his Bloody Mary in the bar of a South Kensington hotel. As he puts down his glass, he calmly states a fact that he has recently helped establish beyond any reasonable doubt: "All human DNA coalesces to a single ancestor, living in Africa around 60,000 years ago." In other words, there really was an Adam. His Garden of Eden was somewhere on the coast of East Africa. And every single one of the six billion people on this planet is his direct descendant.

I look at Dr Wells and see a blond, blue-eyed American of obvious northern European origin. He specifies further: "My father's side is completely English; my mother's side ...

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