This is a statistical argument that makes many assumptions about the degree of isolation and intermarriage of various peoples around the world. I'm to too sure that I would buy all of them.
The only thing Christians should pounce on as this 'proving' is that the science involved in dating the most recent common ancestor is hardly exact and as with much of science, the accepted ages of today may well not bear any resemblance to what they will be 10 years from now as scientist learn more, and learn to integrate the available data more fully.
It seems to me that such issues should not trouble Christians one way or the other. As a Catholic the church makes it clear: God created the Universe, and he created man. We are descended from two common parents (monogenism), who freely chose to disobey God and bring sin into the world. How that played out in literal terms seems to me much ado about nothing. The real issue for us today is to understand what those truths/doctrines mean for who we are (ala JPII's theology of the body) only insofar as they can help us in appropriating the great gift of salvation our Lord has won for us.
Ha! Adam 3,500 years ago in China, Eve 10,000 years ago in Kenya once more goes to show: Women! Can't live with 'em...
Mark,
I don't think this article contradicts any of your previously held beliefs. The Indians may have crossed the land bridge 10,000 years ago; Abraham may have lived 2000 B.C. The point is that, by now, there has been so much intermingling among peoples that you only have to go back to 1500 B.C. to find someone whom we're all related to. That doesn't mean that someone back in 1500 B.C. was some sort of primal font of humanity -- it just means that the person turned out to have a lot of descendants, and over the last 3500 years those descendants have left no bloodlines untouched by the genes.
At first this made no sense at all because we know that Old Kingdom Egypt and Sumer and such civilizations date back much further than 1500 BC. I mean the Great Pyramid at Giza is much older than that.
So I presume that the authors meant something closer to the explanation of Aurochs & Angels.
Yes, I also think A&A is right. There was an interesting article in Atlantic Monthly a few years ago on how if you go back enough centuries, the probability becomes high that you're descended from some person (say, Alexander the Great) who lived at that time. This Nature article seems to be an effort to work that matter out in more detail. It doesn't have much to do with Adam and Eve.
I'm just surprised and glad that they are using B.C. and A.D. instead of that damnable B.C.E/C.E.
Fifteen-hundred BC? That can't be right. That's post-pyramids. Are you sure you didn't make a typo, Mark?
Their point must be that "we're all" descended from somebody who lived roughly 1500 BC, but that said somebody was not the first human being.
This does seem to go against the two common parents view, though, by implying that the first parents' progeny died out before "our" father in 1500 BC.
I guess we're all descended from Solomon, with all those "Eves" of his. 
"This does seem to go against the two common parents view, though, by implying that the first parents' progeny died out before 'our' father in 1500 BC."
No, there's no such implication.
A&A's explanation is correct. This isn't about the first human couple -- it's about the fact that apparently every human being on earth today is descended from someone who lived around 1500 B.C. Knowing what we do about human history and human migration and intermarriage, I'm not surprised by this report in the least. With the Septuagint chronology placing the Flood around 3300 B.C. and the creation of Adam and Eve around 5500 B.C., it's just to be expected that a common ancestor for all living people today would have lived some time after those dates.
One rule I've heard is that if you had an ancestor living in England in 1200 AD, you are somehow related to everybody else who had an ancestor there, according to the redundancy of ancestors.
So when are we having a family reunion?
At the second coming.
Yes, that redundancy of ancestors thing that Sandra mentioned is exactly right. As a genealogy nut who recently proved my mother is descended from James II, King of Scots, I have had more experience than I ever desired to have with the redundancy of ancestors. I think mom is descended from the Stewarts and Campbells 100 times over!
Probably everyone in Europe, except for the more recent immigrants, is descended from Charlemagne. Documenting that descent may not be easy, but statistically it's extremely likely.
Here's more on this: the Atlantic article I mentioned above.
Abstract: "The mathematical study of genealogy indicates that everyone in the world is descended from Nefertiti and Confucius, and everyone of European ancestry is descended from Muhammad and Charlemagne"
Abraham?
You guys may be related to this dude, but I'm not.
Sandra, your term "related" is in the sense of ancestry -- not the sense of biology.
You have 64 g-g-g-g-grandparents. But, assuming these are 64 distinct people, you are not actually related to all of them. You only have 46 chromosomes, plus mitochondrial DNA, so you are related to at most 47 of these people.
Similarly, you are related to at most 47 people in the year 1200. Indeed, the odds are incredibly high that you are related to _exactly_ 47.
Lawrence: Don't forget, though, that in the course of egg and sperm production (specifically, during meiosis), there occurs what's known as "crossing over" - basically, homologous ("paired") chromosomes swap genes. Thus, although you have inherited one pair of chromosomes from each parent, that doesn't mean that all (or any) of the chromosomes in either pair are identical to the chromosomes in the somatic cells of the parent from whom you inherited that pair. Thus, it is indeed possible to be biologically related to more than 46 people.
...everyone of European ancestry is descended from Muhammad and Charlemagne
Sorry, gotta say it:
Gee ,I didn't know they were even dating!
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