Did we originate in Africa?

Wibbs wrote:

I've always been of the opinion that the middle path was the way to go. Complete multiregionalism I don't buy, as much as I dont buy the complete out of Africa notion. It had to be more fluid than that. The evidence in the fossils and tools seemed to suggest some continuation of archaic traits in moderns. It also explains how you see genes in local moderns that are far older than the proposed later out of africa event. It explains the evolution of the head louse too(it would be interesting to see if the african head louse is different to the asian. If not, worms can opened ).

The eastern Mediterranean dates like you say are interesting. Especially as we have sites in israel where sapiens and neandertals were living in very close proximity for long periods of time. They must have gotten busy enough times to have the possibility of these archaic markers still present? I'd imagine a one off event would have died out?

In Asia it's even more weird. Neandertals were a lot closer to us than Erectus, both in genetic time and likely behaviour. Now the view of Erectus as being a bit slow has got some knocks recently with some evidence of long sea voyages and some evidence of cultural ideas, but they would have been in Asia for at least a million years before we show up and pretty different. If we could mate successfully with each other that's amazing given the genetic gap in time. Then again like I mentioned before, wolves can cross with coyotes and they're further apart.

I'd love to see further study into native australians DNA(the above team seem to suggest interesting results from oceania). The puzzle that the earliest australians had less archaic features than later and modern australians is interesting. It seems as well from DNA from mungo man that his line died out. So maybe the first aussies went straight from africa. Pretty much ran along the coast middle east, india SE asia and across into australia about 60,000 years ago and didnt get into hanky panky with erectus on the way. Then another migration occurred later on from asia which had the earlier human mixing going on, which brought along these more archaic features, then interbred with or even largely replaced the folks that were there already? Maybe there was even more recent migrations? The dingo seems to have split from other asian dogs 10,000 odd years ago and its unlikely they swam to Oz on their own. Modern native aussies may be a good place to look as they were pretty isolated(or maybe not?) until 200 odd years ago.

Wibbs wrote:

So my take is this. Archaic humans in Europe and Asia. The first Africans(us) leave and run along the southern asian coast, fishing and eating along the way quite quickly getting all the way to New Guinea, Australia and Tasmania, while leaving the Asian interior to the archaics. Leaving pockets and echos of that migration today.

Then there is a second or contemporary population of Africans to them that head into the interior of Europe and asia, after staying put in the middle east long enough to get jiggy with the Neandertals at their southernmost range. They move into europe, getting further jiggy with the locals and picking up handy mutations like pale skin. The others head off into Asia and get busy with erectus there. This shows in the localised continuation of some erectus features into the moderns in the area. Africans show this local continuity too, but we came from african erectus in africa anyway so...

These central asian folks then migrate into the existing homelands of the first african lads and lasses and get busy with them. This explains why Native australians start off looking like more gracile humans(like andaman islanders), then become much more robust with what may be echoed erectus features(heavier boned skulls and browridges) which came along with the later mirgation from asia who had gotten busy with the archaics there and then become more gracile again, with further later migrations(native australians today can still exhibit much larger browridges and more robust skulls than other populations). Ditto for populations like Papuans.

In Europe the populations likely remain more cut off with smaller populations due to ice ages etc and there are only one or two major moves in until relatively recently. In the Americas, I suspect the first African lads made it maybe 20,000+ years ago and got all the way to the tip of south america, where remains of ancient skulls may show more african traits than the later Asian migrations which followed. On the eastern seaboard the presence of the X haplogroup although rare, but never found in the west suggests a european migration at some point, though likely small. Then the main thrust through north asia brought the bulk of modern native genes into the mix.

My take anyway.

digme wrote: »

ya i was taught in school i came from Africa and my ancestors were black lol
And you can bet your arse the teachers will still be teaching that in 20 years time aswell.

That comment seems a bit harsh to me, but the lad has a point.

My name is URL wrote: »

As for homosexuality.. you say that it would have been established as a biological trait, but the fact is that it doesn't preclude anyone from parenting a child. A gay person could easily father a child that in turn parents a child, which effectively rules out the grandfather's preference.

Biology is not static