Huge News in Paleoanthropology: Say "Bye Bye" to the Out-of-Africa Hypothesis.

[Coyotl]

Re-Examining the “Out of Africa” Theory and the Origin of Europeoids (Caucasoids) in Light of DNA Genealogy
http://www.academia.edu/1809315/Re-Examining_the_Out_of_Africa_Theory_and_the_Origin_of_Europeoids_Caucasoids_in_Light_of_DNA_Genealogy

Based on palaeoarchaeological evidence, the region, where anatomically modern humans have likely originated, is com- prised of a vast territory from Central Europe in the west to the Russian Plain in the east to Levant in the south. Each of these regions is renowned for discoveries of the oldest skeletal re- mains of modern humans dating back to 42,000 - 44,000 ybp. To date, none of these sub-regions has clear and unequivocal advances in this regard.

[JudyM]

1. This is so interesting, thanks for posting.

Only wish I had the genetics background to *really* understand more than the overview.

[Sunlei]

2. I don't think this is really huge news, it's expands the science of DNA studies.

I love the science of DNA, science evolves and is fluid never ending. Science is not etched in stone.

I bet the earliest people didn't migrate out of Africa and never go back and forth. Although with the rising sea levels some early traveling groups probably were stuck in places like Australia and India much earlier than others with a open land path.

Color and feature changes 'evolve' very fast. Look at the changes in some animals. Some changes are by natural selection or natural mutation and others can be changed by a couple generations of breeding selection.

[Coyotl]

3. It is huge news in paleoanthropology and rewrites every textbook in anthropology.

Our earliest ancestors did migrate out of Africa, just earlier. we are all still Africans. This only alters where fully modern humans arose, and one very good candidate near the Levant is the Nile Delta. So maybe Africa is still in the mix. We know our genus was in Asia almost two million years ago.

One of the most interesting aspects of the article is the support it gives to the Toba population bottleneck idea: Population Bottlenecks and Volcanic Winter

[2binkey]

4. i dunno...

they seem to be relying on data from 400 individuals, apparently mixed across race. that troubles me. i could be totally wrong but the sample size, across segmented groups, doesn't seem large enough to reliably detect lingering genetic material present in small percentages of populations.

as someone else said, out of africa still holds, it just appears earlier than the eve hypothesis people want it to be.

i almost think the authors want to us think - as they suggested - that the 'europoids' didn't originate in africa. so that makes me suspect the research is ideologically driven. in a not so fun way.

[Coyotl]

5. Exactly, Out of Africa still holds for hominids, but not for fully modern humans.

Don't confuse originate with evolve. This is not about where hominids originated at all. That they originated in Africa is beyond dispute unless you really reach back to before the apes split into us and the others.

The sample in this study is immense.

[gopiscrap]

7. welcome to DU

[muriel_volestrangler]

6. Published in May 2012, so not 'huge news'; can anyone explain this?

We have found that a great diversity of Ychromosomal haplotypes in Africa is a result of the mixing of several very distant lineages, some of them not necessarily African, and that Europeiods (at least) do not contain “African” SNPs (those of haplogroups A or B). These important findings put a proverbial dent in the “Out of Africa” theory.

How do Y chromosomes 'mix'? They are inherited from father to son only, and only very occasionally do mutations turn up on them. I thought the point was that since there are several very distant lineages in Africa, that shows that modern humans have been there a long time.