A unresolved question about evolution
October 4, 2015 at 6:47 am
(This post was last modified: October 4, 2015 at 6:48 am by marianomanto.)
Hi everybody. I am reading Jared Diamond's - Guns, germs and steel. Check this out its very cool:
In chapter "Up to the straight line", he explains how the different migration streams moved from Africa.
![[Image: image004.jpg]](https://images.weserv.nl/?url=yanko.lib.ru%2Fbooks%2Fnatural%2Fdiamond_jared%3Dguns_germs_and_steel-en-a.files%2Fimage004.jpg)
"Obviously, some momentous change took place in our ancestors' capabilities between about 100000 and 50000 years ago. That great leap forward poses two major unresolved questions, regarding its triggering cause and its geographic location. As for its cause, I argued for the perfection of the voice box. Others have suggested instead that a change in brain organization (...)
As for the site of the great leap forward, did it take place primarly in one geographic area, in one froup of humans, who were thereby enabled to expand and replace the former human population of other parts of the world? Or did it occur in parallel in different regions, in each of which the human populations living there today would be descendants of the populations living there before the leap?
The rather modern-looking human sjulls from Africa around 100000 years ago have been taken to support the former view with the leap occurring specifically in Africa.
Skulls of humans living in China and Indonesia hundreds of thousands of years ago are considered by some physicial anthropologists to exhibit features still found in modern Chinese and Aboriginal Australians. If true, that finding would suggest parallel evolution and multiregional origins of modern humans, rather than origins in a single garden of Eden.
The issue remains unresolved."
What do you think? Moreover, Is this related to the concept of races?
Cheers
In chapter "Up to the straight line", he explains how the different migration streams moved from Africa.
"Obviously, some momentous change took place in our ancestors' capabilities between about 100000 and 50000 years ago. That great leap forward poses two major unresolved questions, regarding its triggering cause and its geographic location. As for its cause, I argued for the perfection of the voice box. Others have suggested instead that a change in brain organization (...)
As for the site of the great leap forward, did it take place primarly in one geographic area, in one froup of humans, who were thereby enabled to expand and replace the former human population of other parts of the world? Or did it occur in parallel in different regions, in each of which the human populations living there today would be descendants of the populations living there before the leap?
The rather modern-looking human sjulls from Africa around 100000 years ago have been taken to support the former view with the leap occurring specifically in Africa.
Skulls of humans living in China and Indonesia hundreds of thousands of years ago are considered by some physicial anthropologists to exhibit features still found in modern Chinese and Aboriginal Australians. If true, that finding would suggest parallel evolution and multiregional origins of modern humans, rather than origins in a single garden of Eden.
The issue remains unresolved."
What do you think? Moreover, Is this related to the concept of races?
Cheers
