The Out of Africa Crowd May Shit A Brick

[Minimalist]

over this one.

The findings of Professor Avi Gopher and Dr Ran Barkai of the Institute of Archeology at Tel Aviv University, published last week in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, suggest that modern man did not originate in Africa as previously believed, but in the Middle East.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/a...z19LdwueAT


It would answer the question of why humans ever left "Africa" in the first place.

[Anomalocaris]

The evidence for the basic truth of "out of Africa" is multi-disciplinary and multifaceted and not something a mere few teeth that looks modern can overthrow. At most the primary "Out of Africa" wave might have picked up some genes from existing population en route. The dominant genetic origin of modern humans still originated in Africa, but there wasn't the 100% replacement of existing local population as some version of "Out of Africa" might have suggested.

[Minimalist]

OOA has set too many barriers for itself.

There shalt be no cross-breeding between HNS and HSS. But there was.

Homo Erectus could not have spread across the planet. But they did.

The Toba Volcano pushed early man to the brink of extinction in 75,000 BC. But did not bother HNS or numerous mega fauna species.

OOA is a lot like a religion. You have to hold your nose too much when discussing it.

Now that the Neanderthal genome project has been done we desperately need Homo Erectus DNA for examination.

[Anomalocaris]

OOA has set too many barriers for itself.

There shalt be no cross-breeding between HNS and HSS. But there was.

Homo Erectus could not have spread across the planet. But they did.

The Toba Volcano pushed early man to the brink of extinction in 75,000 BC. But did not bother HNS or numerous mega fauna species.

OOA is a lot like a religion. You have to hold your nose too much when discussing it.

Now that the Neanderthal genome project has been done we desperately need Homo Erectus DNA for examination.

That there should be no cross breeding between HNS and HSS is an unnecessary barrier, and genetic contribution of AHS and HNS has been shown to be small. That Homo Erectus has spread across the planet had been known for certain since the 1920s. We don't have fossil evidence for the HSS Toba bottle neck, only genetic evidence. We simply don't have enough genetic evidence to conclude the same for HNS. The Toba genetic bottle neck is not crucial to out of Africa. It happened some 15,000 years prior to the postulated date of the out of africa migration. OOA is not like a religion. It's a theory whose challengers have succeeded in peripheral skirmishes with it, but has not seriously challenged its core. If one could show that two different major population of modern humans living outside of Africa derived most of their respective heretic heritage from a common ancestor who lived much more than 70,000 years ago, that will put a nail in the coffin of OOA. But no one has. If one could provide genetic evidence that modern humans in Africa flowed in from outside, then that would put a nail in the coffin of out of Africa. No one has. All people has shown is there might have been some modest interbreeding events between ancestors of modern humans, who most likely came out of Africa some 50-60 KY ago, and some indigenous population in Siberia and China. But no one has provided evidence that this interbreeding mattered a lot as far as the genetic or behavior makeup of the resulting population.

[Minimalist]

All those barriers are erected by proponents of OOA.

The multi-regionalists dismiss them.

The idea of Toba, as I understand it, is that the explosion and subsequent nuclear winter eliminated all HSS outside of East Africa...and reduced those to about 3000 people. The problem is that it was a highly specific disaster as other species didn't seem to notice that they were being wiped out.

In that respect, it is a lot like Noah's Flood. The Egyptians kept right on building pyramids in spite of the fact that Ark-eologists shriek that they were all drowned.

[Anomalocaris]

No, Toba catastrophe only talks about that breeding HSS population living 79000 years ago which direct contributed the most to the gene pool of the modern HSS population that lives on earth today. That particular population, call it A, dwindled down to a few thousand at the time of Toba eruption. Since that population's genes later passed onto to all living humans, all living humans carry in our genes the evidence of the Toba bottleneck.

Toba catastrophe says nothing about whether there were other populations of the HSS, HNS, or Homo Erectus on the earth at the time, or how they were effected by Toba. There could well have been many other populations of homo genus on earth at the time of Toba. Some of those population may have been wiped out by Toba, but some of those populations may well have not been effected much by Toba at all. We simply don't know. All we know is if there were a lot of other HSS populations 79000 years ago, they for whatever reason did not later interbreed extensively descendants of population A. They for whatever reason did not prosper genetically and did not contribute much to our gene pool.

[Minimalist]

Toba catastrophe says nothing about whether there were other populations of the HSS, HNS, or Homo Erectus on the earth at the time, or how they were effected by Toba

Exactly...it says nothing and there is no evidence suggesting that HNS suffered similar devastation. We are constantly bombarded with disaster scenarios from nuclear winters due to asteroids or volcanoes but they are general in their effect and threaten lots of species. Why Toba would only effect HSS defies explanation.

BTW, every time an article like this comes out we always kick it around at http://archaeologica.boardbot.com/

Feel free to drop in if you enjoy this stuff.

[Justtristo]

No, Toba catastrophe only talks about that breeding HSS population living 79000 years ago which direct contributed the most to the gene pool of the modern HSS population that lives on earth today. That particular population, call it A, dwindled down to a few thousand at the time of Toba eruption. Since that population's genes later passed onto to all living humans, all living humans carry in our genes the evidence of the Toba bottleneck.

Toba catastrophe says nothing about whether there were other populations of the HSS, HNS, or Homo Erectus on the earth at the time, or how they were effected by Toba. There could well have been many other populations of homo genus on earth at the time of Toba. Some of those population may have been wiped out by Toba, but some of those populations may well have not been effected much by Toba at all. We simply don't know. All we know is if there were a lot of other HSS populations 79000 years ago, they for whatever reason did not later interbreed extensively descendants of population A. They for whatever reason did not prosper genetically and did not contribute much to our gene pool.

I agree fully with Chuck here, the genetic evidence is the strongest evidence we have for the "Out of Africa" theory.

[Anomalocaris]

Toba catastrophe says nothing about whether there were other populations of the HSS, HNS, or Homo Erectus on the earth at the time, or how they were effected by Toba

Exactly...it says nothing and there is no evidence suggesting that HNS suffered similar devastation. We are constantly bombarded with disaster scenarios from nuclear winters due to asteroids or volcanoes but they are general in their effect and threaten lots of species. Why Toba would only effect HSS defies explanation.

Chronological distribution of fossils is not nearly uniform enough for us to pick up the Toba catastrophe from the samples of HSS or HNS fossils we have. If all we have are HSS fossils, we would have no evidence that HSS suffered Toba devastation either. All Toba evidence comes from genetic analysis. Since our genetic evidence for HNS are not nearly as complete as those for living HSS, It's no surprise if a major population decline amongst HNS could have escaped our notice.

All Toba scenario said was that particular breeding population of humans that contributes the most to our current gene pool had very few breeding pairs 79000 years ago. It didn't imply that particular breeding population was wide in geographic distribution, or included a substantial percentage of all HSS then lived. All it said is that particular population was severely effected. I can think of many modern examples where a particular local population might be severely effected by an distant volcanic upheaval, but the human species and the biota in general did see any drastic impact. Take for example the eruption of the Laki volcano in Iceland in 1783. This eruption ejected 100 million tons of sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere which weakened the Indian Ocean Monsoon of the 1783-1784. This led to diminished rainfall in Nile River basin, a severe draught and famine in Egypt, and the death 20% of the population of Egypt through starvation that year. In total Laki killed around 3 million people in Egypt. But the world wide human population certainly didn't see any noticeable decline during the same time. But if by happenstance Egyptian population were to later contribute disproportionally to subsequent human gene pool, then it would be recorded in later human genes that the human lineage suffered a population bottleneck in 1783.

Now consider Toba eruption was 200 time more powerful than Laki, it should not be surprising that such an eruption might cause some extremely severe local weather disruptions that would kill far more than 20% of the human population in certain areas. But just as Laki caused severe population effects in some areas but no global extinction event, there is no need to insist any Toba effect must be accompanied by global extinction detectable in fossil records.

[Minimalist]

No, Toba catastrophe only talks about that breeding HSS population living 79000 years ago which direct contributed the most to the gene pool of the modern HSS population that lives on earth today. That particular population, call it A, dwindled down to a few thousand at the time of Toba eruption. Since that population's genes later passed onto to all living humans, all living humans carry in our genes the evidence of the Toba bottleneck.

Toba catastrophe says nothing about whether there were other populations of the HSS, HNS, or Homo Erectus on the earth at the time, or how they were effected by Toba. There could well have been many other populations of homo genus on earth at the time of Toba. Some of those population may have been wiped out by Toba, but some of those populations may well have not been effected much by Toba at all. We simply don't know. All we know is if there were a lot of other HSS populations 79000 years ago, they for whatever reason did not later interbreed extensively descendants of population A. They for whatever reason did not prosper genetically and did not contribute much to our gene pool.

I agree fully with Chuck here, the genetic evidence is the strongest evidence we have for the "Out of Africa" theory.

This article (July 2007) announced the alleged triumph of the OOA Theory.

http://news.softpedia.com/news/We-All-Or...0314.shtml

No hanky spanky with the Neanderthals, or ape-men (Homo erectus) in our family tree. A new study shows that we are 100 % an African product. This is the result of a comparison of skulls and DNA of human remains found worldwide. It appears that human species living elsewhere in the world did not contribute to our ancestry.

The team led by Andrea Manica at the University of Cambridge, England, compared over 6,000 skulls from more than 100 ancient human populations. The research discovered a loss of genetic diversity the farther away from Africa people lived.

This supports the single origin, or "out of Africa" theory that states early humans colonized the Earth after spreading out of Africa some 80,000 years ago.

But then...less than 2 years later...the Neanderthal genome project comes out and

http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shorts...d-wit.html

Human evolution is looking more tangled than ever. A new genetic study of nearly two thousand people from around the world suggests that some of our ancestors bred with other species of humans, such as Neanderthals, at least twice.

"The researchers suggest the interbreeding happened about 60,000 years ago in the eastern Mediterranean and, more recently, about 45,000 years ago in eastern Asia," Nature News reports from the annual meeting of the American Society of Physical Anthropologists in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

That conclusion is based on a study of over 600 genetic markers, called microsatellites, sequenced in nearly 100 different populations.

Now, it seems to me that there are only three answers to this.

One. HSS and HNS did interbreed and were capable of producing fertile offspring ( no "ligers" here!) which accounts for the genetic mix detected...and which calls into question those definitions of "species" which hold that a species is a group capable of bearing fertile offspring. In fact, it suggests that HNS and HSS are not different "species" at all but more like what we call "racial" types.

Two. They did not interbreed successfully at all but both descended from a common ancestor ( Homo Erectus? Homo Ergaster?) which possessed these genes and passed them along to both.

Three. They were descended from HE/HErg and still managed to interbreed successfully because the condition of isolation which Darwin proposed gives rise to new species did not exist.

The notion of the hulking, dim-witted, brutish HNS has taken a number of serious hits in recent years. It was a Victorian prejudice that became "common" wisdom. Bottom line seems to be that they were not all that different from HSS.

But I love a mystery. Keeps the brain churning!