How, though?
I was arguing 5 years ago about Homoerecus in Asia now I see the discovery in China . Those were the positive Australian big mouths but with the new evidence they will swallow their insults.
Rethinking Human Evolution
- Thread starter Walter L. Wagner
- Start date
I was arguing 5 years ago about Homoerecus in Asia now I see the discovery in China . Those were the positive Australian big mouths but with the new evidence they will swallow their insults.
Homo Erectus has been known in Asia for some time, these are merely the oldest fossils of them. Again the genetics evidence supports all modern human coming from out of Africa in the last 100ka with minimal to no hybridizing.
How much difference is there genetically between homoerectus and homosapiens ?
Critics of the genetic argument for the replacement model also point out that the rate of mutation used for the "molecular clock" is not necessarily constant, which makes the 200,000 year date for "mitochondrial Eve" unreliable. The rate of inheritable mutations for a species or a population can vary due to a number of factors including generation time, the efficiency of DNA repair within cells, ambient temperature, and varying amounts of natural environmental mutagens. In addition, some kinds of DNA molecules are known to be more subject to mutation than others, resulting in faster mutation rates. This seems to be the case with the Y chromosome in human males.
Further criticism of the genetic argument for the replacement model has come from geneticists at Oxford University. They found that the human betaglobin gene is widely distributed in Asia but not in Africa. Since this gene is thought to have originated more than 200,000 years ago, it undercuts the claim that an African population of modern Homo sapiens replaced East Asian archaic humans less than 60,000 years ago.
http://anthro.palomar.edu/homo2/mod_homo_4.htm
The following U tube video is around 45 minutes long, but worth every bit of that time.
It illustrates the scientific method in action, and the latest take on the evolution of man, based on the gathering evidence.
Well worth the time and effort!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnF3iSrrIWY
It illustrates the scientific method in action, and the latest take on the evolution of man, based on the gathering evidence.
Well worth the time and effort!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnF3iSrrIWY
Genetic clocking is not the issue: why is the majority of genetic diversity of humans in Africa?
[/QUOTE]Further criticism of the genetic argument for the replacement model has come from geneticists at Oxford University. They found that the human betaglobin gene is widely distributed in Asia but not in Africa. Since this gene is thought to have originated more than 200,000 years ago, it undercuts the claim that an African population of modern Homo sapiens replaced East Asian archaic humans less than 60,000 years ago.
http://anthro.palomar.edu/homo2/mod_homo_4.htm[/QUOTE]
Your just quoting them, were is the primary citation? More importantly hemoglobin evolves rapidly (in counter to malaria) and genetic clocking it is not viable.
that's quite the leap of faith.
i believe we can safely exclude your 'alien' hypothesis.
so, even though hominids were moving in and out of africa for millions of years (i.e. all kinds of apes in south-east asia, as well as hominids, and homo erectus in both africa and asia, with similar apes in africa; and of course lots of other 'african' species moving back and forth such as Lions (in Euorope and Africa), leopards, tigers, horses/zebras, rhinos, elephants, etc. etc. all freely crossing the wide land-bridge that 'separated' africa from asia/europe; but humans could not travel those few hundred miles, because of 'occam's razor'; yeah, that makes sense.
No it a leap of faith to say that they evolved outside of Africa and return, without evidence. Again your confusing probable with definite: it is more probable that we evolved in Africa completely than in Asia then back to Africa then back out of Africa and into Asia again, until evidence comes up otherwise.
Lets say there are two possibilities of what happened this morning
A) I manually made coffee
B) I had an some kind of robe goldberg machine make coffee for me.
Which do you think is more likely? The simplest one is more likely, the other requires a vast array of steps being assumed, only with evidence that I built such machine and that it operates correctly would possibility B become more likely. Without any evidence other than coffee being ingest by me at my home: possibility A is the most probable.
The same for 'out of africa' verse 'from asia and back'. Genetic evidence supports that all modern human came out of Africa. Now we can assume we evolved there the whole time, we have lots of evidence of previous homides living there, more so then any other continent. The idea that we evolved in asia, then returned to africa (died of in asia leaving homo erectus) then came back out of africa displacing homo erectus ones and for all in asia, is unfounded and complex, requiring evidence for each step to go from being improbable to probable.
Now again notice my use of 'probable', as in not definite. I can't for sure say that aliens did not bring us here, that not impossible, but I believe the simplest answer until evidence otherwise, and my belief is not fixed, it is not faith, I'll change it dependent on the evidence. All that instead of believing the a more complex outlandish idea first simply because it tickles my fancy, that is what separates me from cranks, crazies and ideologues. Clearly the 'from asia and back' hypothesis tickles arauca fancy for what ever reason, and it wants to believe it no matter the evidence or lack there of.
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I'm not saying that that is definitely what happened. I'm saying that that is a possibility that cannot be excluded as of yet.
The evidence is that Homo erectus (and many variants) lived in Asia for millions of years, contemporaneously with other populations of Homo erectus in Africa (and likely Europe, though I'm not certain we have those fossils yet).
The evidence is also that early man was in Africa circa 100 kya, with descendants being the San now located in southern Africa, and a probable wave of exodus circa 60 kya.
The evidence is that tribes of people in earlier times were highly migrant.
What we don't have evidence for is where the transition from erectus to sapiens occurred. There is a HUGE gap in time unaccounted for in the fossil record. It could very easily have occurred in Asia because of the huge erectus population there. Then again, it could have occurred in Africa (or Europe). We simply don't know, because we don't have the evidence of that transition. It's likely buried under the seas, if it exists.
The time to transition is on the order of hundreds of thousands of years. the time for a human tribe migration from asia to africa is only decades, leaving no trace.
to me, this appears about equally likely, africa or asia, with no way to presently tell.
Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
This could surely have happened, but it did not.
The evidence is in Dr. Cavalli-Sforza's exhaustive analysis of human DNA all over the planet. It clearly points to a single origin of our species in Africa, two migrations out of Africa (one to Australia and one to southwestern Asia), and various subsequent migrations of the Asian population to the other continents.
About the only major outstanding question is the origin of the modern North Africans. Their languages belong to the Afroasiatic family (five branches: Berber, Chadic, Cushitic, Egyptian [now extinct but well documented] and Omotic) along with the Semitic branch (which is primarily in Asia but also has important members in Africa such as Amharic and Ge-ez). North Africa has seen so much migration, that the DNA of the people who now live there is a chaotic mixture with no hope of analysis. North Africa was unpopulated after the desertification of the Sahara; all of the African populations moved south because this was still the Paleolithic Era so the technologies of agriculture and animal husbandry had not been invented yet, and there was no way for people to survive there. It's often assumed that once the Neolithic Revolution happened in Mesopotamia, people from that region slowly migrated into vacant North Africa, where their new food-production technologies made life possible. Yet there's no reason to presume that a few adventurous African explorers did not eventually invent those technologies themselves, becoming the ancestors of the modern North Africans--and that at some point in their development their own descendants did not migrate into Asia to become the modern Arabs, Jews and other Semitic people. Clearly the Asia-to-Africa hypothesis is more plausible, yet the other one cannot be summarily dismissed without more evidence... and there just isn't any--in support of either one.
You are lagging way behind the information curve. Cavalli-Sforza's work has revolutionized our understanding of our ancestry, our relationships to each other, and our migratory routes. I strongly recommend that you catch up on this. There was a fascinating series about it on PBS that you can watch in installments on YouTube, but there's also plenty of text.
I'm not sure I understand your question so I won't be surprised if arauca doesn't either. But to answer the only one that I'm reading: It's not only possible, but common, for two populations of the same species to evolve independently in different regions, in response to the conditions that prevail there. African and Asian elephants; camels and llamas; the bald eagle and the white-tailed eagle. These were all originally single species that evolved into two (or more).How, though?arauca said:
You'll have to ask a geneticist that question. However, I can tell you that there is not very much genetic diversity in Homo sapiens. So another population of hominoids would not have to be very different from us to be automatically suspected as a separate species.
BTW, please correct your transcription of species names--see my revisions in the quotation above. For starters, since they are in a foreign language (Latin), they must be in italics. Second, there must be a space between the genus and the species. Third, the Genus must be capitalized.
This is a place of science. Please follow proper scientific conventions in your writing.
Because Homo sapiens lived in Africa for about 100,000 years before any members of the species migrated to other continents, so they had a long time to diverge. But once that happened, all the individuals who migrated were members of the same tribe, the San or "Bushmen." (Both migrations were performed by members of the San, despite being 10,000 years apart. Those guys must have been very adventurous!) There was almost no genetic diversity in the small bands of humans who left Africa, so it's no surprise that there's so little genetic diversity in their descendants after a mere 50-60,000 years. The Africans have had 150,000 years to diverge.
The Wikipedia article on beta globin does not even mention this. Please provide a source.
Yes, Fraggle, you answered my question, thank you.
Further to this point...I found this link pretty interesting...what do you all think? I was skeptical, not so much, now.
http://www.newswise.com/articles/ui-led-team-sheds-light-on-ice-age-human-evolution-in-asia
Further to this point...I found this link pretty interesting...what do you all think? I was skeptical, not so much, now.
http://www.newswise.com/articles/ui-led-team-sheds-light-on-ice-age-human-evolution-in-asia
Nor can alien transplantation, but we are not giving that the time of day, why should we give 'from asia and back', we have no evidence for it.
Yes but that is not evidence of 'from asia and back'. And that brings up another problem, evidence against. For example we know homo erectus was in asia all the way up until the arrival of modern man, to make the 'from asia and back" hypothesis hold modern human would have to evolved in asia without displacing homo erectus, return to africa and then began displacing all other hominids!
So far the earliest homo sapian fossils have been found in Africa, if an earlier homo sapien or archaic homo sapien fossil is found in asia, then I'll start to give your idea some thought.
It is grossly improbably that handful of stone age people would decide to walk thousands of miles to set-up life some place else. If we look at the rate of spread of humans through North and South America for example it took several thousands of years with the earliest South American fossils several thousand years younger then North American ones. To move from one habitat to another with nothing but stone tools and survive is a titanic undertaking. Even the buntu expansion which had iron tools and agriculture hardy enough to survive central African climate and disease took at least a thousand years to complete, and had not made it into the south of south africa until the last century because their tropical African agriculture did not grow in temperate South Africa.
Every time you add steps, it become more unlikely, lets look at the steps
'Out of Africa'
1. Modern humans evolved in africa
2. Some of them travel out of africa and colonise the rest of the world, including asia, and killing off all other hominids
'From Asia and back'
1. Modern humans evolved in Asia (despite no fossil evidence for this), do not kill off Homo Erectus in Asia or remain in Asia
2. Migrate to Africa
3. From Africa some of them travel out and colonise the rest of the world, including asia, and killing off all other hominids
The latter requires more steps, more assumptions, and is thus less likely. Direct evidence for this steps is need to change that likelihood.
nothing improbable about it at all. 'stone age people' could readily decide to go where the grass is greener, and get away from those awful erectus kind of people. moving a few miles each year, in only a few centuries an entire tribe might have moved from asia to africa (or vice versa).
we have very few fossils from there simply because that is not where most of the fossil digging has been. nowadays, all the feathered dinosaurs are being found there, because people are now searching in those much older terrains, whereas before we were searching primarily on other continents. our fossil data remains extremely patchy.
and yes, i don't disagree with the data about the 'San'; but there is NO evidence that they 'evolved' there rather than moved there.
You know nothing about living off the land. To survive one must know a lot about the local flora and fauna, the local climate and geography, migrating across a continuant without that knowledge is suicidal and survival highly improbably.
A lot of fossils of hominids have been found if Asia for some time now, this most recent one is mearly the oldest.
There no evidence they were not planted their by aliens either.
the oldest homo sapiens remains, as being from our species, are from ethiopia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omo_remains
it is but a hop, skip and a jump from there to Asia, with the red sea 500 feet lower than present, and shorelines much further out. evidence shows that regions which are now desert were lush with grass and rivers during those ice-ages when the Omo were living in the region of Ethiopia. If we look, there is a good chance we'll find other sapiens remains on the saudi peninsula (which was apparently a lush grassland thick with gazelle, etc. back in the day). and still further east to asia proper. why would they remain only in ethiopia when they were chasing game-herds on annual migrations? that makes no sense. apparently you're not familiar with nomadic travellers living off the land as they follow migration patterns, taking them all over the place.
for all I know, there are other tribes older than the Omo, we just havent' found it yet. I'd suggest looking along the seashore regions, which are now about 400 feet under water.
here's a description of saudi arabia from before the ice-age ending, and how that changed everything:
"The first concrete evidence of human presence in the Arabian Peninsula dates back 15,000 to 20,000 years. Bands of hunter-gatherers roamed the land, living off wild animals and plants.
As the European ice cap melted during the last Ice Age, some 15,000 years ago, the climate in the peninsula became dry. Vast plains once covered with lush grasslands gave way to scrubland and deserts, and wild animals vanished. River systems also disappeared, leaving in their wake the dry river beds (wadis) that are found in the peninsula today.
This climate change forced humans to move into the lush mountain valleys and oases. No longer able to survive as hunter-gatherers, they had to develop another means of survival. As a result, agriculture developed – first in Mesopotamia, then the Nile River Valley, and eventually spreading across the Middle East."
http://www.saudiembassy.net/about/country-information/history.aspx
"The first concrete evidence of human presence in the Arabian Peninsula dates back 15,000 to 20,000 years. Bands of hunter-gatherers roamed the land, living off wild animals and plants.
As the European ice cap melted during the last Ice Age, some 15,000 years ago, the climate in the peninsula became dry. Vast plains once covered with lush grasslands gave way to scrubland and deserts, and wild animals vanished. River systems also disappeared, leaving in their wake the dry river beds (wadis) that are found in the peninsula today.
This climate change forced humans to move into the lush mountain valleys and oases. No longer able to survive as hunter-gatherers, they had to develop another means of survival. As a result, agriculture developed – first in Mesopotamia, then the Nile River Valley, and eventually spreading across the Middle East."
http://www.saudiembassy.net/about/country-information/history.aspx
Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
You don't understand ice ages. So much of the earth's water is locked up in the glaciers and icecaps that precipitation is much less. Africa was in a long drought. Prey animals were dying off, edible plants were getting harder to find, and people were starving to death. This is borne out by digging down for soil samples.
They had to find another place to live, or starve. We have no evidence of other parties of desperate adventurers attempting to find a better life in Asia. There were probably others, but they didn't survive. The San did.
The reason they traveled all the way to Australia is that the weather patterns in southern Asia weren't much different from the ones they were used to in Africa. But due to sheer luck, Australia was a paradise. We also don't know how many of them died along the way, but enough made it to reestablish humanity there. And as Cavalli-Sforza discovered, a few of them got tired of walking and decided to try to make a stand on the southern tip of India. Again, we don't know how many of that group died, but enough survived that their DNA was passed down to the people who live there now. Perhaps the fishing was good.
Unfortunately I don't have notes, but many years ago I read that evidence of human habitation at the very southern tip of South America (the continent, not necessarily Tierra del Fuego) is only 1,000 years newer than the first crossing of Beringia. That's only a few miles per year. Any hearty band of explorers can move that fast.
This is to be expected. There's a tremendous advantage to traveling in an east-west path rather than north-south. Weather patterns are recognizable, and many of the same animals and plants live there.
This is why the Agricultural Revolution didn't spread to the southern regions of Africa. The animals that had already been domesticated and the plants that had already been cultivated would not thrive in the new climate.
This is also why progress was so slow in the New World. The agriculture of the Olmecs would not work north of the Rio Grande, and the agriculture of Peru would not work in Argentina. Every tribe had to start from scratch. The Native Americans in what is now the eastern USA actually did have an Agricultural Revolution, with cultivated plants and domesticated turkeys and rabbits (nobody even tried to domesticate the bison until quite recently!) and networks of villages trading with each other. But the Christian invaders saw to it that they were never allowed to invent their own civilization.
Another aspect of human evolution, which is not biological, is connected to unnatural selection based on choice and free will. Animals and the pre-humans that dominate this discussion evolved via natural selection. This will and choice transition is not about DNA, but when the brain takes the lead leading to modern humans who can use the brain to tweak the DNA via science.
Civilization appears to be the transition time, in which humans, not under natural selection, began to separate from the pre-humans who remained part of natural selection. The latter become extinct and the former take over.
Civilization appears to be the transition time, in which humans, not under natural selection, began to separate from the pre-humans who remained part of natural selection. The latter become extinct and the former take over.
colonization overland across a continent away from the equator is (bar crossing an ocean) the slowest known for almost any large mammal - the quick alteration in environments, the linear distance demand for new local knowledge and new skills, is greater for that than other directions and other circumstances (such as along a coastline).
But not all migrations are that slow. We know of stone age migrations of peoples covering hundreds of miles in a single generation, recent enough to be recorded - there were two of Arctic tribes into regions of the northeastern coast within the past 1000 years, the colonization of New Zealand within the past 3000 years was at first a single wave of migrants that took over most of the North Island coastal regions within a century, and so forth. H sapiens is a rapidly moving and colonizing species - we're the traveling kind. Hunter gatherers, in particular, wander and send out their young men as scouts and track game migrations and move camp over horizons almost compulsively. Along water, this is amplified - born for the beach and the tide flat as we seem to have been. Humans will colonize a coastline as fast as a three year old can walk or a log raft can be poled.
The explanation necessary would not be of the great speed at which early H sapiens (or erectus, for that matter) spread to this or that far flung location, but of what slowed it down or kept it out of wherever we don't find it, especially along an east/west coastline. To get out of Africa, they maybe had to move away from the equator and overland - once that barrier was crossed, there would have been nothing slowing them down between the Arabian peninsula and the far reaches of the Indonesian archipelago. Moving back across that barrier, if it existed as seems likely, would be even slower - not only from the N/S and overland factor, but one would be moving into already colonized lands, a much stickier proposition.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/12/1227_051227_asia_migration.html
a 2005 article on the topic
a 2005 article on the topic