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To: Jed Eckert
Interesting review on Amazon:

This book is the first book I have ever read which routinely cites Wikipedia and YouTube. Is this going to be a trend? It may tend to discredit his scholarship. His gratuitous (and often funny) criticisms of black people also tend to bring his serious thinking in to disrepute. For example in a discussion of prognathism he cites Mike Tyson biting a piece out of Evander Holyfield's ear. LOL.

Fuerle is a bit of a crank. The version of Out of Africa that he attacks is is also an extreme crank theory. Responsible scientists like Cavalli-Sforza don't actually believe that all modern attributes evolved in Africa. Fuerle attacks essentially a straw man.

Main stream anthropology currently believes that there was a migration out of Africa about one or two million years ago. This first migration is not controversial. The Out of Africa theory does not refer to this migration of Home Erectus but to a more recent second migration of Homo Sapiens that took place about 100,000 years ago. That there was some sort of migration of Africans or at least African genes is also not controversial because modern humans have gracile (tropical) bodies. Neanderthals had much more robust bodies. Almost everyone attributes the long legs and light skeletons that we have today to an infusion of genes from tropical Africa around 50,000 to 150,000 years ago.

However most main stream aanthropologists recognize that the tropical body of 100,000 years ago did not bring about a modern mind. Cavalli-Sforza refers to an another event of about 50,000 years ago in the Middle East when the true modern mind emerged. Cultural artifacts suddenly arose that were clearly different from any created before in either Europe or Africa. This is the mainstream viewpoint. Fuerle misrepresents current thinking. He creates a strawman that he can demolish.

Fuerle cites many studies and presents many theories. Most of the time he is correct but at least some of the time he is flat out wrong. His discussion of Toba and ice ages is very wrong. Even Al Gore has a better grip on paleoclimate than Fuerle.

Finally Fuerle is an anti-semite. To me this is evidence of a man who is consumed by political agendas not a man who is objective. He finishes his book with a number of virtually unreadable political chapters. Far from being sensible and well reasoned ideas that proceed logically from the material in the early chapters he virtually froths at the mouth.

104 posted on 12/05/2013 4:28:05 PM PST by BenLurkin (This is not a statement of fact. It is either opinion or satire; or both.)
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To: BenLurkin
Stranger In A New Land

Image: JOHN GURCHE PORTRAIT OF A PIONEER With a brain half the size of a modern one and a brow reminiscent of Homo habilis, this hominid is one of the most primitive members of our genus on record. Paleoartist John Gurche reconstructed this 1.75-million-year-old explorer from a nearly complete teenage H. erectus skull and associated mandible found in Dmanisi in the Republic of Georgia. The background figures derive from two partial crania recovered at the site.

Image: EDWARD BELL AFRICAN EXODUS Hominids on the move: the Dmanisi finds establish that humans left Africa early--before 1.75 million years ago. Colonization of East Asia occurred by 1.1 million years ago, but hominids do not appear to have reached western Europe until far later. Perhaps carnivore competitors or inhospitable climate hindered early settling in that region.

105 posted on 12/05/2013 6:23:51 PM PST by blam
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