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DNA Study Yields Clues on Early Humans' First Migration
NYT ^ | 05/13/05 | NICHOLAS WADE

Posted on 05/12/2005 6:44:45 PM PDT by TigerLikesRooster

May 13, 2005

DNA Study Yields Clues on Early Humans' First Migration

By NICHOLAS WADE

By studying the DNA of an ancient people in Malaysia, a team of geneticists says it has illuminated many aspects of how modern humans migrated from Africa.

The geneticists say there was only one migration of modern humans out of Africa; that it took a southern route to India, Southeast Asia and Australia; and that it consisted of a single band of hunter-gatherers, probably just a few hundred people strong.

Because these events occurred in the last Ice Age, when Europe was at first too cold for human habitation, the researchers say, it was populated only later, not directly from Africa but as an offshoot of the southern migration. The people of this offshoot would presumably have trekked back through the lands that are now India and Iran to reach the Near East and Europe.

The findings depend on analysis of mitochondrial DNA, a type of genetic material inherited solely through the female line. They are reported today in Science by a team of geneticists led by Dr. Vincent Macaulay of the University of Glasgow.

Everyone in the world can be placed on a single family tree, in terms of their mitochondrial DNA, because everyone has inherited that piece of DNA from a single woman, the mitochondrial Eve, who lived some 200,000 years ago.

There were, of course, many other women in that ancient population. But over the generations, one mitochondrial DNA replaced all the others through the process known as genetic drift.

With the help of mutations that have built up on the one surviving copy, geneticists can arrange people in lineages and estimate the time of origin of each lineage.

With this approach, Dr. Macaulay's team calculates that the emigration from Africa occurred 65,000 years ago, pushed along the coasts of India and Southeast Asia and reached Australia by 50,000 years ago, the date of the earliest known archaeological site there.

The Malaysian people whom the geneticists studied are the Orang Asli. The term means "original men" in Malay.

They are probably descended from this first migration, because they have several ancient mitochondrial DNA lineages that are found nowhere else.

These lineages are 42,000 to 63,000 years old, the geneticists say. Subgroups of the Orang Asli, like the Semang, have probably been able to remain intact because they adapted to the harsh existence of living in forests, said Dr. Stephen Oppenheimer, the member of the geneticists' team who collected blood samples in Malaysia.

Some archaeologists theorize that Europe was colonized by a second migration that traveled north out of Africa. This fits with the earliest known modern human sites, dating from 45,000 years ago in the Levant and 40,000 years ago in Europe.

Dr. Macaulay's team says there could have been just one migration, not two, because the mitochondrial lineages of everyone outside Africa converge at the same time to the same common ancestors. Therefore, people from the southern migration, probably in India, must have struck inland to reach the Levant and, later, Europe, the geneticists say.

Dr. Macaulay said it was not clear why just one group succeeded in leaving Africa. One possibility is that because the migration occurred by continuous population expansion, leaving people in place at each site, the first emigrants may have blocked others from leaving. Another is that the terrain was so difficult for hunter-gatherers, who carry all their belongings with them, that only one group succeeded in the exodus.

Although there is general but not complete agreement that modern humans emigrated from Africa in recent times, there is still a difference between geneticists and archaeologists about its a timing. Archaeologists tend to view the genetic data as providing invaluable information about the interrelationship between groups, but they place less confidence in the dates derived from genetic family trees.

There is no evidence of modern humans outside Africa earlier than 50,000 years ago, said Dr. Richard Klein, an archaeologist at Stanford. Also, if something happened 65,000 years ago to allow people to leave Africa, as Dr. Macaulay's team suggests, there should surely be some record of that in the archaeological record in Africa, Dr. Klein said. Yet signs of modern human behavior do not appear in Africa until 50,000 years ago, the transition between the Middle and Later Stone Ages, he said.

"If they want to push such an idea, find me a 65,000-year-old site with evidence of human occupation outside of Africa," Dr. Klein said.

Geneticists counter that many of the coastline sites occupied by the first emigrants would now lie under water, because the sea level has risen more than 200 feet since the last Ice Age. Dr. Klein expressed reservations about that argument, noting that people would not wait for the slowly rising sea levels to overwhelm them but would build new sites farther inland.

Dr. Macaulay said genetic dates had improved in recent years, now that it is affordable to decode the whole ring of mitochondrial DNA, and not just a small segment.

But he said he agreed "that archaeological dates are much firmer than the genetic ones" and that it was possible his 65,000-year date for the African exodus was too old.

Dr. Macaulay's team has been able to estimate the size of the population in Africa from which the founders descended. The calculation indicates a maximum of 550 women. The true size may have been considerably less. This points to a single group of hunter-gatherers, perhaps a couple of hundred strong, as the ancestors of all humans outside of Africa, Dr. Macaulay said.


 


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Front Page News; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: africa; anthropology; archaeology; deoxyribonucleicacid; genetics; ggg; godsgravesglyphs; history; human; malaysia; migration; mitochondrialdna; outofafrica; singlewave
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1 posted on 05/12/2005 6:44:46 PM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
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To: TigerLikesRooster; blam; SunkenCiv

Ping!


2 posted on 05/12/2005 6:45:07 PM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
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To: Pharmboy; CobaltBlue

Ping


3 posted on 05/12/2005 6:46:01 PM PDT by martin_fierro (< |:)~)
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To: TigerLikesRooster
National Geographic Genographic Project
4 posted on 05/12/2005 6:48:11 PM PDT by martin_fierro (< |:)~)
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To: PatrickHenry

Out-of-Africa ping!


5 posted on 05/12/2005 6:50:41 PM PDT by AntiGuv (™)
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To: PatrickHenry

Boink.


6 posted on 05/12/2005 6:50:51 PM PDT by general_re ("Frantic orthodoxy is never rooted in faith, but in doubt." - Reinhold Niebuhr)
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To: TigerLikesRooster
Thanks.

I just posted this similar article a little while ago.

Seafood Was Spur For Man's First Migration

7 posted on 05/12/2005 6:57:04 PM PDT by blam
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To: VadeRetro; Junior; longshadow; RadioAstronomer; Doctor Stochastic; js1138; Shryke; RightWhale; ...
EvolutionPing
A pro-evolution science list with over 270 names.
See the list's description at my freeper homepage.
Then FReepmail to be added or dropped.

8 posted on 05/12/2005 7:09:52 PM PDT by PatrickHenry (<-- Click on my name. The List-O-Links for evolution threads is at my freeper homepage.)
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To: TigerLikesRooster
I think blam already posted this.
9 posted on 05/12/2005 7:13:25 PM PDT by balrog666 (A myth by any other name is still inane.)
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To: TigerLikesRooster
"These lineages are 42,000 to 63,000 years old, the geneticists say. Subgroups of the Orang Asli, like the Semang, have probably been able to remain intact because they adapted to the harsh existence of living in forests, said Dr. Stephen Oppenheimer, the member of the geneticists' team who collected blood samples in Malaysia.

Here is a link to Oppenheimer's excellent migratory map, Journey Of Mankind

10 posted on 05/12/2005 7:15:00 PM PDT by blam
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To: TigerLikesRooster; El Gato; JudyB1938; Ernest_at_the_Beach; Robert A. Cook, PE; lepton; LadyDoc; ...
Tiger, I was about to post this article. Thank you for not unnecessarily excerpting a NY Times article. It's one of the Times' few virtues.

FReepmail me if you want on or off my health and science ping list.

11 posted on 05/12/2005 7:21:46 PM PDT by neverdem (May you be in heaven a half hour before the devil knows that you're dead.)
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To: TigerLikesRooster

Grain of salt alert.


12 posted on 05/12/2005 7:52:30 PM PDT by guitarist
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To: TigerLikesRooster

I suspect some dogs went with them.


13 posted on 05/12/2005 7:56:10 PM PDT by alphadog (2nd Bn. 3rd Marines Vietnam, class of 68)
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To: TigerLikesRooster

Was this the time frame that Mt. Tambora blew?


14 posted on 05/12/2005 8:06:10 PM PDT by PzLdr ("The Emperor is not as forgiving as I am" - Darth Vader)
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To: PatrickHenry

Thanks for the ping!


15 posted on 05/12/2005 8:23:00 PM PDT by Alamo-Girl
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To: blam

What a great map! I saw your reference on another thread to some books by Oppenheimer. I'll have to look them up. Thanks.


16 posted on 05/12/2005 8:29:45 PM PDT by facedown (Armed in the Heartland)
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To: martin_fierro

Thanks for the ping...very interesting. (And I still haven't gotten the answer from the genographic site on my cheek scraping).


17 posted on 05/12/2005 8:50:13 PM PDT by Pharmboy ("Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God")
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To: TigerLikesRooster

sigh, typical evolutionist "just so" stories.

According to these evIlutionists, all humans on Earth are related by a common ancestor. But this is only their wild-guess assumption, they have no evidence.

Think about it. They believe the races came about by random chance and chaos?? LOL no way! The races are too complex and ordered to come about by chance. The Europeans, Africans, Asians, South Americans, etc must all have been created by an intelligent designer as seperate kinds. All were created fully formed.

Noone has ever seen a new race evolve, even though scientists have been trying to do it in labs for decades! The reason is because the evolution of a new race requires an increase of information which is disproven by the 2nd law of thermodynamics.

Genetic similarities between races are NOT evidence of common descent! They are equally evidence of COMMON DESIGN!

What gets me is some Creationists accept this rubbish and think all races share a common ancestor with some "Adam and Eve". Can't they see that this is a materialist-atheism belief as it denies God-creation of the races in favour of the religion of random nature-chance?


18 posted on 05/12/2005 8:53:44 PM PDT by bobdsmith
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To: Pharmboy; CobaltBlue

I just checked my number -- all they can confirm is that they've received the sample. It's probably gonna be at least another month before I know anything.


19 posted on 05/12/2005 9:10:56 PM PDT by martin_fierro (< |:)~)
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To: TigerLikesRooster

YEC INTREP


20 posted on 05/12/2005 9:55:36 PM PDT by LiteKeeper (The radical secularization of America is happening)
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