Posted on 02/27/2002 4:56:58 PM PST by blam
New Out-of-Africa Theory Unveiled
By Larry O'Hanlon, Discovery News
Leaving the Mother Country
Feb. 25 — The human family just got even smaller.
Everyone outside of Africa — Asians, Europeans, Native Americans, Southeast Asians, Australian Aborigines, etc. — came from the same small band of humans that left the mother continent some 80,000 years ago by way of Ethiopia, according to a new theory unveiled Monday by geneticists and DNA detectives.
"No, we haven't found the bones of the original Eve," said DNA tracker Stephen Oppenheimer of Oxford University in a press teleconference.
Instead, researchers have followed the trail of mitochondrial DNA, which we inherit unchanged from our mothers, and backtracked down the branching tree of the human family throughout the world.
If the mitochondrial DNA story is correct, then we all descend from a woman who lived in Africa 150,000 years ago, said geneticist Martin Richards of Huddersfield University in England, who also took part in the briefing.
Oppenheimer and Huddersfield will appear in "The Real Eve," a Discovery Channel documentary premiering on April 21.
What's more, all non-Africans come from a small group of people who ventured out of Africa some 80,000 years ago, perhaps because of climate changes along the Red Sea shore that made life there too difficult, he said.(maybe it dried up during the Ice Age, huh?)
Genetic evidence of that small band can be found today in India, said Oppenheimer. "In India, all of the early lines that gave rise to Asians and Europeans are found in great profusion and great antiquity," he said.
For years anthropologists have debated whether humans left Africa by a northern route — via the present-day Suez Canal region — or by a southern route, via a short-lived isthmus connecting Ethiopia to Yemen at the southern end of the Red Sea. Some researchers have even suggested that Europeans descend from the people of the northern exodus and the rest of non-Africans from the people of the southern exodus.
But the DNA just doesn't support dual routes, said Oppenheimer and Richards.
"The fact that we look different is because we live in different environments," said Oppenheimer. "(But) we are really, truly the same under the skin."
The single exodus theory also meshes well with other genetic and archeological discoveries. Last year, researchers working on the Human Genome Project reported that the pool of human genetic material is startlingly small, implying we are a young species and come from a very small group of Africans.
However, not everyone is convinced of the single group theory, said paleontologist Tim White of the University of California at Berkeley. "My sense in it is that we're not close to the bottom line yet," he told Discovery News.
Genetics has yielded some new data to the mix, he said, but the smoke hasn't yet cleared enough to see the details of exactly when and where modern humans came out of Africa.
I bet H. erectus was very, very good at math...
There is reasonable evidence that the Lemba people are genetically related to Jews, although thyey look quite African.
I think it matters, after a population shift, who mates with whom. Native men probably seldom mate with invader women, while invader men probably routinely mate with native women.
Over time, this will get the "Y" lineage and the mtDNA out of sync.
Is that why whites and blacks have much different ratios of slow twitch muscle fiber to quick twitch muscle fiber?
What is it about the thought of a common and recent African ancestor, that seems to bother you so much?
Mensch. Thank you for asking this question.
I don't understand that. What's PC about it?
Does this mean that I'm now entitled to reparations? Oh Joy!
Wait a minute. I guess this means I'd owe them to myself.
Never mind.
Explain that, PC-liars.
If I understand NPR correctly, (a big IF) the theory is that these early humanoids (including the Neanderthals) represent an evolutionary dead end, they have left no present day descendants. So the theory is at consistent, at least.
Personally, I'll keep an open mind.
It amazes me that the same people who argue against the existence of races, always seem to pump up the importance of the non-white ones. You can't have it both ways.
And, please let me again say: there is no doubt that the line that eventually would give rise to humans arose in Africa. The battle is about when the key "Out of Africa" event occured to make us fully human.
Interesting (although I don't see why anyone would view the first rung of the human evolutionary ladder as a desirable claim to fame).
Good point; but, if we combine this issue with their other issue about "all peoples of the world are essentially born with the same intelligence and it is really the environment that counts" we can get to an interesting place, eh?
Yup. Mungo Man (Australia) is an example. I happen to believe that we are Neanderthal.
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