Maybe, but I'd like to see similar studies done in the Indus Valley, Indonesia, Australia (Aboriginals of course), South Africa, China and a few other spots. The "Out of Africa" premise may be true but I've always wondered why no one has tested an "Into Africa" thesis. Maybe they have and I'm just not aware of it.
Your other suggestions for the origin are definitely in the running, IMO.
Ancient Aussie
11:43 09 January 01
A man who died about 60,000 years ago in Australia could force a rethink of our theory of human origins.
Researchers in Australia have accomplished the extremely difficult feat of extracting DNA from his skeleton and were astonished to find the sequence is unique, matching nothing seen before.
The DNA is the oldest ever recovered from human remains. It shows that while the man is completely anatomically modern, he came from a genetic lineage that is now extinct. This finding challenges the prevailing theory that all modern humans are descended from a group of people who migrated from Africa around 100,000 years ago.
"It's remarkable - totally unpredicted," says anthropologist Alan Mann of the University of Pennsylvania.
Alan Thorne of the Australian National University in Canberra, who led the new research, says: "A simplistic 'Out Of Africa' model is no longer tenable."
But not all experts agree. "The genetic evidence is equivocal," says Colin Groves, of the ANU. "The African origin model stands or falls by the fossil evidence. In my opinion, it stands."
The new research contradicts a recent study of mitochondrial DNA, which supported the Out of Africa theory (New Scientist online, 6 December 2000).
Family trees
The remains of Mungo Man were found on the shores of Lake Mungo in south-eastern Australia in 1974.
In 1995, a team led by Thorne began an attempt to extract genetic material from the remains. Gregory Adcock and his colleagues at CSIRO Plant Industry managed to replicate and sequence a single gene from Mungo Man's mitochondria. The small genome of these cell powerhouses is passed down the female line.
Simon Easteal, an evolutionary geneticist at ANU, then set about analysing the sequence and comparing it with sequences of the same gene from nine other early Australians - ranging in age from 8,000 to 15,000 years - as well as 3,453 contemporary people from around the world, chimpanzees, bonobos and two European Neanderthals.
According to Easteal's evolutionary tree, the line that led to the most recent common ancestor of contemporary people, includes the ancient Australians but excludes Mungo Man.
"We can say with a high degree of confidence that modern people arrived in Australia before the new lineage [of the most recent common ancestor] arrived," Easteal says.