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.
The Homo erectus of China (Peking Man) of 400,000 years ago had specific dental and cranial traits that are unique to present-day Asians.
Explain that, PC-liars.
By "we" does he mean all non-africans, or everyone.
Well, Phoenicians have lived in North Africa for several millennia by now -- a period of time comparable to that from the initial alleged exodus. How come no poeple seem to develop Negroid features because it lives in Africa after migrating from elsewhere?
Is it possible that Homo erectus evolved at several places on earth in stages? The Peking Man would have evolved first into modern man, others evolved later. Would the evolutes all have the same DNA? That hypothesis is popular in China.
This gives me hope that I an all white team will one day win the NBA trophy. Not.
Never the less I'd like to hear it from Pharmboy himself.
That, sir, is a softball. I have been in science my whole life and have a great deal of respect for data. When politics drives pronouncements based on contradictory data it ceases to be science. Stephen Jay Gould is the mother of all anthropology/evolution liars. They disregard contradictory evidence (and there is much).
Further, I infer from your question that you think I have an ulterior motive in lambasting this lunacy, i.e., I am a racist. You, perhaps are a liberal. Read more on the subject starting with the site I linked.
You do not sound like a mensch to me.
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