Posted on 07/14/2004 8:53:47 AM PDT by blam
New twist on out-of-Africa theory
Judy Skatssoon
ABC Science Online
Wednesday, 14 July 2004
Homo erectus, the species thought to be the first to leave Africa for Eurasia in the out-of-Africa model of human origin (Image: Science)
Early humans made love, not war, according to new DNA analysis presented at a genetics conference that gives a new twist on the out-of-Africa hypothesis of human origins.
U.S. researcher Professor Alan Templeton of Washington University, St Louis, debunks the prevailing version of the out-of-Africa hypothesis, which says early humans migrated from Africa and wiped out Eurasian populations.
Instead, they bred, he told the Genetics Society of Australia's annual conference in Melbourne this week.
Templeton said his evidence didn't support the so-called replacement theory in which African hominids caused the extinction of other Homo species.
Instead, he said his analysis of the human genome showed prehistoric gene-swapping created a single evolutionary lineage beginning in Africa and ending where we are today.
He looked at mitochondrial DNA, as well as DNA on a range of chromosomes including X and Y.
"The genetic legacy of current humans is predominantly of African origin," he said.
Templeton is the first to suggest expansion out of Africa occurred in three waves: 2 million years ago, 800,000 years ago and 100,000 years ago.
The alternative view suggests that expansion out of Africa occurred twice and caused the genetic extinction of existing populations, with the colonisers later diversifying into separate races.
What about races?
But Templeton said this extinction never happened and a combination of movement and interbreeding meant diversification of races didn't occur.
"We really have to abandon the idea of race. It actually does not reflect the genetic differences we can now measure in an objective fashion."
Templeton said the differences between human populations today were based on geography not genetics.
This meant a Norwegian would be more closely related than a Fijian to someone from sub-Saharan Africa.
"We do see differences in different regions of the world but the best indicator of those differences is simply geographical distance and not things like skin colour."
Templeton said his data was inconclusive on whether interbreeding also occurred with Neanderthals.
But he said there was fossil evidence that this probably occurred, which would imply a bit of Neanderthal could live on in us all.
Australian geneticist Associate Professor Philip Batterham from the University of Melbourne said the research showed humanity was far more closely related that previously thought and that race was a cultural phenomenon.
Templeton's research was published in the journal Nature in March 2002.
The differences we create in terms of race are purely man-made. Do we consider brown horses as a different "race" than spotted horses? The horses certainly see no difference.
Thanks for the ping!
Hair color and eye color are also genetic. But we don't separate brunettes, blondes and red-heads into separate "races". But we do separate on the basis of how flat noses are, round eyes are and by skin color.
AMT,Astra,Browning,Colt........Savage,Tikka, Winchester..I like being literate and collect the "alphabet"...
What would a sloth know about race?
Browning A-Bolt 270 Composite Stock with Leupold Goldring 3X10 50mm Objective lens scope. Is my favorite hunting rifle. Got a lot of stuff in between the Browning and the Ruger.
i agree with you, how can race (used scientifically) be disgarded. bone structures are easily identifiable, seems to me to be just more drivel from pseudo-intellectuals.
That is a difficult truth to tell - Post of the Day nominee!
So they moved into another area, and outbred the local population into extinction? Sounds like what Africans, Mexicans, and Muslims are doing today to Europe and America. Interesting.
Many scholars of the Bible think there are at least two creations of man, the sixth day man, made from gray dust, told to hunt, gather, and have dominion, and the creation of "Adam" sometime after the Sabbath rest, whose name means "red earth", able to blush, whose different command from God was to farm or till the earth.
They feel that in relating the story of Adam and the Garden of Eden, God is not rehashing events from the sixth day, but has moved on to a time past the seventh day. Adam is addressed, by God as an individual, not as "them". When Adams son, Cain, slew his brother, he fled to the surrounding towns inhabited by the sixth day creation of man.
It makes sense and answers questions about how Cain could flee to an inhabited town and marry into that community, when the number of children of Adam and Eve are to that point, only two.
I have noticed that at the end of knowledge, as more is known, the findings always come to conform with the Bible, as with the new knowledge that living things are a result of several spontaneous appearances of several different species, as opposed to all developing from the same single cell organism as was promoted by evolution.
Genesis 6, even relates an attempt by Satan to pollute the human bloodline that Christ would be born in the flesh through, by the marriage of human women to supernatural angels.
Some attempt to say that the "sons of God" were the elite of the community, but that does not jive with all the other references to the "son's of God" in the Old Testament.
So there is still alot to be learned in my opinion.
'Fraid not. Total addict to sugar and caffine (best administed using Mountain Dew...).
This guy's out of date. Genes for racial characteristics have already been identified.
I should've said that he was probably quoted out of context.
Not a sugar consumer myself. We must be from different caves. Good to know you anyway.
That's because skin color breeds true. Eye color doesn't.
With horses, dogs, cats, etc. we call them breeds because their offspring maintain those characteristics.
So, we actually do have various "races" of horses, some highly prized, such as the Arabian and Morgan.
Tell the black man who has sickle cell anemia that the 20 times greater risk he had of getting the disease was just a political construct.
Tell the Jewish couple whose child has Tay-Sacks the fact the disease only occurs in Jews is a political construct.
Race, AFAIK, is not used scientifically, at least not by biologists. Race is only relevant because culture and politics have made it relevant.
bone structures are easily identifiable
Good luck determining someone's race by looking at their skeleton.
What a bizarre interpretation of scripture.
Does a single tear appear on your face when you see a car drive by that was littering?
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