Posted on 04/23/2005 8:30:41 PM PDT by Lessismore
MILWAUKEE, WISCONSIN--About 1200 researchers gathered near the shores of Lake Michigan here from 5 to 9 April to discuss early Englishmen, the birth of modern humans, and Stone Age weapons.
In the past 15 years, a flood of genetic data has helped propel the Out of Africa theory into the leading explanation of modern human origins. DNA from mitochondria (mtDNA), the Y chromosome, and ancient humans each suggest that the ancestors of all living people arose in Africa some time after 200,000 years ago, swept out of their homeland, and replaced archaic humans around the globe without mixing with them. But at a genetics symposium, two independent groups presented data from the X chromosome hinting that modern humans interbred with other human species: The teams found possible traces of archaic hominids in our genes. "Just as the Y and mtDNA data seemed to have settled it, the new data revive the question [of interbreeding]," says Stanford University's Joanna Mountain, co-organizer of the symposium. "The controversy is not settled." Geneticists Makoto Shimada and Jody Hey of Rutgers University in Piscataway, New Jersey, presented an intriguing haplotype--a set of genetic mutations inherited together--that appears to have ancient roots in Asia rather than Africa. Shimada sequenced a 10.1-kilobase noncoding region in 659 individuals from around the world. Overall, the genetic variations were most frequent in Africa, just as expected if our ancestors were a subset of ancient Africans who migrated out of that continent. But one rare variant, appropriately named haplotype X, appeared in nine individuals from Europe to Oceania but was entirely absent in Africa. Shimada estimated that the haplotype arose 1 million years ago, long before the modern human exodus from Africa. "Haplotype X is difficult to explain by the recent African origins model," says Shimada. "It's very old, it's rare, and it is widespread outside of Africa."
In independent work, geneticist Michael Hammer of the University of Arizona in Tucson offered a similar example. Hammer and postdoc Dan Garrigan identified a 2-million-year-old haplotype in the RRM2P4 region of the X chromosome that is common in East Asia but vanishingly rare in Africa. Their work, published 2 months ago in Molecular Biology and Evolution, raises the possibility that the haplotype arose in very ancient Asian populations, presumably of Homo erectus, an ancient human once found across Asia. "This is what you'd expect if you had introgression" between modern humans and H. erectus, Hammer said.
But at this point several other explanations are possible. Hey of Rutgers acknowledges, for example, that haplotype X may be present in Africa but was missed by spotty sampling in that continent. "Simply observing those [examples] is not sufficient to rule out one model or another," cautions Mountain. "What you need is 10 or 50 loci--one or two is not sufficient." Hammer, for one, thinks that these preliminary data do "speak to some archaic admixture. The few [loci] we've done so far are so suggestive that it gives me great excitement to continue sequencing more loci."
"...that appears to have ancient roots in Asia rather than Africa."
I'm not suprised at all.
Keep your eye on SE Asia, a lot probably happened there while the rest of the world was in an Ice Age. Sundaland would have been a nice warm place to live for thousands of years.
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Modern Humans Made Their Point
Science Magazine | 2005-04-22 | Ann Gibbons
Posted on 04/23/2005 8:34:30 PM PDT by Lessismore
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1389976/posts
I suppose the next item on the agenda will then attempt to explain the origin of each race.
The kits I ordered from National Geographic were delivered promptly. The price, a little more than $100 including postage and handling, seems very reasonable compared to the competition.
CB says check it out.
bump for later
Doubtless this would explain my gigantopithicine waistline.
Read the bible, of course there were at least two types of live styles, one to hunt and gather the other, Adam, was to farm. Then in Genesis six there was inbreeding between human women and the "sons of god" creating a hybrind that had to be wiped out in the flood. At least that is the way a simple reading relates it.
On the other hand it could be cheese burgers.
Dr. Darwin... ...say it ain't so!!! |
Jessy Jackson, Al Sharpton, Louis Farrakhan , and all the race baiters are all sadden now.
Yes, they will be sadden now that there maybe evidence that humans came from SE ASIA and not from Africa and will target their racism more towards Asians now instead of Caucasians.
It would seem to me that the region with the most genetic variations is the go to region not the migrated out of region.
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Make that two of us, out of Africa is bogus.
Most scientists will not touch race except to disavow it.
They can't get funding for race studies unless they diminish the cracker one.
Not a geneticist but I did stay at Holiday Inn last night. Anyway, I *believe* that the most varied region is the oldest because it's had the most time to accumulate variations. Europe and other newer areas have less variation because they were settled later and by a (relatively) few people.
All the research into the past is fascinating but I'd really like to see where scientists think that human evolution is occuring most today. Is it in areas with large numbers of births and deaths? It seems like advanced countries have lower birth rates, which goes counter to evolution.
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