Some of my distant relatives work for Geico.
Posted on 05/22/2005 12:27:12 PM PDT by Lessismore
Abstract
Ten years ago, evidence from genetics gave strong support to the “recent Africa origin” view of the evolution of modern humans, which posits that Homo sapiens arose as a new species in Africa and subsequently spread, leading to the extinction of other archaic human species. Subsequent data from the nuclear genome not only fail to support this model, they do not support any simple model of human demographic history. In this paper, we study a process in which the modern human phenotype originates in Africa and then advances across the world by local demic diffusion, hybridization, and natural selection. While the multiregional model of human origins posits a number of independent single locus selective sweeps, and the “out of Africa” model posits a sweep of a new species, we study the intermediate case of a phenotypic sweep. Numerical simulations of this process replicate many of the seemingly contradictory features of the genetic data, and suggest that as much as 80% of nuclear loci have assimilated genetic material from non-African archaic humans.
a) Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, India 208016
b) Department of Anthropology, University of Utah, 270S 1400E, Salt Lake City, UT 84112, USA
c) Department of Anthropology, University of Utah, 270S 1400E, Salt Lake City, UT 84112, USA
Received 30 June 2004; accepted 8 February 2005. Available online 6 May 2005.
Keywords: Modern human origins; Multiregional hypothesis; Out of Africa hypothesis; Phenotype sweep
Somehow I feel relieved. I was never comfortable with the idea that human life began in Africa.
Would you feel better if it began in Newark?
One of my ancestors was a dinosauer but, I don't brag
about it.
Dinosaurier? Deutscher?
According to the Bible, Adam named all the animals.
Lions live in Africa.
Adam named the lions.
Adam was in Africa.
I'm sure Louis Leakey would rather humans had originated in San Tropez near a nice cafe.
:-)
sure....
The only tenuous contribution Africa can claim towards humanity and modern civilization is as the source of proto-humans.
Take that away, and Africa might as well be in Beta Centauri.
Insensitive racist homophobe!
Ahhh... But did he name the duck-billed platypus?
Mark
Penguins!
Dammit, hold everything.
Penguins are in Antarctica.
Q.E.D.
Antarctica is the home of the human race.
Some of my distant relatives work for Geico.
That's good news!
Why not?
Also note that the headline is misleading -- it doesn't refute "the idea that human life began in Africa" (in fact, it seems to support that idea), it only refutes "an exclusively African origin of [modern] humans".
I don't have the paper in front of me, but from the abstract, it sounds as if it has no conflict with the large amounts of evidence indicating that ancestral hominids first arose in Africa. It's just saying that modern humans as we know them today didn't spring forth as a single lineage in Africa and then spread to the rest of the globe -- instead, there were hominids and/or "not-quite modern" humans already around (from prior radiations) and that modern humans formed as a result of a novel lineage someplace (perhaps still Africa) *and* subsequent mixing with pre-existing (but not modern-type) humans.
In short, we may be mutts instead of purebreds. ;-)
What made you think I was taking anything about this tread seriously? :)
Galapagos Islands would work too...they have penguins. But no lions.
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