New fossils suggest human ancestors evolved in Europe, not Africa

[Chris]

What's the basis of that disagreement?

The OP reports the evidence for a European origin. Everything else I've ever read supports out of Africa.

[Tahuyaman]

The OP reports the evidence for a European origin. Everything else I've ever read supports out of Africa.

As as time goes on, we discover things we didn't know. Just because we find eveidence that our ancient ancestory has traces to Europe that doesn't mean we trivialize or deny other origins.

[Chris]

As as time goes on, we discover things we didn't know. Just because we find eveidence that our ancient ancestory has traces to Europe that doesn't mean we trivialize or deny other origins.

Yes, we do, and some discoveries support one theory or the other.

[Mister D]

You have two very different groups that might be vested in a single origin, Religious groups that believe in Adam and Eve and leftist who believe we owe everything we are to Africans.

I'm speaking strictly to scientific theory. I don't take that part of Genesis literally but I also have no quarrel with those who do.

[Chris]

Decided to look into it. According to out-of-Africa theory, citing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recent...modern_humans:

There were at least several "out-of-Africa" dispersals of modern humans, possibly beginning as early as 270,000 years ago, and certainly during 130,000 to 115,000 ago via northern Africa.[8][9][10][11][12][13] These early waves appear to have mostly died out or retreated by 80,000 years ago.[14]

The most significant "recent" wave took place about 70,000 years ago,[6][7] via the so-called "Southern Route", spreading rapidly along the coast of Asia and reaching Australia by around 65,000–50,000 years ago,[15][16][note 2] while Europe was populated by an early offshoot which settled the Near East and Europe less than 55,000 years ago.


Map of the migration of modern humans out of Africa, based on mitochondrial DNA. Colored rings indicate thousand years before present.

[Chris]

And there are competing multireional theories of orgin, citing https://www.nature.com/scitable/cont...ypothesis-6391

Broadly speaking, there are two competing hypotheses on the origin of modern humans: the Out-of-Africa hypothesis and the multiregional hypothesis. Both agree that Homo erectus originated in Africa and expanded to Eurasia about one million years ago, but they differ in explaining the origin of modern humans (Homo sapiens sapiens). The first hypothesis proposes that a second migration out of Africa happened about 100,000 years ago, in which anatomically modern humans of African origin conquered the world by completely replacing archaic human populations (Homo sapiens; Model A). The multiregional hypothesis states that independent multiple origins (Model D) or shared multiregional evolution with continuous gene flow between continental populations (Model C) occurred in the million years since Homo erectus came out of Africa (the trellis theory). A compromised version of the Out-of-Africa hypothesis emphasizes the African origin of most human populations but allows for the possibility of minor local contributions (Model B).

[jimmyz]

White man's ancestor



Black man's ancestor



Yellow man's ancestor



This post brought to you by Genealogy For Dummies

[Peter1469]

I would tend to subscribe to the hypothesis or multiple origins but a European origin is controversial because it flies in the face of decades of evidence and acceptance of the out-of-Africa hypothesis, and because the evidence for an out-of-Europe origin is so far meager. Of course, science must remain open to all possibilities.

Modern man is likely out of Anatolia.

[Mister D]

Modern man is likely out of Anatolia.

Why do you say that?

[zachroidott]

The OP reports the evidence for a European origin. Everything else I've ever read supports out of Africa.

There are still out of Asia proponents. They’re a small minority, of course, and I don’t know how much they’re respected in their respective fields. Paradigms get reactionary.