Fans of this blog will recall our long standing reservations about the various Out-of-Africa hypotheses which crowd the field of human paleontology. We’ve mentioned our doubts about the earlier one before (LSS 18 5 23). To be fair, the second one, involving modern Homo sapiens has stood up rather better, in view of all the archaeological, linguistic and genetic evidence which supports it.[1] [2] All of which is no reason not to be glad when someone comes along and upsets the apple cart. Today that someone is Professor Huan Shi, whose work is more than admirably reported on by Matthew Phelan for the Mail. [3]
The jumping -off point for Professor Shi is the Dali skull from Shaanxi province. Not only is it very old (260 000 BCE) for something which displays a lot of modern traits; it’s also a very long way from Africa. He goes on to suggest genetic similarities between early H sapiens in Europe and those in East Asia, distancing both from African centred populations. Finally he rests on the (slightly controversial) theory of Maximum Genetic Diversity, which suggests ancestral populations will exhibit a lower diversity, while derived ones will go higher.
Out thoughts? Since China rejoined the community of civilised nations after 1976 they have made some wonderful contributions to paleontology; so treat this with respect. However: there are even older fossils in parts of Africa, such as Jebel Irhoud at 315 000 BCE, which have modern features.. And all the all the models of linguistic complexity suggest the most complicated phoneme patterns are in African languages, and the least out in the Pacific islands, almost the last places we reached in our wanderings. What if both sides are asking the wrong question?After all, a thousand years is a long time for a powerful top predator. Such a species spreading at only ten miles a year would cover the whole landmasses of Africa and Eurasia in that time. Add a few thousand more and maybe the odd climate fluctuation and instead you would have a population endlessly marching, cross breeding and throwing up all sorts of variations. Of which a few fragments found hundreds of thousands of years later will give only the most cursory understanding. What if our species never began at all but has just carried on evolving, and always will?
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recent_African_origin_of_modern_humans
[2]https://www.nature.com/articles/srep36645
[3]https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-14236961/Scientist-challenges-Africa-theory-human-evolution.html
human evolution #china #homo sapiens #out of africa #lingiustics #genetics #microbiology
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