The Yahoo story article about "Out of Afica" start of mankind is a farce.John Hawks Univ.Wisc, is right

Question

Taking one or several skulls from millions of years ago, can not prove fact 340 millions years later.The group of researchers trying to prove a "theory" to write a book about "Out of Africa"

to state a 'pin-pint' place & time mankind began, is absurd.

Answer 1

It's not a farce. The original skulls that tell the start of the story are the beginning. It is the spread of the upright ape across the continents that is being mapped. Don't sneer at the scientists, it's not their fault if you don't like it!

Answer 2

Adam and Eve lived in the same place where Baghdad is located, so you must be right

Answer 3

The skulls are from up to 50,000 years ago. There were not "several skulls", there were over 4,500 from 105 different regions on Earth. This confirmed the single point of origin theory, and showed that humans originated in the South East region of Africa, as most scientists in this field have thought for many years. The other main scientific theory, that of several origins, which then merged through breeding, while it has its supporters, does not have strength of evidence as does the Out of Africa theory.

See the Scientific American article below.

To ignore evidence is to remain ignorant.

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Answer 4

I think you are misreading John Hawk's hypothesis on out of Africa.  He, like many of us, suspects some genes from a more ancient line of hominoids "introgressed" into the Sapien genome as they moved into areas occupied by them. Bruce Lahn's team of genetic researchers has some supporting evidence that leads us to suspect both the "regional & out of Africa" views will have to compromise to some degree.  The majority of H.Sapien genes obviously come out of Africa, but it appears they did interbreed at least once in the Mid East.

The Neanderthal Genome is targeted for a complete sequencing within 2 years & this should provide us with a wealth of information.  Unfortunately we have no H. Erectus DNA to work with as of yet, so unless we find a gene in Asians that obviously introgressed to H.Sapien... that question will go unresolved.

The wonderful thing about DNA is that it is not subjective like so many decisions made by anthropologists when they examine bones or fossiles. DNA does not lie.

I will go out on a limb here & offer some "opinions" on Europeans:  Because of a closer & longer association with Neanderthal, Europeans are likely to have scarfed up more Neanderthal genes than most other H.sapiens migrating to Asia did.  Therefore, since the Neanderthal had occupied the colder climates for at least 300K before H.Sapien arrived, they most likely had very light skin, light eyes & hair... causing the unique conditions found in Northern Europeans.

Answer 5

I agree that it is a farce and it shows the rediculous state of paleoanthropology today.  In my opinion, the out of Africa theory is hidden racism (my suspicion) or simply assuming a greater knowledge than exists today.  For example, Homo floresiensis shows traits of early Homo Habilis (2 millions years old plus) as well as Astralopithecus.  This tends to argue that something migrated out of Africa well over two million years ago and into Eurasia.  This is confirmed with Georgia fossils found in Eurasia that are 1.8 million years old.  The out of Africa crowd, if they stepped back and were objective, would realize that ancient hominids outside of Africa, insert doubt as to where the hominids evolved.  Miocene apes (lets say 12 million years ago) seemed to move out of Africa, evolved in Eurasia and moved back to Africa.  This pattern probably has been occuring since then in my opinion.  There is no way to know. I get so frustrated by paleotologists that seem completely unwilling to accurate assess how little we know and how incomplete the fossil evidence is.  The problem is that the out of Africa theory has evolved into an orthodoxy and psuedo-religion in my opinion.

What does the evidence really say regarding more variability in Africa.  For me this is almost a DUH question.  There are several indiginous races in Africa, Arabs, ******, Pigmys, Kung!, Oriental (in Madagascar), etc.   Does this indicate that all man moved out of a single place or simply that there are many races near there.  I think  there are other explanations.