There were THREE types of ancient humans

[DJKillaQueen]

But the theory of humans originating from Africa IS based on DNA exploration. It's not dream't up out of thin air!

Basic expanation of why mitochondrial DNA tells us we migrated out of Africa

And note the important point that we are talking about the species of human we are today and it's origins....not the origins of the other know groups/ species of mankind that died out (although even the article you reference shows the other species as migrating out of Africa too).

And did you not close your op with the following statement?

Commonsense tells us humans didn't all evolve in Africa and somehow colonise the world (a scientific myth).

An opinion made by you that shows an ignorance of broadly accepted scientific evidence......

You've only got to look around you to tell we're not all from the same stock.

A common claim of the ultimately discreditted Eugenics theory....I'll take scientific explanation over your version of common sense any day!

[SeanMacGabhann]

8 times? 8????

[DJKillaQueen]

Spelling mistakes and poor sight due to having the lurgy at the moment ...lol.....

[Huguenot]

"my point is, if it is not true that human origins originated in Africa then your belief in that falsehood was as silly as you regard the story of Adam and Eve being silly"

No silverfox, there is no equivalence here.

An assertion that we are an alien experiment placed on earth, or descendants of the tooth fairy would be as daft as Adam and Eve, since there is no evidence for any of them.

The 'out of africa' theory isn't even a belief - it's a best estimate derived from the huge depth of evidence currently at hand. If other evidence comes to light that challenges it, you'll be impressed with the pace at which science accepts the error and revises the theory. Religion on the other hand would imprison the heretics.

You didn't need to mention the word religion in your post for it to be an obviously religious invocation. The case for this is supported by the fact that you readily jumped at the religious debate it fostered.

[Brendan]

Can I just reassure the Daily Mail reading public that just because the current scientific evidence suggests that the modern day populations of anatomically modern humans outside of Africa originated from a migration about 50K years ago out of the continent it doesn't mean that you are actually black.

[siousxiesue]

:))

[silverfox]

Okay, let's take some of the points made by DJKillaQueen where she quotes what I actually said, not what people imagine I said or would prefer I had said to suit their purposes.

DJKillaQueen said:

"But the theory of humans originating from Africa IS based on DNA exploration. It's not dream't up out of thin air! ..."

Wrong. The theory of humans originating from Africa is based on bone fragments and teeth found in Africa. As a result of recent discoveries some scientists think one group of early human ancestors left Africa between 300,000 and 400,000 years ago and quickly split up. One branch evolved into the Neanderthals who spread into Europe, while the other moved east and became Denisovans.

Homo sapiens discovered in Middle Awash, Ethiopia, from 160,000 years ago were believed to be the oldest 'modern' human beings. Then around 70,000 years ago there was another wave of migration when modern humans quit Africa. These were our ancestors and they first encountered and interbred with Neanderthals - leaving traces of Neanderthal DNA in the genetic code of all non-Africans alive today. One group of modern humans later came into contact with Denisovans, leaving traces of Denisovan DNA in the humans who settled in Melanesia.

DNA, that is sequenced mitochondrial DNA, or mtDNA, has only been used in the last 10 to 15 years to analyse these bones. But mtDNA?inherited only from mothers?contains far less information about a person's genetic makeup than DNA found in the nucleus of a cell, or nuclear DNA (see a quick genetics overview https://genographic.nationalgeographic.com/genographic/lan/en/overview.html).

However the Cradle of Mankind theory has been called into question over the past 30 years as more anomalies are discovered. Recent discoveries of early human remains in China and Spain have cast doubt on the 'Out of Africa' theory and the new discovery of pre-historic human remains by Israeli university explorers call into question these earlier theories.

Archeologists from Tel Aviv University (using mtDNA and nuclear DNA sequencing) have found eight human-like teeth found in the Qesem cave near Rosh Ha?Ayin - 10 miles from Israel?s international airport - are 400,000 years old, from the Middle Pleistocene Age, making them the earliest remains of homo sapiens yet discovered anywhere in the world. The findings of Professor Avi Gopher and Dr Ran Barkai of the Institute of Archeology at Tel Aviv University, published last week in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, suggest that modern man did not originate in Africa as previously believed, but in the Middle East.

So the problem for the Out of Africa theory now is that unless older bones/teeth are found in Africa then the Middle East would appear to be the Cradle for early homo sapiens. Further, the implication of this is an 'Into Africa' migration with early homo sapiens crossing the land bridge from the Middle East and following the coast down to what is now Ethiopia.

DJKillaQueen said:

"And did you not close your op with the following statement?

Commonsense tells us humans didn't all evolve in Africa and somehow colonise the world (a scientific myth).

An opinion made by you that shows an ignorance of broadly accepted scientific evidence...... "

As above, this broadly accepted scientific evidence is now in question. A cursory glance at the serious scientific literature on the subject shows, as would be expected, that the scientists have never claimed the theory to be correct. Rather that mtDNA tends to support the view ... or it can be inferred that ...

Further, if this latest Israeli study is correct it substantiates what many archeologists have long suspected, that modern homo sapiens sapiens are the result of interbreeding between earlier forms of homo sapiens

DJKillaQueen said:

" 'You've only got to look around you to tell we're not all from the same stock'.

A common claim of the ultimately discreditted Eugenics theory....I'll take scientific explanation over your version of common sense any day!"

Taken together with a May DNA study that found Neanderthals also interbred with modern human ancestors http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/05/100506-science-neanderthals-humans-mated-interbred-dna-gene/, the Denisovan finding suggests there was much more interbreeding among different human types than previously thought, Stanford University geneticist Brenna Henn said.

"In the actual archaeological record, people have been talking about this for a long time. ... But before six months ago, there was no genetic evidence for any admixture between archaic humans and modern humans," said Henn, who co-authored an article accompanying the study in the journal Nature.

This "new twist" in human evolution adds substantial new evidence that different types of humans?so-called modern humans and Neanderthals, modern humans and Denisovans, and perhaps even Denisovans and Neanderthals?mated and bore offspring, experts say.

"We don't think the Denisovans went to Papua New Guinea," located at the northwestern edge of the Pacific region called Melanesia, explained study co-author Bence Viola, an anthropologist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.

"We think the Denisovan population inhabited most of eastern Eurasia in the same way that Neanderthals inhabited most of western Eurasia," Viola said. "Our idea is that the ancestors of Melanesians met the Denisovans in Southeast Asia and interbred, and the ancestors of Melanesians then moved on to Papua New Guinea."

(See "Interspecies Sex: Evolution's Hidden Secret?")

If modern humans and Denisovan humans were separate species, their hybrid children probably wouldn't have been able to reproduce. But the hybrids apparently were able to have babies, otherwise the Denisovan DNA couldn't have been passed down to today's Papua New Guineans. Therefore, study co-author Viola reasoned, Denisovans and modern humans probably weren't separate species.

As scientists "produce evidence that Denisovans interbred with modern humans (as did Neanderthals) then the implication is that modern humans, Denisovans and Neanderthals are all subspecies of Homo sapiens," he said.

In short, if some of our early human ancestors encountered and interbred with Neanderthals - leaving traces of Neanderthal DNA in the genetic code of all non-Africans alive today and a second group of modern humans later came into contact with Denisovans, leaving traces of Denisovan DNA in the humans who settled in Melanesia, genetically we are not all from the same stock.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1341973/Did-humans-come-Middle-East-Africa-Scientists-forced-write-evolution-modern-man.html#ixzz19SfzVCyJ

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1340830/There-THREE-types-ancient-humans-30-000-year-old-finger-fossil-new-species.html#

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/12/101222-new-human-species-dna-nature-science-evolution-fossil-finger/

[HAL9000]

Silverfox - very well argued: 10/10.

The 'new twist,' as you put it, based on nuclear DNA is not supported by mtDNA analysis: this raises some interesting opportunities for speculation.

In some closely related species, such as the horse and the donkey, for example, fertile and infertile hybrids are possible: the mule (offspring of a male donkey and a female horse) and the hinny (offspring of a male horse and a female donkey). All male mules and most female mules are sterile. Almost all hinnys are sterile.

In the case of H. sapiens hybrids it is possible that only (some) males were fertile - which would explain why no hybrid mtDNA has been observed (mtDNA being passed down through the female lineage).

Conversely, it may be that only H. sapiens males interbred with non-sapiens females. A similar situation is observed in modern mixed societies, where, for example, black males tend to have far more offspring with white females than white males with black females.

Of course, there may be many other factors at work here - this area of research is still very new.

[Huguenot]

I don't really get the issue here:

The 'Garden of Eden' is a creation myth designed to establish social hierarchies (in particular gender roles and religious authority) and political power structures (original sin and obedience). If you challenge it the you challenge the entire system.

'Out of Africa' is merely a hypothecation made upon the data at hand. It doesn't underpin any social or political structures, and certainly doesn't act as a foundation for scientific method (which is a process of rational investigation, not a religion or a political system). In short it's largely academic. New insight into human history doesn't suddenly make the 'Garden of Eden' more plausible - Eden is a literary conceit, a moral fable, a 'creation myth' like thousands of others.

Genetic diversification takes place over long periods of time, and in the initial stages emerging new species are impossible to differentiate from each other. Pronounced differences across the evolutionary tree usually stem from an initial divergence followed by periods of isolation.

The effectiveness of interbreeding is entirely down to how far they may have diverged during the isolation period.

Either way, so what?

[Huguenot]

Ironically, it seems to be silverfox pursuing this species issue with particular interest, because from a religious view the species question is very important - if man was made in God's image, and man is unique, then any other species is NOT man and hence can be dealt with accordingly.

There is consequentially a streak of pure evil running through assertions by religious groups that Melanesians are 'not of the same stock'. It doesn't take a great deal of imagination or knowledge of history to see how this type of attitude manifests itself.

[silverfox]

Thanks Hal, I bow to superior knowledge.

Huguenot, what is this religious dimension you've introduced here? Let it go. I accept evolution and I accept scientific method. Where I give my tuppence worth is when science tries to create grand theories that are no longer scientific. And the general acceptance of the 'Out of Africa' axiom is fair game as far as I'm concerned.

You state:

"...The 'out of africa' theory isn't even a belief - it's a best estimate derived from the huge depth of evidence currently at hand..."

I agree, except that it's obvious that you BELIEVE it, DJKillaQueen BELIEVES it and mockney Piers BELIEVES it. In fact so strong is their BELIEF (note caps here) that they result to sniggering about the fact that the Daily Mail reports on articles published in reputable Journals such as Nature. Therefore it must be wrong.

I don't take that view. Science works at the level of what can be proved. Once science starts extrapolating/theorising into the realm of philosophy it needs to be questioned, not blindly accepted by the masses. Evolution? yes, up to a point. Multiple universes? Maybe. Worm holes? Maybe.

Let's come down to a more practical level and take human evolution. I read that the "Out of Africa" or recent African origin hypothesis argues that Homo sapiens arose in Africa and migrated out of the continent around 50,000 to 100,000 years ago, replacing populations of Homo erectus in Asia and Homo neanderthalensis in Europe. Scientists supporting the alternative multiregional hypothesis argue that Homo sapiens evolved as geographically separate but interbreeding populations stemming from a worldwide migration of Homo erectus out of Africa nearly 2.5 million years ago.(see Wikipedia here).

The 'Out of Africa' theory may be true. I don't know. And ignoring the recent discoveries of Denisovan Man and the Israeli findings in an earlier post, what commonsense makes me ask - yes commonsense - is what happened to those early homo sapiens who didn'nt migrate from Africa, ie, those that left Ethiopia and turned left (westwards) or headed south?

These homo sapiens who, it is reasonable to assume, were part of the migration 70,000 years ago, didn't find their way to a land bridge and cross into the Middle East. Rather they ended up in what is today the Western Sahara, Sierra Leone, Liberia, in the West, or South Africa in the south of the continent. Surely this branch of homo sapiens would be purer than those who migrated to Europe and Asia but I can't find any information on a general internet search. No doubt there are academic papers on this.

Where are the bones, teeth and mtDNA analyses of these 'purer' homo sapiens who took a left or headed northwest and south within Africa? What could these bones tell us about human evolution with the exception that there's no Neanderthal DNA in their genome?

I would be interested to know.

[Huguenot]

I can't speak for other people's belief, but for clarity's sake I can say that in marks for plausibility in terms of the full picture the current 'Out of Africa' theory sits at 65/100 , whereas Garden of Eden, snakes and the Hand of God sit at 0/100 on the same scale.

That's not a 'belief' that's a rational interpretation of the data.

It most certainly is not philosophy, as it doesn't attempt to explore our history through contemplation, but through physical evidence.

Many of my age group will have had the fortune to selectively breed fruit flies as part of their education. We've seen evolution in action, and it required no 'faith' or 'belief' to experience it.

I'm shocked silverfox, that having already had the dangers of this discourse highlighted for you, that you are now asking specific questions about species 'purity'.

Evolutionary theory has it that the random mutations necessary to generate modern humans could have happened once or many times, and that interbreeding could have emphasised or deemphasised the influence of a range of genes at multiple times in history. No one of these is any more 'pure' than the next, there is no right or wrong in evolution.

Neither scientific method, evolution, nor I have any idea what you're talking about in terms of species purity. Biologically the community cannot even gain agreement on what a 'species' is; nature doesn't deliver flora and fauna against fixed blueprints, but instead as variations on a theme.

You only need to glance around at your neighbours, with brown and blonde hair, big and small noses, brown and white skin to see that there is no single 'pure' genetic map that defines humanity.

I think your desire to identify a 'pure' homo sapiens is a hopelessly flawed and narcissistic pursuit based on a religious desire to be both unique, and the most important thing in the universe.

The fact that the outcome of such convictions through history have been evil should make you think twice.

[Huguenot]

On the subject of the Israeli find...

Genetically the history of homo sapiens can be traced back through a series of 'bottlenecks' when the overall population was limited by geographical or environmental influences to a small number of individuals - perhaps only a few thousand. Examples of this may be Ice Ages.

'Out of Africa' merely highlights that the earliest bottleneck we can currently trace homo sapiens to is around 200,000 years ago in Africa, and that it was a few thousand individuals.

Evolutionary theory doesn't deny the existence of humans before that point, it merely says that it has no evidence for them. In fact it's likely that variations on homo sapiens existed long before that point as part of the evolutionary process.

A find in Israel 400,000 years ago would be a matter of celebration if it proves true, showing us an earlier point on the road map to the modern day.

I'll wait for peer review on the data, because unlike the Daily Mail I'm a wee bit suspicous that the country naming it's residents as the 'chosen race' should now claim to be the birthplace of humanity, and that they should make the announcement at Christmas.

I wonder if those religious links aren't also what makes you so excited about the possiblity of such a find?

[mockney piers]

Science as a belief fallacy, hardly worth commenting on.

Suffice tomsay there is a difference between a useful working assumption that current evidence points to, and a belief.

It makes no difference to me where homo sapiens originated, if current evidence says A then that's fine by me. If new evidence says B and more evidence backs that up, then that is also fine by me.

To suggest otherwise is a bit weird.

If the 'out of Africa' theory makes people uncomfortable then it can only be for philosophical reasons, not scientific ones.

The archaelogoical evidence is actually rather weak time tends to be unkind to bones, especially in creatures yetbto develop advanced ceremonial techniques that involve some degree of internment.

However mitochondrial and y chromosomal DNA analysis strongly supports the theory.

I won't patronise anyone by capitalising the word theory.

This all relates to homo sapiens, it would seem absurd to suggest we are the first humans or the only humans, rather a wig on an evolutionary branch. I would be surprised if older human species didn't crop up elsewhere and died out.

Indeed as Huguenot alludes to, current theories think that severe climatic conditions came damn close to getting rid of us. And that being the case, why couldn't previous spreads of homo sapiens have died out during the same period, and all modern humanity have descended from a few surviving pockets in Africa.

It's possible, but until we finder older Homo sapien remains elsewhere the origination in Africa remains thenmost convincing theory. Oh sod it, THEORY.

[DJKillaQueen]

Huguenot is absolutely right in that the Israeli finds have yet to be corroborrated and verified by outside scientific organistations but if they do point to earlier evidence of mankind and migration then science will embrace it as will I and every one else who is interested in Science and truth. There is no issue there. I don't care if we began in Africa, Asia or the planet Zog.....just long as it's not the Garden of Eden. And I totally agree with MP, that those that have issue with the 'Out of Africa' theory are often thoses with either religious, racial or or other philosophical or moral preoccupations.

Let's be clear, the Out of Africa theory relates to us today and the earliest remains/ fossils of mankind that relate to US. So we CAN say that x amount of years ago OUR ancestors migrated out of Africa. That doesn't mean that THEIR predacessors didn't migrate from somewhere else, just that we don't know what happened before that. We wait to see if the new finds have any connection to the Africa relics and then through to ourselves, or indeed show a new origin altogether for some of us.

Incidently you yourself have said that:

The theory of humans originating from Africa is based on bone fragments and teeth found in Africa. As a result of recent discoveries some scientists think one group of early human ancestors left Africa between 300,000 and 400,000 years ago and quickly split up. One branch evolved into the Neanderthals who spread into Europe, while the other moved east and became Denisovans.

That theory IS based on sound evidence. mtDNA is perfectly usuable for this work. And yes, while we don't yet fully understand why all the various mutations of evolution have happened as they do, to give us different 'looking' sub-species we know that evolution can generate such differences (looking at anything from birds to fish shows us that). Evolution is a slow process and has taken an incomprehensible amount of time to get there.

[Ridgley]

Give me the old fashion, biblical belief of Adam & Eve has the original humans I am tired of hearing we come from monkeys or some odd amphibian.