At last, a bit of realism creeping into the Out of Africa debate. At https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/human-evolution/it-makes-no-sense-to-say-there-was-only-one-origin-of-homo-sapiens-how-the-evolutionary-record-of-asia-is-complicating-what-we-know-about-our-species … here we are told the story of our ancient ancestors began in Africa millions of years ago. That paradigm remains in vogue. Here, there is a difference. Then we are told, but – but there are considerable gaps between early Homos and modern humans. Sheela Athreya – as soon as Homo left Africa all bets, or certainty, are off. Evolution is going to treat every population differently.
One idea she is investigating is that there was not a single origin of Homo sapiens. Rather, our ancestors, living in quite different geographical regions with differing environments may have strayed from our true evolutionary pathway. Eventually, they evolved into the humans of today – and the differences. Once humans left Africa it created complexities. It makes no sense to think there was only one origin of Homo sapiens, she has said. This is definitely a deviaion from the mainstream mantra. Not so much from the Chinese perspective, however, and they are increasingly an important contributor to science. She continues by noting Homo erectus was in Europe and Asia by, at the latest, 1.8 million years ago. What happened between that point and the arrival of Homo sapiens purportedly at 50,000 years ago? We don’t know, she said. There is, at present, a lack of fossils. Homo erectus fossils, though few, survived in Indonesia until 108,000 years ago – at the last interglacial episode. Did Homo erectus mate with Homo sapiens later than in other regions? In China, we know that Homo erectus fossils survived until 300,000 years ago – at the least. At this time skeletal material and skulls became more variable and seem to have traits in common with Neanderthals in Europe and western Asia. This includes smoother bicupsol teeth that also appears among Homo erectus in East Asia. In other words, Homo erectus did not die out and may have provided a major contribution to modern populations. The problem here is that DNA degrades over time and it is impossible, at present, to get any DNA from Homo erectus. They go back too far.