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At this point the argument isn't that people stayed in Africa, but that everyone outside of Africa died. At this point the 3 oldest fossils we have that look li
by lkrubner 3y ago
At this point the argument isn't that people stayed in Africa, but that everyone outside of Africa died. At this point the 3 oldest fossils we have that look like homo sapiens are all from Morocco or the Levant or Greece, suggesting homo sapiens first evolved near the Mediterranean. But at some time between 50k and 20k years ago, all humans outside of Africa seemed to have died: Neanderthals, Denisovans, and Sapiens, all of them.
Regarding the older finds of Sapiens, when we find DNA traces and compare them to modern DNA, we are not able to find any modern population that is descended from any of this Sapien DNA, outside of Africa, that is older than even 25k.
It is well known that Sapiens arrived in Spain 40k years ago and that they demonstrated modern behavior: arts, music, advanced hunting tools, but DNA analysis suggests this group disappeared entirely, no trace of their DNA is found in existing European populations. The picture then is that 75k ago Eurasia was covered with humans, of at least 3 or 4 different species, and all of them died, and then Eurasia was repopulated by a burst of homo sapiens that radiated out from Africa.
Of course, this picture would change if we ever found some old DNA, outside of Africa, that could also be matched to DNA in a surviving group of humans.
- Ericson2314 3y agoAre you saying it is less that homo sapiens out-competed the others than the ice age knocked out everyone? How does that comport with modern humans still having some admixture from them?
- CogitoCogito 3y agoModern humans having some admixture from them doesn't contradict the idea that the ice age was the bigger problem than direct competition.
- lkrubner 3y agoMy own guess would be the final years of the Ice Age saw too many changes in the northern hemisphere, erratic weather that wiped out everyone, but I have not seen that in an official source, except in discussions of Neanderthals. Modern Humans can be an admixture of several species if the ancestors to modern humans either migrated south to Africa or continued to survive in some place like Arabia, but perhaps we just haven't found the right fossil yet. Assuming Sapiens and Neanderthals mixed together in the Levant then they either survived in the Levant or they moved south into Africa and then later expanded out of Africa.
- cco 3y ago> At this point the 3 oldest fossils we have that look like homo sapiens are all from Morocco or the Levant or Greece, suggesting homo sapiens first evolved near the Mediterranean. This is fascinating and new to me, can you provide any articles or podcasts that discuss it?
- username135 3y agoSeconded
- lkrubner 3y agoI've been meaning to write this up in one place, and maybe this week would be a good time to do so. I thought the news from Morocco was now well known, see here: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2017.22114 https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2017.22114 Homo sapiens and some other form of human were living in the Levant 200,000 years ago: https://www.earth.com/news/new-type-of-prehistoric-human-found-in-the-levant/ https://www.earth.com/news/new-type-of-prehistoric-human-fou... The reference to the skulls found on an island Greece, I'll need time to track that one down.
- cco 3y agoFascinating, I was able to find some references to Greece around 200kya, but not much around the Levant. Very neat, turns a lot of previous evidence on its head.
- throwaway290 3y ago> It is well known that Sapiens arrived in Spain 40k years ago and that they demonstrated modern behavior: arts, music, advanced hunting tools Anyone to whom this is complete news? How did they manage this all without wheels?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ch4s3 3y ago> How did they manage this all without wheels? Walking, and at least for the people in North America probably canoes.
- throwaway290 3y ago"Modern behavior", not getting places...
- lkrubner 3y agoSee here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_European_modern_humans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_European_modern_humans This population in Belgium and Spain seems to have died out: "Earlier EEMH (10 tested in total), on the other hand, did not seem to be ancestral to any present-day population, nor did they form any cohesive group in and of themselves, each representing either completely distinct genetic lineages, admixture between major lineages, or have highly divergent ancestry. Because of these, the study also concluded that, beginning roughly 37,000 years ago, EEMH descended from a single founder population and were reproductively isolated from the rest of the world. The study reported that an Aurignacian individual from Grottes de Goyet, Belgium, has more genetic affinities to the Magdalenian inhabitants of Cueva de El Mirón, Spain, than to more or less contemporaneous Eastern European Gravettians.[15]" The population in Spain apparently had music, as this flute is dated to 40k years ago: https://www.quora.com/Did-Cro-Magnons-have-music https://www.quora.com/Did-Cro-Magnons-have-music
- throwaway290 3y ago
- rustymonday 3y agoAboriginal Australians migrated to Australia 65,000 years ago.
- NotSuspicious 3y agoYeah, OP's timeline is incredibly off. It has absolutely no bearing to reality.
- philwelch 3y ago> But at some time between 50k and 20k years ago, all humans outside of Africa seemed to have died: Neanderthals, Denisovans, and Sapiens, all of them. Hasn’t this been debunked by the discovery of Neanderthal and I think Denisovan DNA in contemporary human populations?