* Not only does Africa lack any data
supporting out of Africa (other than bi-pedal ape 7 million years ago),
already existing data makes such a scenario impossible.
Read how climate change made human evolution possible in SE Asian volatile archipelago - not on a continent like Africa.
Read how
two craniopagus twins born 2006 solved the "greatest mystery in
science" - and proved Peter Klevius theory from 1992-94 100% correct.
The whole concept of "Africans" is a childish, sometimes sentimental,
sometimes racist, lumping cultural interpretations in fixed geographical
terms.
Acknowledgement: For you poor
bastards who don't have a clue about paleo-anthropology, please do note
that there are a multitude of fake news sites out there trying, for
example, to make you believe that modern human intelligence started as
"symbolism in the Blombos cave 70-1000,000 bp" - sometimes even spiced
with completely unrelated cave paintings no older than a few thousand
years. There are many such examples swirling around on the web - even
incl. some so called "serious" sites. Scratch the surface and you'll see
Klevius is the path to follow.
Update re climate changes and human evolution:
The best indicator for the beginning of
our contemporary interglacial* - which is the last in a series of increased oscillations that made Homo evolution possible during the closing of the Panama isthmus - is sea level rise - which started ~20,000
years ago, when the last (real) ice age** had ended.
*
Sea level rise is constantly trumpeted about the situation of today but
carefully avoided about the past as the marker of the beginning of our
contemporary interglacial. Do also consider the important difference
between the easily recognizable major effects of Milankovitch cycles,
and the lesser "noise" caused by random events such as volcanism and
space debris. Moreover, in the last 3 million years the tectonic map has
stayed practically the same, so only sea level variations have managed
to alter the terrestrial map.
** Most people are also
(deliberately?!) made confused about ice ages because the term is used
for everything between the ~50 million year cooling period from Eocene
to now, as well as for the short Younger Dryas cooling between
12,900-11,700 years BP.
The end of an interglacial can be abrupt and with extreme cold in the north and aridity in the south. And although changes in polar vortex and AMOC (Gulf Stream) also occur at other times, they always constitute the trigger for regular Milankovitch steered glaciation periods during Pleistocene. Today time's up and the signs alarming.
Since the tectonic events in Eocene leading to the glaciation of
Antarctica, the temperature of the Earth has gone down and culminating
in the characteristic oscillations after ~3.5 Ma caused by the narrowing
of the Caribbean ocean flow and eventual stop (Panama isthmus) which
caused the AMOC (Gulf Stream) on a bigger scale interacting with the
Milankovitch cycles (on a smaller scale there has of course been many
changes to the AMOC due to melt water pulses/Heinrich events etc.).
Sea
level rise is a slightly delayed - due to time needed for enough
melting to trigger it in any notable way - starting point for an
interglacial. In our case it happened ~20,000 years ago, i.e. we may be
already overdue compared to previous interglacials. It's important to
distinguish between the "heavy lifting" of the periodical Milankovitch
cycles and random terrestrial events like volcanism, impact from space
debris etc.
Although AMOC (aka Gulf Stream) has collapsed many
times during interglacials (compare Heinrish events, melst water pulses
etc.) it's only when the Milankovitch cycle coincides with it when a new
and inevitable ice age starts building up. As Peter Klevius has
explained it (first in the world again? - sad isn't it*): Although the
Antarctic ice sheet was created by tectonics already during Eocene,
Greenland's ice sheet was a late comer and a product of tectonics
closing the ocean flow between South and North America, which came to a
complete stop some 3 million years ago. According to Peter Klevius
(first again?!), this caused the evolutionary jump from apes to Homos -
just like the icing of Antarctica caused the evolution of Simians - all
due to sea level fluctuations in the SE Asian archipelago. see
How the pliocene-pleistocene Panama
isthmus debunks wild rafting "theories" and confirms Peter Klevius' calm
out of SE Asia* human evolution analysis.
Milankovitch cycles
The dip at ~3.5 Ma may indicate the starting point for Homo
The cooling steps are in perfect harmony with Peter Klevius out of SE Asian archipelago evolution analysis.
The Bølling-Allerød,
Younger Dryas, or Holocene did not indicate any starting point of our
contemporary interglacial. This fake graph is either made out of
ignorance or deliberately made to confuse ignorant viewers. LGM ended
around 20,000 bp. However, here the outdated concept of Holocene - which
started around 11,000 bp - is used although it has nothing to do with
our interglacial because Younger Dryas - probably caused by massive
volcanism - was just a short interruption in the overall warming trend.
Ludvig Wittgenstein (mentor of Georg Henrik von Wright, who mentored Peter Klevius):
Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.
Homo naledi is a so far undated silent
hominid found in South Africa.Mathole Motshekga, on the other hand, is a
vocal representative of stupid modern humans who calls John Hawks et
al, "pseudo-scientists". And although Klevius agrees that John Hawks
(like many others) out of Africa talk may come close to "pseudoscience",
Klevius doubts that John Hawks wants to make "Africans" subhuman.
In reading the below do note that the conventional Homo sapiens (HS) and
Homo sapiens sapiens (HSS) classification has so far no known genetic
basis.
Klevius proposes a possible scenario where modern human genes from
eastern Eurasia "waded" through "Neanderthal land", multiplying and
continuing down to Africa, hence absorbing and diluting so called
"Neanderhal" genes to a point they almost vanished (see more below). It
has for long been seen as a "mystery" why the Neanderthal mixing with
Homo sapiens (HS) didn't start earlier - considering that they must have
often come in touch with each other. Moreover, Svante Pääbo about the
genetic revelations of the Sima de los Huesos hominins: “They are
consistent with a rather early divergence of 550,000 to 750,000 years
ago of the modern human lineage from archaic humans.” However, this
problem is easily solved with Peter Klevius theory which states (see
below) that the key to a "re-mixing" came from Denisovans who had been
stuck in island SE Asia where they still possessed hybridization
capabilities from before the Neanderthal-Denisovan split. So, together
with a smaller but better packed brain (jungle/island dwarfing) some
Denisovans left their island isolation during a time of low sea level
(iceage) and started spreading towards the north where they met with
their old kin (Altai Neanderthal) and hybridized in a way that also
opened up for what we used to call HS and HSS and the hybridization with
other "Neanderthals".
The Denisovan population shows a
drastic genetic decline relative to old genetic markers found in modern
human populations. Do note mongoloid San as the least effected during
the decline. This is in line with Peter Klevius theory which states that
Denisovan genes started from SE Asia, and became diluted away after
hybridizing produced the modern human in northern Eurasia who then
flooded the world without fully erasing the furthermost ones. Do also
note the additional effect of much later Austronesian colonizers who
interbred with aboriginal women high in Denisovan genes (mtDNA), thereby
spreading them farther out.
HS has been used in physical anthropology (pre-genetics) to describe
intermediate forms close to modern human appearance yet still visibly
archaic. In this categorization HSS was supposed (based on available
datings) to have appeared quite recently (~40,000 bp). However, due to
shortcomings in dating technology and spiced with prejudice and
ignorance, many Eurasian fossils (especially from the east) have been
wrongly assessed. So for example was the Liujiang skull (mentioned
below) thought to have been only between 10,000-30,000 bp - much because
its modern look didn't fit in prevailing ideas. Today, however, we know
that Liujiang can't be younger than 68,000 bp and most likely between
100,000-130,000 bp with some additional suggestions of more than 155,000
bp. All of these new dates puncture the whole idea of HS/HSS and out of
Africa. Moreover, Liujiang is far from alone in SE Asia.
Acknowledgement
Peter Klevius: The biggest challenge for a paleo-anthropologist is to
avoid cultural (incl. political and religious) interpretations. Although
you may or may not have some cultural connections with your children,
parents, other close persons etc., what's 100% certain is that you have
no whatsoever cultural connection with individuals or groups tens of
thousands of years ago.
Talking about culture, as Klevius has been informed that muslims are
easily offended, he hereby
calls for muslim "Africans" to comfort themselves (for not being "the original") with the fact that no
matter how you look, Klevius would never feel knowing anything about
your
intelligence, because of the enormous mixing of genes that has been
going on. Moreover, if Klevius would dislike or despise people with less
intelligence than himself, he would never be able to believe in Human
Rights equality - nor could he have treated children as well as he has.
The reality of human evolution is quite different from the pathetic homogeneous
"out of Africa" mythology, which clearly seems to rest on some sort of
racism based on any particularity of being "African"*. However, if you're
a sharia muslim who opposes basic Human Rights equality, then that
would hint to Klevius that you either aren't very bright or that you are
a deliberate racist and sexist.
* The only time Peter Klevius has considered himself a proud "European" is when he criticizes Europeanism (see e.g. Klevius critical European profile on his web site museum - not touched upon since more than a decade ago).
Klevius 2012 maps on human evolution
UPDATE: In April 2024 Liujiang was re-dated to Cro-Magnon age. This doen't affect anything of Peter Klevius evolution theory, but certainly makes the combination of truly modern Asian features together with an occipital bun quite interesting, and seems to fit perfectly in a spread from East to West where Cro-Magnon displays a much more archaic features because it had to "wade" through (hybridize) Neanderthal land. That also explains Cro-Magnon's protruding "superman chin".
Liujiang (SE China 68,000-155,000 bp) compared to a later Chinese paleo skull.
The Upper Cave 102 skull was found at the same location as much more archaic looking skulls from the same period.
Klevius: Do note that Liujiang in SE
China is much older (see below) than UC 102 in NE China. UC 102 may
possess both pre- and postmortem deformations.
Eurasia fossils show a diverse morphological picture. Klevius therefore tries to trace the most modern ones.
Peter Brown: Parts of three human skeletons were excavated from the
Upper Cave and one of these, UC102 referred to as the “Melanesian woman”
by Weidenreich, as been argued to be artificially deformed (Brothwell
1975). However, the UC102 skeleton was lost at the same time as the
Zhoukoudian H. erectus (Peking Man) fossils in 1941 and the original
specimen is now only known from a plaster replica. Both the replica and
original description by Weidenreich (1939) indicates that the UC102
cranium was broken and somewhat distorted postmortem. This complicates
any anatomical assessment of the cranium, but as Donald Brothwell
correctly indicated, the shape and proportions of the major cranial
vault bones are consistent with cranial deformation. The cranium of
Upper Cave 102 (UC102) is nearly complete but has severe post mortem
damage. This has left the skull with a number of long and quite broad
cracks running transversely across the parietal and occipital regions
and the cranium as a whole is somewhat twisted to the right. The skull
can be compared to the other well-preserved “female” cranium found at
the site (Upper Cave 103), which does not share UC102's unusual
morphology. Morphologically, the unusual features of UC102 include the
lengthening and flattening of the frontal bone, with a marked flattening
in the posterior two-thirds of the bone, and great cranial height.
There is also a series of depressions on either side of the mid-line on
the frontal bone, however, there is no evidence of a prebregmatic
eminence. While the age of UC102 will always remain uncertain (10-29 ka
BP) the evidence indicates that it was deformed during infancy and may
be the earliest recorded evidence of this type of behavior.
Deborah L.Cunningham, Daniel J. Wescott (2002): Since there is
disagreement over the sex of Upper Cave 102, this specimen is treated
alternately as a female and as a male. Results show that the Upper Cave
specimens exhibit significantly more variation than do individuals within
more recent human populations, especially if UC102 is considered male.
Furthermore, results indicate that the fossils never fall into the same
modern human group, and that each specimen is significantly atypical of
its nearest modern neighbor in multivariate space. We conclude that the
three Upper Cave crania do not represent a family group but are
representative of the larger contemporaneous heterogeneous Asian
Pleistocene population. Our results support the contention that today’s
within-group homogeneity is a relatively recent phenomenon, and is
likely the result of a Neolithic population expansion and its many
effects.
Tam Pa Ling (Laos)
The Tam Pa Ling fossil from Laos is now estimated to be between 46,000
and 63,000 years old and has clear implications for modern human
origins.
Laura Shackelfor: "It supports an Out-of-Africa model for modern human
origins and not a multiregional hypothesis because the anatomy is
clearly modern and without features that are typical of local, archaic
populations. Given its early date, it also suggests that the migration
out of Africa occurred relatively quickly — genetic data indicates that
the earliest migration of modern humans into Southeast Asia occurred at
least 60,000 years ago."
Peter Klevius: Quite the opposite. It proves the out of Africa story as
completely flawed. Do note "the anatomy is clearly modern and without
features that are typical of local, archaic populations" and "it also
suggests that the migration out of Africa occurred relatively quickly".
It took "Homo idaltu" (see below) some 100,000 years to manage from the
edge of NE Africa to enter Sinai or the Arabian penisula, while we are
made to believe truly modern humans would have done the trip from Africa
to eastern China in no time at all. It's a little bit like the belief
in "Neanderthals" developing and staying just outside Africa, never to
return from Israel to Egypt.
Timeline of Peter Klevius theory on human evolution:
1992: Cold adapted mongoloid features pointed to the fat and protein
rich, albeit also challenging, cold north as a propellant for human
evolution. The puzzling Khoisan (no cold adaptation needed in southern
Africa) and Jinniushan (northern China "mongoloid" early archaic
sapiens) pattern combined with the lack of mongoloid features in
Australia seemed to support this view.
2003 (first time on the web): Ice age and inter glacial variations may
have forced developed genes back and forth through central Asian passes,
hence speeding up and/or spreading evolution of what became modern
humans.
2004: The discovery of Homo floresiensis put focus on isceage
island/main land fluctuations in island south east Asia with the
additional effects of dwarfing which resulted in better packed, albeit
really small skulls.
2010: The Denisova bracelet and the Denisovan genome contributed the
final clues in the theory, linking the new brain to big skulled
"neanderthal" relatives and HS.
To this one may add that the 50,000 bp sewing needle found in Altai,
fits extremely well in Pääbo's et al genetic analysis that places
the mixing with the Altai "Neanderthal" and Denisovan not far ahead of
it on the time scale.
An important implication of the theory is that although this relatively
sudden "jump" in intelligence (first in small brained SE Asians and
later in Siberia/Altai big brained HSS via Altai "Neanderthal") was the
starting point for the spread of what we call the truly modern human, it
later became progressively diluted because of:
1 Not every child from hybridized HSS tribes got it in the first place, and
2 when HSS spred around and multiplied, it now possessed the capability
to hybridize with more archaic homos with due dilution as a consequence -
especially
3 where human societies multiplied with less demand for intelligence
(compare cattle breeding/farming etc. in favorable environments.
As a consequence of this pattern the sparsely populated north got and
kept a richer mix (every third to tenth child - your guess is as good as
mine) of this new intelligence, mainly among smaller cold adapted
individuals. However, later on there was a selection based on sex
segregation, when big (compare Kurgan people) males from the Russian
steppe started raiding the north for women. This development, in turn,
resulted in some of their kids becoming both big and intelligent in a
time when size still really mattered. It's among these people we may
locate the sources for the repeated conquests of the southern more
populous areas. This may include the spread of Indo-Aryans, Tocharians,
Seima-Turbino, the "sea people", Celts, Goths and Vikings. And the
reason why Klevius keeps emphasizing "Finland-Swedes" as the latest in
this development is precisely because Klevius is a Finland-Swede (i.e. a
bilingual Finn with old Swedish as his mother tongue) and therefore has
experienced a linguistic and cultural milieu involving Sami, old
Nordic, Finnish and Karelian (now Russia).
Moreover, by looking at historical maps and migration patterns as well
as history itself, it's easy to see how the proto-Uralic/Indo-European
(bilingual) borderline zone has moved north west from its Russian
mainland. As explained in Klevius
Origin of the Vikings (since 2006 on
the web) the Finnish epos Kalevala gives a good basis for this line of
thought.
Fennoscandia (area 1.2 million km2) is located in a changing climate
zone (e.g. Gulf stream) that has been in varying degree sparsely populated but with
contact zones both to the northern hunter gatherers as well as the
farmers and raiders in the more southern parts of the peninsula. Do note
that it was the bilingual contacts that made Finland-Swedish Vikings so
successful both in the east (northern Russia was Finnish) and the west
(old Nordic became spoken all the way to Iceland - incl. big parts of Britain were Old Nordic already existed).
The "sudden jump" in technology and genetic profile intimately follows
the "4-species" (incl. X) hybridization events we now know about from
genomes found in the Denisova cave.
50,000 bp sewing needle found in the Denisova cave, Altai/Siberia
Do note that 40,000 bp for the Denisova stone bracelet is a conservative estimate.
The "jump" in sophistication ~45-50,000 bp (compare e.g. 50,000 bp
sewing needle and more than 40,000 bp stone bracelet in the Denisova
cave in Altai followed by "lion man", sculpted portraits plus cave art
from western Europe to later Sulawesi etc. finds) is so great and
evolutionary sudden compared to previous human ancestors that it calls
for an explanation that is impossible to find within the African
continent. Africa lacks paleo DNA as well as modern skulls older than
~30,000 bp (Hofmeyr skull shows archaic features and its dating is
unsure and no more than 36,000 bp - probably much younger). Africa also
lacks the level of art of the crucial period. This has to be considered
against the background of the Denisovan and the so called Altai
Neanderthal genomes, as well as the existence of a 55,000 bp modern
looking very small (1,100 cc) skull cap in Israel (Manot) and a much
older fully modern looking big (1,567 cc) skull from Liujiang on the
east coast of southern China, dated to at least 70,000 bp but more
likely much older - incl. suggestions of more than 155,000 bp which
would make it contemporary with the much more archaic looking Idaltu
skull (1,450 cc) which has been baptized Homo idaltu although it lacks
any credibilty for this - even out of Africa fantast Chris Stringer
criticized the move.
Theories have to be built on existing data theoretically sewn together
in a possible way. Africa is impossible not only with existing data but
what we already have excludes it entirely - except for if you insist on
simply naming bi-pedalism human.
However, starting with Klevius cold adaptation theory (in Demand for
Resources 1992, ISBN 9173288411), and continuing with his
pre-floresiensis "better wrinkled brain" theory on the web (Out of
Africa as pygmies and back as global mongoloids, 2003 and floresiensis
updated to 2006 - thereafter no changes to the page which is part of
Klevius "web museum"), and 2010 Denisova connection as originating in
island/mainland fluctuating SE Asia causing the "better packed brain"
which later encountered the so called "Altai Neanderthal", a pattern
emerges that fits known data so far. And according to this line of
thought, it's only bi-pedalism that evolved in Africa in the form of
something like the 7 million year old Sahelanthropus tchadensis ape. All
other stages are the result of repeated island/mainland fluctuations
and due "mongolizing" explorations to the north (compare Klevius example
of the remarkable Jinniushan skull in his 1992 book).
For out of Africa fanatics old divergences between African populations
constitute a mirage created by admixture between incoming modern humans
and archaic paleo-africans. Always keep in mind that at all stages in
hominine evolution there has been repeated north-south movement often
triggered by climatic changes.
Here are some "heavy" names on the theme. Although they carelessly repeat
an empty "out of Africa" mantra (without defining it) please consider
them in the context of Klevius theory (Klevius will later comment more
specifically).
John Hawks: We have no reason to assume that other populations, such as
the Denisovans, would not be mistaken for modern humans, certainly based
on the fragments that have so far been unearthed. I’m very enthusiastic
about Sulawesi. It may be a beautiful test of the biogeography of early
Homo across its southern range. If archaic humans were effectively
using coastal habitat as a dispersal corridor, we may expect that they
repeatedly reached Sulawesi—by 120,000 years ago, they may even have
been in continuous contact.
Or if Southeast Asia was full of human populations with high endemism,
some founded by Homo erectus-like populations, then Sulawesi may have
been home to such a population. Unlike Flores, the resource base on
Sulawesi was richer and island’s size would have enabled a relatively
large human population, possibly large enough to avoid the mutational
meltdown possibilities of the smaller island population.
Michael F. Hammer (whom Klevius referred to already back in 2003 re.
"back migration") et al (2011) found evidence for two separate peaks in
the maximum-likelihood surface: (i) an older peak with an archaic split
time, T0 ≈ 700 kya, a time of admixture, Ta ≈ 35 kya, and an admixture
proportion, a ≈ 2%; and (ii) a more recent peak with T0 ≈ 375 kya, Ta ≈
15 kya, and a ≈ 0.5% (Fig. 2). Although our method has little power to
infer the exact admixture proportion, we can place 95% CIs on the times
of divergence (125 kya < T0 < 1.5 Mya) and admixture (Ta < 70
kya) (SI Materials and Methods). Note that T0 for the more recent peak
is consistent with the Biaka–Mandenka split time estimates from the
two-population model.
A survey of the insertion that is diagnostic for the divergent haplotype
at 4qMB179 (i.e., at position 179,598,847 in Table S3) in 502
individuals from West, East, central, and southern Africa reveals that
it reaches its highest average frequency (3.6%) in Pygmy groups from
west-central Africa (Fig. 4). The variant is also found at low average
frequencies (0.8%) in some non-Pygmy groups from West and East Africa.
An A→G mutation that marks the divergent haplotype at 18qMB60 shows a
similar distribution—also reaching its highest average frequency in the
Pygmy groups—although it is found at slightly lower frequencies than the
variant at 4qMB179 (i.e., 1.6% vs. 3.6%, respectively). This variant is
also found in some non-Pygmy groups, exhibiting similar average
frequencies as the 4qMB179 variant in West Africans (0.8%), East
Africans (0.8%), and southern Africans (0.5% vs. 0.0%, respectively).
Interestingly, the distribution of the G→A variant marking the divergent
haplotype at 13qMB107 exhibits a somewhat different geographic
distribution, reaching its highest average frequency in our sample of
southern Africans (6.3%, and especially in the San at a frequency of
11.9%) rather than in central African Pygmies (average of 5.2%).
However, it is important to note that its presence in our sample of
central Africans is entirely limited to the Mbuti, where it has a
frequency of 14.8%.
Our inference methods reject the hypothesis that the ancestral
population that gave rise to AMH in Africa was genetically isolated and
point to several candidate regions that may have introgressed from an
archaic source(s). For example, we identified a ≈31.4-kb region within
the 4qMB179 locus with highly diverged haplotypes, one of which is found
at low frequency in several Pygmy groups in central Africa. We
hypothesize that the unusual haplotype descends from an archaic DNA
segment that entered the AMH population via admixture. The observed
haplotype structure is highly unusual (P < 5 × 10−5), even when we
account for recent population structure or uncertainty in the underlying
recombination rate (Table S4). It is noteworthy that the two ends of
the archaic haplotype correspond to recombinational hotspots in the
4qMB179 region, suggesting that an initially much longer block of
archaic DNA was whittled down by frequent recombination in the hotspots.
Both inferential methods also identified the 13qMB107 locus as a likely
introgression candidate; however, only ≈7 kb of the surveyed region
contains SNPs that are in high LD, all of which are found at the 5′ end
of the sequenced region in two San individuals. To determine whether the
length of the unusual pattern of SNPs extends beyond our sequenced
region at 13qMB107, we examined public full genome sequence data (25).
We identified a San individual (!Gubi) who carried one copy of the
unusual 13qMB107 haplotype and noted a run of heterozygous sites that
extended an additional ≈7 kb to the 5′ side of our sequenced region.
Like the case of 4qMB179, the two ends of the unusual haplotype
correspond to recombinational hotspots, and analysis of 13qMB107 yields
an estimated divergence time of ≈1 Mya and a recent introgression time
(≈20 kya) (Table 1).
The geographic distribution of the introgressive variant at 18qMB60, a
third candidate identified in the three-population model, is very
similar to that of 4qMB179, albeit consistently found at lower
frequencies. On the other hand, the distribution of the introgressive
variant at 13qMB107 is distinguished from that of the other two
candidate loci by its presence in the San and the southern African
Xhosa, as well as in Mbuti from the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Interestingly, the Mbuti represent the only population in our survey
that carries the introgressive variant at all three candidate loci,
despite the fact that no Mbuti were represented in our initial
sequencing survey. Given that the Mbuti population is known to be
relatively isolated from other Pygmy and neighboring non-Pygmy
populations (26), this suggests that central Africa may have been the
homeland of a now-extinct archaic form that hybridized with modern
humans.
We have relied on an indirect approach to detect ancient admixture in
African populations because there are no African ancient DNA sequences
to make direct comparisons with our candidate loci. As proof of
principle that an indirect approach can be useful, we reexamined the
RRM2P4 pseudogene on the X chromosome. Using a similar
approximate-likelihood methodology, it was previously posited that a
divergent allele at the pseudogene introgressed from an archaic taxon in
Asia (27, 28). We compared human and Neandertal RRM2P4 sequences and
found that the three derived sites that define the non-African basal
lineage are shared with Neandertal (Fig. S4). Thus, we verified that
this unusual human sequence, which is characterized by a deep haplotype
divergence and a small basal clade, is indeed shared with an archaic
form. Further genome-level (i.e., multilocus) analysis will also shed
light on the process of archaic admixture, which is likely to be more
complicated than we have modeled. For instance, the multimodal
likelihood surface in Fig. 2 suggests that gene flow among strongly
subdivided populations in Africa may characterize multiple stages of
human evolution in Africa.
Our results are consistent with earlier inferences supporting the role
of archaic admixture in sub-Saharan Africa based on analyses of coding
regions (19) and the Xp21.1 noncoding region.
The results point to relatively recent genetic exchange with an unknown
archaic hominin that diverged from the ancestors of modern humans in the
Lower-Middle Pleistocene and remained isolated for several hundred
thousand years. Despite a fragmentary African fossil record, there are
plenty of candidates for the source(s) of this introgression.
Beginning ≈700 kya, fossil evidence from many parts of Africa indicate
that Homo erectus was giving way to populations with larger brains, a
change that was accompanied by several structural adjustments to the
skull and postcranial skeleton.
By ≈200 kya, individuals with more modern skeletal morphology begin to appear in the African record (8, 14).
Despite these signs of anatomical and behavioral innovation, hominins
with a combination of archaic and modern features persist in the fossil
record across sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East until after ≈35
kya.
The evidence presented here and elsewhere suggests that long-separated
hominin groups exchanged genes with forms that either were in the
process of evolving fully modern features, or were already fully modern
in appearance.
The emerging geographic pattern of unusual variants discovered here
suggests that one such introgression event may have taken place in
central Africa (where there is a very poor fossil record).
Interestingly, recent studies attest to the existence of Late Stone Age
human remains with archaic features in Nigeria (Iwo Eleru) and the
Democratic Republic of Congo (Ishango). The observation that populations
from many parts of the world, including Africa, show evidence of
introgression of archaic variants (6, 16, 19) suggests that genetic
exchange between morphologically divergent forms may be a common feature
of human evolution. If so, hybridization may have played a key role in
the de novo origin of some our uniquely human traits.
PingHsun Hsieh et al (2016): Comparisons of whole-genome sequences from
ancient and contemporary samples have pointed to several instances of
archaic admixture through interbreeding between the ancestors of modern
non-Africans and now extinct hominids such as Neanderthals and
Denisovans. One implication of these findings is that some adaptive
features in contemporary humans may have entered the population via gene
flow with archaic forms in Eurasia. Within Africa, fossil evidence
suggests that anatomically modern humans (AMH) and various archaic forms
coexisted for much of the last 200,000 yr; however, the absence of
ancient DNA in Africa has limited our ability to make a direct
comparison between archaic and modern human genomes. Here, we use
statistical inference based on high coverage whole-genome data (greater
than 60×) from contemporary African Pygmy hunter-gatherers as an
alternative means to study the evolutionary history of the genus Homo.
Using whole-genome simulations that consider demographic histories that
include both isolation and gene flow with neighboring farming
populations, our inference method rejects the hypothesis that the
ancestors of AMH were genetically isolated in Africa, thus providing the
first whole genome-level evidence of African archaic admixture. Our
inferences also suggest a complex human evolutionary history in Africa,
which involves at least a single admixture event from an unknown archaic
population into the ancestors of AMH, likely within the last 30,000 yr.
PingHsun Hsieh et al. (2016): African Pygmies practicing a mobile
hunter-gatherer lifestyle are phenotypically and genetically diverged
from other anatomically modern humans, and they likely experienced
strong selective pressures due to their unique lifestyle in the Central
African rainforest. To identify genomic targets of adaptation, we
sequenced the genomes of four Biaka Pygmies from the Central African
Republic and jointly analyzed these data with the genome sequences of
three Baka Pygmies from Cameroon and nine Yoruba famers. To account for
the complex demographic history of these populations that includes both
isolation and gene flow, we fit models using the joint allele frequency
spectrum and validated them using independent approaches. Our two
best-fit models both suggest ancient divergence between the ancestors of
the farmers and Pygmies, 90,000 or 150,000 yr ago. We also find that
bidirectional asymmetric gene flow is statistically better supported
than a single pulse of unidirectional gene flow from farmers to Pygmies,
as previously suggested. We then applied complementary statistics to
scan the genome for evidence of selective sweeps and polygenic
selection. We found that conventional statistical outlier approaches
were biased toward identifying candidates in regions of high mutation or
low recombination rate. To avoid this bias, we assigned P-values for
candidates using whole-genome simulations incorporating demography and
variation in both recombination and mutation rates. We found that genes
and gene sets involved in muscle development, bone synthesis, immunity,
reproduction, cell signaling and development, and energy metabolism are
likely to be targets of positive natural selection in Western African
Pygmies or their recent ancestors.
In fact, everything is missing from Africa except the very oldest traits
leading back to the chimp-bipedal ape split. However, that's not us.
John Hoffecker thinks this guy and his/her pals because of bi-pedalism
somehow created a "super brain community". However, no one has ever
found anything supporting such a claim.
Sahelanthropus tchadensis (7 million years ago) is the oldest bi-pedal ape.
Eurasia from Europe to China was populated with bi-pedal apes at least
1.85 million years ago - probably much longer. East Africa happens to
possess the world's easiest and biggest terrain for picking old hominid
fossils, which fact has heavily influenced the overall picture (compare
the Leakey family etc.).
"Homo sapiens idaltu" on the border between Africa and Asia could be
contemporary or just slightly older than Liujiang. However, when it
comes to modern features "Homo idaltu" has a lot to catch up with as you
can see. Cranial capacity ~ 1,400 cc (male) compared to Liujiang's ~
1,600 cc (female weighing 52 kg).
The 52 kg big skulled Liujiang may well be the oldest truly modern looking human ever found so far.
UPDATE: In April 2024 Liujiang was re-dated to Cro-Magnon age. This doen't affect anything of Peter Klevius evolution theory, but certainly makes the combination of truly modern Asian features together with an occipital bun quite interesting, and seems to fit perfectly in a spread from East to West where Cro-Magnon displays a much more archaic features because it had to "wade" through (hybridize) Neanderthal land. That also explains Cro-Magnon's protruding "superman chin".
Liujiang died as far from Africa you can get at that level.
Homo floresiensis and the chimpanzee
have similar brain size, yet quite different cranial features, which
explains why Homo floresiensis managed to make tools, fire and hunt on a
level comparable with those with double its brain size.
Wikipedia: An indicator of intelligence is the size of Brodmann's area
10, the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, an area of the brain associated
with higher cognition. LB1's region 10 is about the same size as that of
modern humans, despite the much smaller overall size of the brain.
Notwithstanding the small brain of H. floresiensis, the discoverers have
associated it with advanced behaviors. Their cave shows evidence of the
use of fire for cooking, and Stegodon bones associated with the
hominins have cut marks. The hominin specimens have also been associated with stone tools
of the sophisticated Upper Paleolithic tradition typically associated
with modern humans, who have nearly quadruple the brain volume
(1,310–1,475 cm3 (79.9–90.0 cu in)) and 2.6 times greater body mass.
Some of these tools were apparently used in the necessarily cooperative
hunting of Stegodon by these hominids.
German Dziebel (the out-of-America guy): The divergence of African-specific clades from Eurasians is a
phylogenetic fact regardless of whether we believe in out-of-Africa or
into-Africa. That's the reason why people mistakenly think people
originated in Africa. Under out-of-Africa, there was an Africa-only
"stage" in human evolution followed by an emergence of Eurasian clades
in the course of the colonization of Eurasia. Eurasian clades are
further removed from a hominid ancestor of modern humans than
African-specific clades.
Haploid lineages show clades (mtDNA L0, L1, L2; Y-DNA A and B) that a)
are not found outside of Africa, along the putative ancient routes that
humans took when they left Africa; b) are clearly more divergent than
the most wide-spread African lineages (mtDNA L3 and Y-DNA E) as well as
non-African ones; and c) localized within Africa. They are likely
candidates for "archaic" admixture and some of them are highly
concentrated among Khoisans and Pygmies.
Early mixing of northern moderns with archaic "Africans"
South African less than 36,000 bp Hofmeyr skull is younger than the
38,000 bp Nazlet Khater 2 which was found on the border between Africa
and Asia.
German Dziebel (the out-of-America guy): Hofmeyr, which is a skull from
extreme Sub-Saharan Africa dated to just 5,000 years younger than the
onset of Upper Paleolithic outside of Africa, clustering with Eurasian
Upper Paleolithic skulls and showing no special affinity with
Mid-Pleistocene AMH in Africa, must be product of a migration from
Eurasia to Africa. The quoted interpretation is just a feeble attempt to
force it into an out-of-Africa straitjacket.
We only need Homo sapiens in America for my model to work. If African
genetic divergence comes from admixture with archaics, then the lack of
archaic hominins in America explains its less divergent character
compared to Africans. And as Denisovan pinkie and tooth demonstrate,
fossils takes time to accrue. "Time" as in hundreds of years. This has
nothing to do with the presence or absence of humans. It has something
to do with population size, density and technological adaptation.
Peter Klevius: German Dziebel is right when he criticizes the out of
Africa direction. However, Klevius sees no need to go farther than Altai
when you consider:
1 The existence of cold adapted mongoloid features among the oldest
populations in South Africa (Khoisan), South Asia (Shompen) and America.
2 Denisovan genes can't have met with "Altai Neanderthal" genes in America.
3 There's no similar "art and tech track" in America.
just to mention a few
Native African with the oldest L0 haplotype
To clean out unnecessary ballast bias you better get rid of cultural interpretation of human evolution.
We have no clue about L0 "Eve's" home address. Just because Khoisan
people with mongoloid features now happen to live in Africa doesn't
mean that their genes are from there - other than for bi-pedalism
millions of years ago.
If we by 'modern humans' mean something different from Neanderthals,
erectus, etc. Mousterian-like cultures, then the picture is clearly
focused outside Africa. And if we look at the timeline of modern
physical traits, they clearly indicate an eastern origin.
Africa lacks any finds of truly modern human skulls at a time when they
had already for long been around outside Africa. Liujiang in China is a
big (1567cc) and very modern looking skull that outdates anything even
close from Africa. Add to this a variety of teeth etc. from East Asia
that predate anything from Africa.
The 55,000 bp Manot skull cap from Israel is very small (1,100cc) and
that's the closest we can come to Africa. Yet it is more archaic than
the much older Liujiang. Does it signal an archaic Pygmy/Khoisan/Negrito
back migration?
These two examples fit well in Klevius theory that physiologically
modern human looking hominins roamed the world, starting from East
Asia,and then getting an IQ boost from Denisovan hybridization.
However, these two examples (Manot and Liujiang) aren't connected to
anything new when it comes to sophistication of technology, although
that "jump" must have happened shortly before the Denisova sewing needle
(50,000 bp) in Altai/Siberia.
Liujiang HSS, 1567cc, est. 70,000 bp
to more than 150,000 bp. Even the lowest possible estimate is far
earlier than anything similar in Africa, Mideast or Europe.
Do consider the multitude of techniques in use to blur the physical HSS
definition. However, this skull can't be confused with anything from
Africa before 70,000 bp.
The Liujiang skull most probably came from sediment dating to 111,000 to
139,000 bp but there is a small chance that it came either from a
deposit dating from around 68 000 bp or from one dating to more than 153
000 bp. However, even the loweat est. combined with its very modern
shape and size would even then make it the first of its kind.
Early modern human settlement of Europe north of the Alps occurred
43,500 years ago in a cold steppe climate - and 3,500 years earlier than
in Mideast.
Some 37,000-42,000 bp Neanderthals in Romania/Europe are supposed to
have disappeared. Oase 1 is within the Aurignacian cultural tradition,
which was the first wave of modern humans in Europe est. 45,000-35,000
bp. Compare this to the 45,000 bp modern HSS at Ust-ishim in western
Siberia, of whom we have a full DNA.
For comparison, Mladeč 1, an early
Upper
Paleolithic skull from the Czech Republic, dating to around 36,000 bp
compared to Manot 1 from Mideast 55,000 bp cranial capacity 1100 cc.
John Hawks: The morphology of the skull is very comparable to those that
come from the early Upper Paleolithic of Europe. Its parietal bones
bulge outward and upward into distinct bosses, which place its maximum
breadth relatively high on the parietal bones, not at the midpoint of
the skull as in Neandertals. But like many early Upper Paleolithic
crania, it has Neandertal-like features. In the case of Manot 1, the
occipital bone projects backward into a bun-like structure and there is a
slight erosion of the surface of bone at the cranial rear called a
suprainiac fossa.
Oase 2 Romania, 40,000 bp compared with Liujiang and UC 102.
Oase 1 from the same site and time as Oase 2, was clearly human but had
some 5 to 11 percent of his genome originated from Neanderthals. This
individual's Neanderthal ancestry was more recent than that of any
modern human tested previously. Some half of its chromosome 12 sequence
coincided with Neanderthals rather than modern humans and it had a
Neanderthal ancestor within the past four to six generations, pointing
to later than anticipated admixture between Neanderthals and the modern
human population to which Oase 1 belonged.
The 55,000bp 1,100cc Manot skull from Israel is the closest to Africa
you can get with a modern looking, albeit very small, individual. And do
note that this skull is definitely much younger than the Chinese
Liujiang.
Tampa Ling (Laos) skull (TPL1) and jaw (TPL2) est. 46,000-63,000 bp.
Recent discoveries in Laos, a modern human cranium (TPL1) from Tam Pa
Ling‘s cave, provided the first evidence for the presence of early
modern humans in mainland Southeast Asia by 63-46 ka. In the current
study, a complete human mandible representing a second individual, TPL
2, is described using discrete traits and geometric morphometrics with
an emphasis on determining its population affinity. The TPL2 mandible
has a chin and other discrete traits consistent with early modern
humans, but it retains a robust lateral corpus and internal corporal
morphology typical of archaic humans across the Old World. The mosaic
morphology of TPL2 and the fully modern human morphology of TPL1 suggest
that a large range of morphological variation was present in early
modern human populations residing in the eastern Eurasia by MIS 3.
TPL1
TPL2 has a significantly smaller dental arcade breadth than all modern
and archaic samples, including the closely contemporaneous mandible from
Tianyuan cave (64.5 mm) or any other East Asian early modern humans
(66.4 ± 2.2, n = 5) [29]. The only other Homo fossils that are similarly
small in bigonial breadth and dental arcade breadth at the M2 are LB1
(83.0 mm (estimated) and 55.0 mm, respectively) and LB6 (71.0 mm and
53.0 mm, respectively) from Liang Bua, Flores (Homo floresiensis).
Jaw from Tam Pa
Ling in the Annamite Mountains, Laos, dating to between 46,000 and
63,000 ybp. Missing teeth mirrored by Klevius.
Niah skull, Sarawak (Malaysia) est. 39,000-45,000 bp.
Real contemporary portraits from the past support the morphological diversity mentioned above.
"Racial" distribution in accordance with Klevius' "Out of Siberia and
back to Africa" theory
Mongoloids (red) and Australoids (blue) are the races most distant from each other
because whereas Africa had a strong back migration of mongoloids (and "bastards" called Caucasians)
Australia, due to its location, came to be less involved. This is also why
the so called Caucasoid race (in a broad sense) came to populate what
in Klevius terminology is called the "bastard belt" (the gray area on
the map).
