Svante Paabo: "
In the West there were Neanderthals, in the East there were Denisovans, maybe other forms of humans too that we've not yet described. The modern humans emerged somewhere in Africa, came out of Africa presumably in the Middle East. They meet Neanderthals, mix with them, continue to spread over the world. And somewhere in south-east Asia they meet Denisovans, mix with them, and continue on out through the Pacific."
Peter Klevius: What?! Why do you lie to media - or at the least forget to tell them that what you call "modern humans" didn't look or behave modern at all?! Moreover, and even more importantly, you forgot to tell media that you know absolutely nothing about the genetics of these "modern" Africans you talk about! There doesn't simply exist the slightest scientific reason to connect certain extremely primitive looking remains in Africa to the Eurasian moderns (with far more sophisticated culture) that then came to populate the whole world. Why do you abuse the deep ignorance among most non-specialists? As a scientist you shouldn't mix political correctness (or whatever) with the presentation of scientific facts. Why does Klevius have to correct you?
1) "Modern humans" couldn't have come out from Africa because they had first to arrive in Africa (see below)!
2) If the only Denisovan (40,000-80,000 BP) we know about, so far, was found in Siberia/Altai, how then can you say that "
somewhere in south-east Asia they meet Denisovans"?! Wouldn't it have been much more likely that they first encountered Denisovans more opposite to south-east Asia?!
Again, based on what we know so far, isn't it much more likely that Denisovans spread from south-east Asia all the way to Siberia and later were extinguished by the flood of successful moderns spreading southwards, leaving most genetic traces of Denisovans around the area where they came from. As we all know south-east Asia harbored already one species of a non-modern creature (Homo floresiensis) that possessed a brain that was superior when it comes to the relation size/performance of known species at the time
http://kleviusanthropology.blogspot.co.uk/. And all of this fit much better in Klevius' theoretical framework presented a decade ago on the web!
These portraits may all have been made in Eurasia before and/or around the ti me when modern humans reached Africa*
* No one knows for sure as yet about the time for the so called "back migration" (estim. from 21,000 to more than 30,000 BP) and
as long as we don't find high level Aurignacian etc art in Africa
(especially in sub-Sahara) there is no reason to believe truly modern
humans were there before (more on this below).
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So what is 100% clear is that nothing even close to these works and time
have been found in Africa so far. So why do some people continue
neglecting this important fact that has long reaching implications for
our understanding of how we all evolved?! What's the problem with
Africa? We haven't found these things in the Americas,
West/South/SE-Asia or Australia either!
Klevius reminder: First of all! Forget all you've heard about the
Afrocentric invention "Mitocondrial Eve" some 200,000 years ago. It's
all proven either completely wrong or at least unreliable. Moreover,
"Mitochondrial Eve" had many "sisters" who contributed similarly
although their particular mt lineages ended somewhere although their
genetics was passed on to us. Secondly, we can't be sure were she lived
anymore because the genetic history of Africa has turned out to be a
mess of migrations and back migrations. Thirdly, we don't have any clue
whatsoever about how she looked like. 200,000 years ago (and probably
more) even the most human like creatures we have found remains of were
nothing like us in appearance or behavior. However, there is absolutely
no reason to believe that "Mitochondrial Eve" had anything to do with
them. She could, and more likely so, have been a small Homo floresiensis
like half ape.
Long ago when I followed Leakey's etc diggings in the Rift Valley I used
to combine it with the horror I felt in reading and watching films
about slavery in the US (but not in Central and South America, and not
muslim slave raiding/trading in Africa, Arab countries and Eurasia). And
in doing this plus knowing about harsh and primitive conditions with
many people starving in Africa, a pro-African bias sneaked into my
understanding of the world. A bias that only disappeared with the
writing of my book
Demand for Resources 1992.
Today I see this kind of bias again all around me but now politically used to boast and monetize agendas of racism and sexism.
An other voice on the evolution of the modern human
According to Anatole A. Klyosov, Igor L. Rozhanskii, seven thousand five
hundred fifty-six (7556) haplotypes of 46 subclades in 17 major
haplogroups were considered in terms of their base (ancestral)
haplotypes and timespans to their common ancestors, for the purposes of
designing of time-balanced haplogroup tree. It was found that African
haplogroup A (originated 132,000 ± 12,000 years before present) is very
remote time-wise from all other haplogroups, which have a separate
common ancestor, named β-haplogroup, and originated 64,000 ± 6000 ybp.
It includes a family of Europeoid (Caucasoid) haplogroups from F through
T that originated 58,000 ± 5000 ybp. A downstream common ancestor for
haplogroup A and β-haplogroup, coined the α-haplogroup emerged 160,000 ±
12,000 ybp. A territorial origin of haplogroups α- and β-remains
unknown; however, the most likely origin for each of them is a vast
triangle stretched from Central Europe in the west through the Russian
Plain to the east and to Levant to the south. Haplogroup B is descended
from β-haplogroup (and not from haplogroup A, from which it is very
distant, and separated by as much as 123,000 years of “lateral”
mutational evolution) likely migrated to Africa after 46,000 ybp.
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