Comments
The 'Out of Africa' or 'Eve' concept has intuitively bothered me for three major reasons:
1.Why should we presume Africa as a spacial unit as opposed to say 'Savannahstan'?-a vast region of grassland extending from Asia to Africa millions of years ago.
2.Why should we accept the notion of one way traffic of hominins FROM Africa TO Eurasia?Maybe the early humans ranged thought-out nearly the entire old world-Africa and Eurasia.
3.Absence of evidence is not necessarily evidence of absence.With the discovery of the Dmanisi and Flores fossils I think this point is now clear.How much remains to be found in Eurasia?
posted by Robert Browne
August 5, 2009 @ 6:26 PM
Regarding the genetic data;Y chromosome and mtDNA markers are sex-linked and therefore can be lost over generations,for example:I have no Y chromosome nor mtDNA from either my maternal Grandfather nor paternal Grandmother..does this mean I'm not related to half my set of Grandparents?!
Maybe the genetic evidence suggests that Africa has had a larger and more stable population level over time and,(with the entire human species being an interconnected and interbreeding network spanning the old world) the African lineages have tended to 'edge out' the others in the genetic record.
posted by Robert Browne
August 5, 2009 @ 7:37 PM
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