Ancient and ArchaeologyÌý permalink
Out of Africa Hypothesis
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Message 1.Ìý
Posted by Haesten (U4770256) on Monday, 11th May 2009
Anyone catch this programme?
I think Multiregional Hypothesis is the more likely explanation.
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Message 2
Posted by TwinProbe (U4077936) on Monday, 11th May 2009
Hi Haestan,
"I think Multiregional Hypothesis is the more likely explanation" Ìý
I'd be interested to know on what basis.
TP -
Message 3
Posted by Haesten (U4770256) on Monday, 11th May 2009
TP
The whole Single Origin Hypothethis (Out of Africa) seems to be based on MtDNA
It seems to me that MtDNA dating is being used to prove O of A theory and O of A is being used to prove MtDNA dating.
I would also need convincing that people had a reason to migrate north during the last glaciation, when central Africa would have had the best climate of anywhere. -
Message 4
Posted by dngardner1 (U13959272) on Monday, 11th May 2009
I agree. The multiregion hypothesis stands up to scrutiny better. I am aware that Peking Man lived in China about 300,000 years ago. This does not square with the Out of Africa hypothesis which argues that man migrated from Africa around 70,000 years ago, unless Peking Man is an evolution line that died out.
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Message 5
Posted by Nik (U1777139) on Monday, 11th May 2009
I had read in the past about the multiregional hypothesis and it intrigued me to find that modern regional races bear certain resemblances to the ancient Homo Erectus regional races. Even Homo Erectus other "son", Homo Neaderdalensis bears some resemblance at some points with some western Europeans (nose and chin). But then is that really strange? Afterall imagine that two animal lines which are pretty much far apart, the mammals and the marsipials were evolved into similar structures, e.g. you had a marsupial tiger-like animal (the saber-pocket tiger, extict some millenia back), a marsipial dog-like (the Thylacine, extinct in early 20th century - we even have photos). Even between very earlier dinosaurs and mammals there were equivalents with a marine dinosaur being very much a lookalike of the modern dolphin.
So I guess there is nothing surprising that later Homo Sapiens races shared some characteristics with earlier Homo Erectus in every region.
Now, a hotter climate is not necessarily the best climate to live. A temperate climate was excellent not only for Homo Sapiens but even for Homo Erectus who knew very well to thrive on such a climate. In fact, the African plains when they were emptied from the herds of bulls and gazeles (due to any combination of factors) had not as much to provide as a temperate plain that had lots of edible trees and plants. On the other hand other hominoids like Homo Neaderdalensis they actually thrived on colder climate living strictly out of chasing animals (actually the snow slowed animal speed and the bulky Neaderdals could more easily trap them).
However as we know what drived back then humans was following animal movements and of course inter-human warfare - the loser had to just move out of the vicinity (that is at least some 50km away). 50km to 50km - in a few decades hominoids and humans could easily spread over vast surfaces.
Now, on the out of Africa theory, people argue and re-argue. There are also those that cannot understand the variation of human races. But to me variation of human races while very visible is not even close to the variation of... dogs!!!! And as we know, only a few millenia back most dog races were not that much different from not really so many ancient dog races: I am sure had you not known you would not even imagine that the Chihuahua was the one and the same spieces with the Doberman. If dogs could provide with say 10 races and 100 subraces in some 20,000 years then I find it natural that man - despite his higher mobility - provided with 5-6 races and some 20-30 subraces, what is so strange? We can even locate easily races bearing common points, like the San people of South Africa who are of light brown skin, have a tedency for slashed eyes like Asians
and while their noses (and thus their general appearence) resemble those of Africans and Asians, their more elongated skulls bear also some resemblance to those of Europeans. If I had to vote, I would vote for them as the race the most close to that first Homo Sapiens tribe, though inarguably everybody thus including the San has evolved since then.
This is of course a higly interesting subject. And it should be kept out of any para-theories, i.e. we should rather judge from the results and not select results to fit theories. -
Message 6
Posted by LairigGhru (U5452625) on Monday, 11th May 2009
Supporting what Nik has said, I think.
It has to be understood that waves of humanoid migration flowed out of Africa over the last 2 million years, and it is only the last one 80,000 years ago that involved our ancestors, Homo sapiens. Peking Man descended from Homo erectus, which must have left Africa about half a million years ago. -
Message 7
Posted by TwinProbe (U4077936) on Tuesday, 12th May 2009
Hi Haestan,
Thanks, but I'm not sure that everyone is posting about the same hypothesis. Can I give a brief account to see if everyone agrees?
About 2 million years ago H. erectus evolves from H. ergaster in Africa.
Everyone agrees that H. erectus leaves Africa and spreads to many parts of Asia within a 1-2 hundred thousand year period. Skeletal remains of this species are found in Java, China, and Dmanisi.
About 600,000 years ago H. heidlebergensis evolves in Africa and spreads to Europe evolving to Neanderthals.
The 'multi-regional hypothesis' postulates that H. erectus continues to evolve into H. sapiens wherever populations existed. No single place could be said to constitute the origin of H. sapiens and obvious regional differences between modern populations of H. sapiens are really very old.
The 'out of Africa' hypothesis postulates that H. sapiens evolved in S. Africa about 100,000 years ago and (for the last time) a population spread world-wide. Wherever H. sapiens encountered a population of earlier hominids it replaced them. The obvious regional differences between modern populations of H. sapiens are really quite recent.
Is that a fair account of the two theories to start from?
TP -
Message 8
Posted by Haesten (U4770256) on Tuesday, 12th May 2009
TP
Yep.
The oldest Homo Sapien remains are from Ethiopia, 130,000 years and then Isreal, 100,000 years.
Genetic diversity points to the San people of Namibia (West Africa) being the tribe that a handful of people (150) left to populate the rest of the world. I'm not sure if any remains of Homo Sapien have been found in the area, but this is based on "population bottleneck" to explain the lack of genetic diversity in the rest of world's population at present.
During the last 800,000 years there have been four glacial periods that would have caused "population bottlenecks" outside Africa I would have thought. -
Message 9
Posted by lolbeeble (U1662865) on Tuesday, 12th May 2009
The documentary is frustratingly slow but then it is not really designed for me. In fact for the most part it seems to resemble a holiday programme with a soundtrack that wants to be Nirvana and Massive Attack but plumped for the cheaper option of original compositions mimicking them.
It is obvious it favours the recent out of Africa replacement model, publicised by Chris Stringer and Peter Andrews, but this really only differs from most modern multiregionalist models on the basis of how geographically diverse they consider the ancestral population of anatomically modern humans to be. Both Stringer and Andrews and Milford Walpoff imagine that groups of hominids were continuously involved in a process of isolation and unification where isolated groups would develop unique genetic combination, haplotypes, some of which turned out to have benefits for survival to the extent that selection resulted in them becoming prevalent in that band.
They differ in what they believe happened after that however. While both models suggest that such beneficial adaptations would increasingly be spread across a wider population, the recent out of Africa model places the processes that lead to the modern human lineage firmly within the confines of Sub Saharan Africa and suggests that the longer groups were geographically isolated the more likely they would develop into separate species. Multiregionalism posits a worldwide feedback loop since the first hominids left Africa that implies speciation was not so clearly delineated and that haplotypes could develop on any continent and then be spread throughout archaic hominid lines.
I'm not sure that it is appropriate to cherry pick one line or point from genetic studies and then present it as the be all and end of all of your argument as you have tended to do. Whereas it is true that part of the recent replacement theory uses evidence derived from studies of mitochondrial affinity it is not the only source that it relies on. Assumptions derived from genetics still have to be anchored by the fossil record and it seems more or less incontrovertible that the crucible of modern human development was sub Saharan Africa. This region has produced the earliest examples of modern skull morphology and the cranial development of African specimens displays a far greater degree of continuity over the last half million years compared to that of the modern and archaic populations across Eurasia. Note the development of the chin, characteristic high forehead and reduction in the prominent brow ridge that are absent in archaic populations across Eurasia. The modern pattern of difference between the size and body shape of males and females shows up first in Africa. The difference in body mass between men and women becomes much less pronounced around a quarter of a million years ago while womens' hips begin to widen to accommodate the changing cranial morphology of infants, approaching the modern norm. Finally aspects of the package of behaviours that we associate with modern humans first appear in Africa before spreading to Eurasia. It did not take long to find sites that lead to this conclusion once chronological divisions based on the European Paleolithic were abandoned for that matter.
The question still remains as to how this package of morphological features and complex behaviours came to be ubiquitous. To that extent the documentary's material on possible routes out of Africa is relevant whatever degree of admixture with archaic hominid populations in Eurasia one subscribes to. In fact such studies are all the more important to the multi-regionalist hypothesis as the theories mechanism requires regular genetic exchange between African and non African populations. Therefore the issue of Sub Saharan Africa's isolation from North Africa and Western Asia remains pertinent. One of the problems of the multi-regionalist explanation is how frequent such genetic exchange has to be in order to prevent speciation. The root into Europe appears to have been particularly hard to traverse given the long dry zone running across the Sahara and Arabia and as such climatic data suggests only occasional brief wet periods that allowed hominids to cross this barrier. Around one million years ago for Homo Erectus, six hundred thousand years ago for Homo Heidelbergensis with modern populations appearing North of the Sahara just over one hundred thousand years ago. On the other hand the route to East Asia would have been more likely to be accessible during periods of maximum glacial advance as the drying of the climate would reduce sea levels around the horn of Africa by tens of meters. Whether these periods were sufficiently close to maintain a genetic link between the dispersed hominid populations of East Asia and Europe is contentious given the vast stretches of time between them. Certainly we are looking at a timeframe that is at least ten times greater than that separating old from new world populations when Columbus arrived if not more. The number of generations is further exacerbated by the faster rate of maturation for archaic hominid populations compared to modern humans.
The evidence for a prolonged period of mega-drought from around 120,000 years to 75,000 years would suggest that East Africa was not the supposed garden of Eden you paint it to be. That being the case it is still probable that Sub Saharan Africa was home to the greatest concentration of archaic hominids throughout the Paleolithic and thus would have the greatest scope for isolation of specific populations simply because of the number of bands. Genetic evidence has suggested that the modern African population split into two isolated groups during the megadrought period, possibly as a result of fresh water resources becoming increasingly more scarce. There appears to be little evidence from the periphery of the climatic ranges of hominid populations to suggest that anatomically modern and archaic groups occupied the same regions at the same time, most notably the sites on Mount Carmel. Indeed the growth in Neanderthal genetic sequences has been used to suggest their population was also divided into geographically distinct groups that had minimal interaction with one another for that matter. Such patterns of distribution would seem to add further complications to a process of continuous genetic exchange between archaic hominid populations in Africa and Eurasia. -
Message 10
Posted by lolbeeble (U1662865) on Tuesday, 12th May 2009
That said there are some anomalies that require explanation, the apparent antiquity of East Asian nucleic DNA for starters. This appears to suggest that some haplotypes of East Asian nucleic DNA have a longer heritage than any found in African populations. This has been attributed several possible causes; the result of interbreeding with archaic hominids; the legacy of a haplotype, either mitochondrial or nucleic, carried out of Africa by anatomically modern human groups that has persisted to the present day in East Asia but become extinct in modern African populations or even as a result of an acceleration in the accumulation of changes on nucleic DNA in East Asia possibly as a result of the dramatic increase in the size of the overall population.
There is also some debate as to the implications surrounding the genetic lineage of parasites that co-evolved with humans. Lice, tapeworms, follicle mites, protozoan and bedbugs all seem to display a period where the population was split into two geographically separate groups long before the recent out of Africa exodus before undergoing a recent reunification event. In spite of this there is an overwhelming presence of genetic material that can be traced back to African antecedents, both for humans and our parasites, that further supports movement from Africa. Multi-regionalists have increasingly looked to variants of the wave of diffusion model put forward by V Eswaren as a means of explaining this pattern. It acknowledges the role of Africa in the development of modern human genetics but provides a mechanism by which the genetic package hat evolved in Africa spread through the archaic populations of Eurasia over the last 100,000 years.
Incidentally, the scanning software this board employs makes it is remarkably difficult to refer to discredited multiregionalist models such as that favoured by the unfortunately named author of "The Races of Europe, The White Race and the New World". -
Message 11
Posted by lolbeeble (U1662865) on Tuesday, 12th May 2009
Genetic diversity points to the San sharing a common mitochondrial ancestor with the human groups that left Africa. This is a feature they share with the Mbuti in West Africa and the Sandawe in East Africa because all display what appears to be the oldest surviving mitochondrial haplotype, dubbed L0. This is the antecedent of the L3 haplotype, common in East Africa, that in turn provided the lineage that left Africa and populated Eurasia. The evidence would therefore suggest that East Africa was the ancestral home of modern humans.
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Message 12
Posted by Haesten (U4770256) on Tuesday, 12th May 2009
Thanks lolbeeble
How about Mungo Man in OZ, he doesn't descend from the East African "Eve" and is dated 40,000 to 60,000 years old? -
Message 13
Posted by lolbeeble (U1662865) on Tuesday, 12th May 2009
Well it depends how one chooses to interpret the data. Bearing in mind that "Mitochondrial Eve" is a statistical creation rather than a physical individual, the most recent common ancestor for modern populations is not going to be the same as that of ancient populations. In simple terms there may have been other maternal lines that left Africa that have since become extinct. This has been suggested as a possible reason why the mitochondrial line appears to resemble certain parts of the Chromosone 11.
Mind you questions have been raised about the likelyhood that genetic material could survive in the environment around Lake Mungo. DNA deteriorates quite rapidly in temperate and warm climates and the level of material Adcock is reported to have extracted for amplification has lead to suggestions that there may have been modern contamination. Consider the case of the recent female serial killer in Germany who turned out to be a worker in the factory that made the swabs.
The indigenous Australian population has been used to highlight the possible survival of archaic cranial features such as heavy brows and broad cranial bowls that were supposedly a legacy of the Asian Homo Erectus. The dating of lake Mungo burial to around 60,000 years in the late 90s seemed to provide something of a problem for the dispersal of modern humans as the standard rate of change of Mitochondrial DNA suggeste that the African exodus did not take place until around 70,000 years ago. This therefore meant that humans would have had to have reached Australia within around 10,000 years and this appeared to be too rapid as little evidence had been found for human activity in between. The only comparable site was the Great cave of Niah in Sarawak, Borneo and had been dated to c.40,000 years ago. It was therefore seen as strengthening the case for multiregionalism. However the age of the site has subsequently been adjusted downwards to around 40,000 years. Since that time traces of modern human activity that predate the earliest Australian evidence have been found in Southern India. Furthermore recent studies have suggested that the morphology of the skull in the Mungo burial resembles those found in the Levant dating to around 100,000 years ago, such as the site at Skhul featured in the documentary. -
Message 14
Posted by Colquhoun (U3935535) on Monday, 18th May 2009
Dr Roberts is however very easy on the eye....
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Message 15
Posted by giraffe47 (U4048491) on Wednesday, 20th May 2009
She is indeed, but this illustrates all the problems with modern TV documentaries.
2 or 3 'facts',
2 or 3 (sometimes doubtful) 'conclusions',
90% scenery, padding, 'adventure' and 'debate' with 'talking heads' trying to make the science behind it all understandable for the moronic 10-year-olds it appears to be aimed at.
I keep watching them all, in the hope that one of them will actually bite into the problem, but all of them seem to end up the same format. -
Message 16
Posted by Colquhoun (U3935535) on Wednesday, 20th May 2009
All of the above posts refer to mdna, yet on Sunday's eposode the possibility of the Chinese being decended directly from Homo erecticus was ruled out by reference to paternal dna. So it appears that both the paternal and maternal paths support the prevalent 'out of Africa theory'
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Message 17
Posted by Haesten (U4770256) on Wednesday, 20th May 2009
Assuming genetics is the exact science that is claimed, I wonder why farming started in China some 9,000 years ago and only 4,500 years ago in sub-Saharan Africa?
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Message 18
Posted by lolbeeble (U1662865) on Thursday, 21st May 2009
Technically what the genetic study ruled out was the entirely separate linear development of modern East Asian populations directly from East Asian archaic hominids by demonstrating that they all have a genetic link with groups of humans that left Africa within the last 100,000 years. The study concentrated on just one specific genetic marker on the Y chromosome which does not rule out a genetic legacy from archaic hominids on other parts of the genome although this does point out they would be a very minor influence compared to that of anatomically modern humans from Africa. Having said that I really cannot see why the presenter keeps feigning surprise at the Chinese view of their own special evolutionary path. Such a model of mutiregionalism was common throughout those parts of the world that considered themselves to be civilised in the first half of the twentieth century as it supported the hierarchy of races put forward by the likes of Gobbineau. That said, scientists of European and East Asian descent differed over just which race was most evolved but these debates were motivated more by cultural chauvinism than anything else. Even today some East Asian writers assume that the recent out of Africa model means that the Chinese are more evolved than the rest of the world despite not developing in such extreme isolation.
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Message 19
Posted by lolbeeble (U1662865) on Thursday, 21st May 2009
Haesten, I think you may have misunderstood the point the documentary was raising about the adoption of agriculture in East Asia although it was not made that clearly in the first place. It is not a matter of the timing of the adoption of sedentary agricultural subsistence patterns on different continents but what it caused. Given that a large portion of the documentary was devoted to the development of East Asian racial morphology the sudden leap of twenty thousand years at the end of the episode was designed to display that modern racial divisions have a fairly recent origin rather than being linked to the earlier archaic hominid populations. The primary mechanism for this process appears to be the growth of specific populations whose descendants took up agriculture and now make up the overwhelming majority of the world's population.
As to why farming started at different times in different parts of the world, it is difficult enough working out what motivated such a transition in each separate case. Suffice to say it was not because farming is inherently superior to hunter gathering given the increase in labour required to grow the food as well as the apparent decline in diet, both in terms of calories and the variety of species consumed and their subsequent effect on the health from the remains of early agricultural communities. Amongst other problems it appears to have accelerated rates of dental caries and diabetes.
As such there appear to be several interlinking factors that lead to an almost exclusive reliance on domesticated foodstuffs over wild species although these played out over the space of thousands of years. Declining numbers of suitable food species in the environment resulted in a greater reliance on a much less varied diet made up of the survivors. As the number of species declined, survivors had less competition for resources allowing them to become more prevalent across the ecosystem. Thus what were once marginal species, both in terms of distribution and dietary preference, in areas of great biodiversity would spread across a much wider environment forcing a more prominent role in human subsistence. Then there is the use of technology to reduce the effort required to gather and prepare what were often rather expensive foodstuffs in terms of calories expended making some foods more attractive than they had bee to previous generations. There is also the level of human population and its relation to the amount of food needed to sustain it. On the one hand growing populations would allow more food to be gathered from the environment spreading the effort. This would also place a greater strain on wild resources so food would become scarcer close to settlement sites more quickly meaning there would be greater benefit in increasing levels of physically manipulating the environment to encourage the production of manageable food resources.
What appears to be evident is that the decline in the prevalence of certain edible food plants occurred far earlier in the temperate regions of the Near East and East Asia compared to the Southern border of the Sahara where most of the Sub Saharan staples were domesticated. Thus the kind of strains suggested above forced a greater reliance on a smaller number of species at a much earlier date because of the difference in the results of climatic change. Whereas the Temperate zones saw a decline in plants that were available for exploitation around ten thousand years ago the areas around Lake Chad and the southern borders of the Sahara became increasingly lush and sustained a greater degree of biodiversity, at least in terms of plants as large prey were supplanted by cattle based pastoralism around eight thousand years ago. This lush period came to an end around five thousand years ago, around the same time as domesticated varieties of plants like Sorghum start to appear regularly in the archaeological record of the region. The increasing aridity reached its maximum around four thousand years ago, coinciding with the end of the Egyptian Old Kingdom period and forced Sub Saharan agriculturalists into an ever more restricted range around Lake Chad as well as southwards into the tropics. -
Message 20
Posted by U V (U2084947) on Thursday, 21st May 2009
Assuming genetics is the exact science that is claimed, I wonder why farming started in China some 9,000 years ago and only 4,500 years ago in sub-Saharan Africa?Ìý
This is because the development of agriculture was not dependent on a genetic change but on environmental factors such as climate changes and availability of plant and animal species amenable to domestication. -
Message 21
Posted by lolbeeble (U1662865) on Thursday, 21st May 2009
Blimey, how did you manage to post this before I sent my message yet have it show up later?
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Message 22
Posted by Haesten (U4770256) on Thursday, 21st May 2009
This is because the development of agriculture was not dependent on a genetic change but on environmental factors such as climate changes and availability of plant and animal species amenable to domestication.
Ìý
The premise of Out of Africa is that the Homo Sapiens were more intelligent than the European/Asian Hominids, thus they were able to wipe them out in a relatively short space of time. Wild rice was indigenous to Africa but was hardly domesticated at all.
The "hunting was good" is a very convenient answer to this.
The genetic Eve in O of A is 143,000 years old and the genetic Adam only 80,000 years old.
Also I gather the computer programme that generates the Eve used, turns out infinite numbers of genetic family trees that differ slightly from the one used. -
Message 23
Posted by U V (U2084947) on Thursday, 21st May 2009
lolbeebel: "Blimey, how did you manage to post this before I sent my message yet have it show up later?"
That was because it was my first post on this board - so I am still on pre-mod.
Mind you, I did allow you an hour or so to respond to Haesten, as you since have in your thorough and comprehensive way
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Message 24
Posted by lolbeeble (U1662865) on Friday, 22nd May 2009
The recent out of Africa replacement model does not suggest what mechanism the archaic population came to be replaced by anatomically modern humans. It is true that some commentators have suggested possible explanations but evidence is thin on the ground and so no firm conclusions have been drawn other than the obvious that there is now only one hominid species.
So what does genetics have to do with the differing times for the adoption of sedentary farming? Your assertions do appear to have a whiff of James Watson's views about the relationship between race and intelligence. I suppose we should be grateful there has been no reference to a Cecil Rhodes inspired white Goddess.
Anyway the hunting and gathering was not always that good otherwise it would not have started to give way to pastoralism and agriculture. Your allusion to the domestication of rice in Asia before Africa is a flawed model to use as a comparison for that matter. Rice cultivation was not so important to the development of complex societies in Sub Saharan Africa and its range was restricted by the climatic constraints that require fairly heavy rainfall. As a result it never spread far beyond the area of its wild progenitors in west Africa. Starchy grains from the savanna and woodland margins like Sorghum and Millet were the agricultural staples and were better suited to the range of climates in much of Sub Saharan Africa as far south as the Limpopo. Compared to rice they require far less water to grow and are far more drought resistant for that matter. Even in the parts of Africa where wild rices are found there were alternative starchy staples, such as the yam and false banana, but their domestication is much harder to plot simply because traces of their storage and preparation do not survive so readily in the archaeological record. Furthermore rice was not the sole basis of early complex societies in East Asia for that matter given the reliance on millet in Northern China and Korea. -
Message 25
Posted by Colquhoun (U3935535) on Friday, 22nd May 2009
Wasn't there agriculture based on grain in Mesopatania (sorry about spelling, on blackberry) around 9000 years ago?
I had always assumed that much of sub saharan Africa was unsuitable for arable agriculture, afterall if it was then it would be used as such today. -
Message 26
Posted by Haesten (U4770256) on Friday, 22nd May 2009
So what does genetics have to do with the differing times for the adoption of sedentary farming? Your assertions do appear to have a whiff of James Watson's views about the relationship between race and intelligence. I suppose we should be grateful there has been no reference to a Cecil Rhodes inspired white Goddess.
Ìý
I would have thought that if only a handful of Homo Sapiens left Africa and most stayed, civilisation should have started there.
"One theory for the Neanderthals disappearance is that they couldn't compete with humans, who had better brains and more sophisticated tools, for scarce resources such as food."
I don't follow your connection of this to Watson?
Apparently the Y chromosome is dying out.
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Message 27
Posted by lolbeeble (U1662865) on Friday, 22nd May 2009
Yes, there is evidence for a growing dependence on gathering grains in the Near East from around twenty thousand years ago. However the change from multiple species of small wild grains to a growing dependence on a more restricted range of larger fatter grains of domesticated wheat and barley is apparent at least ten thousand years ago. That said grain domestication occurred across several regions at roughly the same time and the resultant crops came together to form a package that is recognisable as the western staples.
Emmer wheat and barley were first cultivated around the Jordan valley in the Levant. Sites in the Jordan valley also have evidence displaying early attempts to cultivate oats but the crop was not adopted as a staple. Einkorn wheat was domesticated from wild species found on Mount Karacadag in Southeastern Anatolia in the Upper Tigris Euphrates basin. The area is of particular interest because its domestication can possibly be linked to the first signs of sedentism. It may well be that the effort invested in the nearby monumental site of Gobekli Tepe was responsible for the transition from wild to domesticated wheat as well as sheep and goats as its eariest levels were in use between thirteen and eleven thousand years ago. Rye cultivation was attempted in Southern Anatolia but like oats this species rapidly fell out of favour. Both Oats and Rye would later be domesticated for cultivation in Europe after traveling as weeds with the spread of farming. Agricultural communities supplemented grains with pulses like lentils and peas that were developed from wild species in the Tigris Euphrates basin and Jordan valley. Figs may well have been part of the early agricultural package with speculation that their seeds were deliberately planted from eleven thousand years ago.
Much of Sub Saharan Africa is used for agriculture and pastoralism. The trouble is a large proportion of the most fertile land was, erm, expropriated (which I think is a polite way of saying stolen or purchased for a hand-full of beans) by European settlers. Other than cash crops like the tea we drink it doesn't really feature that highly in our consciousness.
Incidentally I noticed that Alice Roberts appears to have visited many of the same places as Nigel Spivey did for his series How Art made the World such as the !Kung San in Namibia and Gobekli Tepe in Turkey. In fact there have been quite a number of television crews that have turned up to film the !Kung San in recent years, alongside the two mentioned they've been filmed by David Attenborough in the life of Mammals, Ian Wright winging about having to eat Guinea fowl as well that drippy hippy priest in Around the World in eighty Faiths. What with their role in the Gods they must be crazy, the !Kung San may well have become as familiar with the workings of an outside broadcast unit as they are with their local environment. -
Message 28
Posted by Haesten (U4770256) on Friday, 22nd May 2009
lolbeeble
Alice ruled out the direct route to the "Fertile Crescent" (100,000 year old homo sapien burials in Isreal) presumably because they do not fit the out of Africa computer model.
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Message 29
Posted by Haesten (U4770256) on Friday, 22nd May 2009
Yes, there is evidence for a growing dependence on gathering grains in the Near East from around twenty thousand years ago.
Ìý
Do you mean Wadi Kubbaniya? (Nile Delta)
"The cereal grains were dated at the University of Arizona, Tucson, and the date-stones at the Oxford University facility; all were shown to be relatively modern contaminants.The idea that cereals and dates had been important components of the Late Palaeolithic economy of Wadi Kubbaniya was therefore abandoned (Wendorf et al. 1984; Gowlett 1987)."
Dated to circa 6,000 years ago.
Apparently the grains were assumed to date the same as the archeology they were found with, this gave the 20,000 years date. -
Message 30
Posted by richnewton13 (U13980217) on Saturday, 23rd May 2009
I read Eswarans paper many years ago and would suggest anyone interested in this topic does too
clearly some on the post board know of this paper
i will not spurt out verbatum the idea but welcome comments
basically Eswaran's diffusion wave model theorises on a demic diffusion of a genotype, a co-adapted combination of gene advantage spreading not by migration of a tribe for want of a better word, but by migration of the advantaged genotype out of africa by means of assimilation of the archaic population at the wave front of modernity. ie it is not the population that is flowing but the new speices genes.
think of the borg on star trek
or read the article and pay particular attention to the idea of the dog he puts forward
oh and by the way this guy is no anthropoligist so has no axe to grind if you will pardon the pun
regards
rich -
Message 31
Posted by Haesten (U4770256) on Saturday, 23rd May 2009
"Anthropologist Jeffrey Schwartz of the University of Pittsburgh, also a supporter of recent African origins, takes a dim view of evolutionary reconstructions based on DNA.
Until we rethink basic assumptions about DNA, the prospects for understanding human evolution with genetics look pretty bleak," he says.
Eswaran, however, remains upbeat about the prospects for his model of our genetic origins. It's attracted a lot of interest in a short time, and he's ready to ride the diffusion wave as far as it goes." -
Message 32
Posted by lolbeeble (U1662865) on Saturday, 23rd May 2009
Haesten, as you have noted, you assume that the earliest complex societies ought to follow on from the earliest examples of modern humanity and obviously you wonder why this did not occur. This is a a valid question and does not suggest any form of prejudicial view of one group or another by itself. However the fact that you dismiss possible explanations that do not refer to differences in ability as "convenient" and want to look at genetic factors that influenced the differing time frames for the adoption of agriculture does make one believe that there is a tone in your enquiry that there is something wrong with Sub Saharan populations for not becoming "civilised" sooner. This view is particularly evident because it goes so heavily against your negative disposition towards other conclusions derived from genetic studies. Now you have not expressed such views as explicitly as James Watson's assertion that all evidence goes against the modern anthropological belief that humans have similar levels of intelligence where ever they originated. However looking for some kind of genetic explanation does infer that you are prepared to believe that Eurasian populations had some innate biological advantage when it came to exploiting and manipulating their landscape compared to the populations of Sub Saharan Africa. My outburst was not so much Political correctness gone mad as slightly vexed.
Again it is not the out of Africa replacement theory that suggests that better brains and tools of incoming moderns resulted in the demise of archaic hominids but the subsequent attempts to provide a narrative to explain this. Lithics are probably a bad example to highlight as there is a body of evidence that suggests that Neanderthal tool kits became more specialised towards the end of the species existence as Mousteranian assemblages changed to Chatelperronian and Bohunician assemblages in different geographical regions and in any case were sufficient for the purpose of survival. There is also evidence for a developing concentration on personal adornment. These technological changes were once believed to have been in response to the arrival of anatomically modern humans but seem to actually predate this event. There was some comment amongst those in favour of multiregionalism that the jawbone found at the site of Les Rois in association with Aurignacian lithics, traditionally associated with modern humans, meant they were also being used by Neanderthals and so represented potential for interbreeding but as the report suggests it is more a case of being used on Neanderthals instead.
Furthermore it is not simply a case of superior brains resulting in the survival of one species over another but differences in the behaviour that each species employed to sustain such a long period of maturation and the collection of sufficient calories required for the the development and upkeep of a large blob of fat. I'll admit that doesn't really trip off the tongue. However it would appear that Neanderthals had more restricted ranges, less diversity in diet, lower life expectancy and their communities were far more isolated from one another as well as having less specialisation of tasks required for subsistence than that of the incoming moderns. Though such differences may individually been minor, it would appear that the modern human survival strategies forced Neanderthals into ever more marginal areas over the course of the two species existence in Europe. -
Message 33
Posted by lolbeeble (U1662865) on Saturday, 23rd May 2009
As such it is not inconceivable that the Mediterranean populations of anatomically modern humans from around one hundred thousand years ago became extinct as the climate got colder and thus did not contribute to modern ancestry. Be that as it may other groups that were closely related to this population may have crossed the horn of Africa into Southern Arabia leading to the morphological similarities between early Australians and the remains found at Skhul. There certainly appears to be evidence that the earliest migrations out of Africa predate the seventy thousand year barrier initially suggested by analysis of Mitochondrial DNA. The first migrants were thought to have used what is referred to as a Late Stone Age tool assemblage however the stone tools found in Southern India from around seventy thousand years ago appear to bear more affinity to African lithic technologies associated with the Middle Stone Age. This still shows how conclusions drawn from genetic studies have to take into account the fossil record.
-
Message 34
Posted by lolbeeble (U1662865) on Saturday, 23rd May 2009
I was referring to sites like Ohalo II and later Kebaran sites in the Levant and Sinai that show a reliance on wild grain species. Ohalo II has ample evidence for the collection and processing seeds from a wide variety of grasses from twenty three thousand years ago.
As far as I was aware, the Wadi Kubbaniya levels from around twenty thousand years ago suggest the population was more reliant on root crops than grains. Although grind stones and mortars have been uncovered, examination of coprolites suggests they were used to crush vegetable matter. This mush appears to have been used to wean infants. -
Message 35
Posted by Haesten (U4770256) on Saturday, 23rd May 2009
lolbeeble
I was assuming that Out of Africa Homo Sapien had the same range of intelligence as modern homo sapien (thicko to Einstein)
I was assuming that the Einstein who would make the leap forward in human intelligence would likely come from the larger population (O of A says the African population was far larger than those who went walkabout)
I was assuming that crop/animal selection/domestication, indicated a leap forward in human intelligence.
Why did this leap forward take place in Mesopotamia (Iraq) and not in sub-Saharan Africa?
So far we have homo sapien in Isreal dated 100,000 years BP and 23,000 years BP, and Neanderthal dated 30,000 BP -
Message 36
Posted by PaulRyckier (U1753522) on Sunday, 24th May 2009
Re: Message 34 and 35.
lol,
wanted to thank you for the interesting messages 9,10 and 11, even before I left for Italy, but now I see that it is extended to a high-level discussion to which among others Haesten contributed a great deal too.
I thank you all for this elaborated and polite exchange of messages, which covers a field of history and science in which I am particularly interested.
Warm regards to all the contributors of this thread and with esteem,
Paul. -
Message 37
Posted by Haesten (U4770256) on Monday, 25th May 2009
This site came up in last nights programme.
Apparently hunter gatherers could form a complex society, this appears to rule out the "hunting was good" argument for Africa, where evolution to civilisation is concerned. -
Message 38
Posted by Aussie-Ellie (U13982413) on Monday, 25th May 2009
We are finding this programme fascinating. True it can be a bit slow, the editing could be slicker and the camera man less obsessed with Alice's lovely face. However the content is thought provoking will no doubt make some types very angry (but the probably wouldn't watch anyway)
I am not an anthropologist, geneticist, or archaeologist but taught History of Art for many years. I am fascinated by the possibility of tracing our origins through our DNA and the effects of climate change and population movements of human life on earth
I have always been struck by the similarity of myths and legends that exist in most human groupings. Almost all races and religions have a flood in their earliest history, where virtually everyone except the few chosen ones perish and the chosen survivors go forth to repopulate the world.
If Alice is correct and people did walk across the Red Sea at one point during a very short period of time, perhaps they were being pursued. Perhaps many of the biblical stories and other ancient texts were based on facts that were passed down through the millennia by word of mouth through story tellers with the unavoidable embellishments and spin that all human engage in
I am really looking forward to the Australian episode next week -
Message 39
Posted by lolbeeble (U1662865) on Monday, 25th May 2009
Intelligence leap brought about by farming? Ah, that'll be where the misunderstanding comes in but I'm not sure that domestication represents any great leap in cognitive ability. Where would urban sophisticates be without the stereotype of the country bumpkin? Hungry I guess. I would say you are conflating the development of complex societies based on agriculture in the Tigris Euphrates basin with the initial domestication events. It would be best to treat them as separate developments for although it does follow that one cannot have the complex societies of Mesopotamia without sedentary agriculture the latter does not start for several thousand years after the domestication events so we are looking at a vastly different set of potential choices.
Continental population density does not really matter in the development of agriculture. Although Sub Saharan Africa may well have had the highest density of hominids for much of the past few million years by the time agriculture starts to develop humans had long since moved into virtually every environmental niche across the globe. There was not so much difference in the size and settlement density of populations even if those in Eurasia came from a much smaller number of ancestors. Population densities increased in resource rich locations no matter where they were based. The development of agriculture does not seem to be merely a matter of continental population density however but increases in regional population density from stresses brought about by a reduction in the variety of resources. Thus although populations may have increased in density in periods of plenty, they would have been more evenly spread across the landscape whereas in times of crisis the overall landscape may have been less densely populated but individual sites may have become more crowded though congregation around particular resources.
Mind you not all western domesticates come from North of the Sahara as genetic analysis of western cattle populations suggests that their wild progenitors came from the Saharan zone or in the Ethiopian highlands and spread along the Nile and over the Red Sea into Western Asia as well as southwards into Africa. However the differing rate for the advance of cattle north and south of the Sahara was a matter of acclimatisation. To the North there there was a much wider range of temperate ecosystems with sufficient water to support cattle so that by the time agriculture was introduced into Central and Western Europe cattle are an indispensable part of the package. South of the Sahara, the equatorial zones and their wide range of tropical diseases slowed the advance of pastoralism.
In the Levant, traces associated with Neanderthals appear to occupy a very brief time frame starting no later than seventy five thousand years ago only to disappear around forty five thousand years. This and finds in Mesopotamia represent the most southerly advance of the species whose traditional range was much further north. Neanderthals only survived as late as thirty thousand years ago in parts of Southern Europe such as the Carpathian uplands and the far west of the Iberian peninsular. The presence of anatomically modern humans in the Levant is split between an early settlement pattern between one hundred and thirty and eighty thousand years ago with resettlement as late as fifty thousand years ago. Presumably this later group were the ancestors of the residents of Ohalo II. -
Message 40
Posted by lolbeeble (U1662865) on Monday, 25th May 2009
See, I told you the film crew pitched up at Gobekli Tepe. The site merely challenges an assumption that non farming communities have very little in the way of social stratification and communal coercion. Such an image of pre agricultural society stems more from theories like economic historical progression and perceptions of the noble savage. Admittedly the idea of societies weighing up the cost of food production over food collection is another facet of Marxian economic analysis as well as painting the whole transition to agriculture as being far more deliberately planned than it actually was. However this does not take away form the basic premise that an emphasis on production of a limited number of staples gradually became more attractive compared to collection of a wide variety of wild resources. The fact is the environment around Gobekli Tepe was initially very rich in flora and fauna.
Sites like Gobekli Tepe, Mureybet and Jerf el Ahmar's significance cannot be underestimated simply because they represent the period just before the development of recognisable domesticate strains of certain species. Gobekli Tepe gets most of the headlines for its magnificent ritual complex but there are no apparent dwellings associated with the site suggesting it was a seasonal meeting place for communities across a wide area. However the ritual significance of the site suggests that the development of farming was not simply a utilitarian pursuit but appears to be associated with some ideological significance. For example the grains may have contributed to some ritual food or drink associated with the complex, possibly as a means of re-enforcing communal bonds after an extended period of absence. The temptation here is to suggest some form of alcohol but then it is a Bank Holiday. The collection, storage and redistribution of grain that must have happened may well have resulted in spreading the wild grains beyond the confines of their natural habitat. As the site appears to have been seasonal it is therefore possible that when the groups departed they took seeds with them and may well have sown them near other seasonal sites possibly as a standby in the event of shortages of other resources. -
Message 41
Posted by Haesten (U4770256) on Monday, 25th May 2009
I would say you are conflating the development of complex societies based on agriculture in the Tigris Euphrates basin with the initial domestication events. It would be best to treat them as separate developments for although it does follow that one cannot have the complex societies of Mesopotamia without sedentary agriculture the latter does not start for several thousand years after the domestication events so we are looking at a vastly different set of potential choices.
Ìý
No trace of domestication, plant or animal has been found at Göbekli Tepe, but......
"Recent DNA analysis of modern domesticated wheat compared with wild wheat has shown that its DNA is closest in structure to wild wheat found in a mountain (Karacadag) 20 miles away from the site, leading one to believe that this is where modern wheat was first domesticated."
"Schmidt and others believe that mobile groups in the area were forced to cooperate with each other to protect early concentrations of wild cereals from wild animals (herds of gazelles and wild donkeys). This would have led to an early social organization of various groups in the area of Göbekli Tepe. Thus, according to Schmidt, the Neolithic did not begin at a small scale in the form of individual instances of garden cultivation, but started immediately as a large scale social organisation." -
Message 42
Posted by Petebro (U13904311) on Thursday, 28th May 2009
My theory came from watching the Walking with Caveman. Why isn’t the answer the variations we see around the globe simply because the new out of Africa humans had a more dominant gene which enabled the modern mans thinking process, but were still compatible with their older migrating cousins and simply bred, mixing the two evolutionary waves?
-
Message 43
Posted by PaulRyckier (U1753522) on Thursday, 23rd June 2011
Anyone catch this programme?
I think Multiregional Hypothesis is the more likely explanation.
Ìý As an aside, but complementary to this thread:
The second URL seems to be changed and on the new URL I found this, enlightening us about American society.
Not that it is "that much" better in European society?
Kind regards,
Paul. -
Message 44
Posted by Haesten (U4770256) on Thursday, 23rd June 2011
New programme here.
-
Message 45
Posted by PaulRyckier (U1753522) on Thursday, 23rd June 2011
lol,
couldn't resist to read the whole thread first, before leaving to the French messageboard. And yes indeed it answers a lot of my questions and I see already Göbekli Tepe commented. And "nearly" all about the Neanderthal question in message 32. And a lol beeble on his best in the last paragraph of message 27.
Will add it immediately to the Coppens thread on the French messageboard. And as most understand English... Who some years ago had expected that a lol beeble would have enlightened a French public , I mean LOL...
Kind regards and in admiration...for your in depth knowledge...
Paul.
PS: Now I understand why I didn't fully read this thread as I was that time in Italy Sorrento near Naples. To see the place and the history of my favourite song of "Torna a Surriento" especially when it is interpreted by someone as a Giovanni Martinelli not that a Caruso isn't as well... -
Message 46
Posted by PaulRyckier (U1753522) on Thursday, 23rd June 2011
Haesten,
coincidentally see my message 8 in Henvell's Homo Georgicus thread...
Kind regards and with esteem,
Paul. -
Message 47
Posted by PaulRyckier (U1753522) on Thursday, 23rd June 2011
Addenum to message 45.
lol,
was afraid to lose my message when looking on another site and returning to the Ö÷²¥´óÐã...
And we discussed it years ago overhere in a thread about the history of the human voice...if you remember...
Kind regards and with esteem,
Paul. -
Message 48
Posted by Poldertijger (U11154078) on Wednesday, 29th June 2011
Hello Nik and Haesten,
In 2010 a remarkable discovery was made public:
insert neanderthal genes into a search engine.
So, homines sapientes might well have come out of Africa, but then they started seeing the Neanderthals socially...
Regards,
Poldertijger
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