When did humans leave Africa? (general, Chinese, DNA, Spain)
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The earliest evidence of an ex-African presence by a Homo species is around 1.8-2.0 million years ago. This species is generally called Homo erectus, though a minority of paleontologists recognize the earliest such fossils as belonging to the species Homo egaster, proposed by some to exist in addition to H. erectus. Note that this is a classification dispute, not a dating dispute.
An interesting and complex question. First of all it's pretty well established that there was more than one exodus out of Africa, and that the groups which left first did not evolve into Homo Sapiens. Second, what do we understand by "humans"? If we want to restrict that term to anatomically modern humans, it changes the question around.
Third, it's hard to imagine a field which is changing as rapidly as paleoanthropology. New fossils (or more likely partial fossils) keep coming to light, as well as DNA studies, resulting in re-thinking of the tenuous links in our evolutionary tree. Any book or article on this subject should be fairly recent if it's to be considered authoritative.
I think even the Homo Sapiens qualifier needs to be broken down into anatomically modern Homo Sapiens and earlier variants of Homo Sapiens.
Anatomically modern Homo Sapiens arrived in Australia about 50,000 years ago. I beleive that they left Africa at relatively the same time (migratory people can cover a good deal of ground relatively fast).
As the other poster said, there have probably been several out of Africa migrations with some waves being far more successful than others. For example, an early wave was hit hard by a volcanic eruption in Indonesia. As human popualtions were very small, and did not have alot of food reserves etc, it did not take much of an impact on weather / cooling to put people in grave danger.
Anatomically modern Homo Sapiens arrived in Australia about 50,000 years ago. I beleive that they left Africa at relatively the same time (migratory people can cover a good deal of ground relatively fast).
I've seen that figure of 50,000 years ago as well.
Back in '09 a genetic survey of people in Africa (Tishkoff-Ehret study ) suggested that after getting the African data and combining it with DNA information from the rest of the world the believed the area for the origin of humans was in southwestern Afrcia near the Kalahari desert. And they also indicated that they believed the first humans who left Africa left from the midpoint off the African coast on the Red Sea. I believe the results of this genetic study was published in Science magaizne in 2009. Not sure of the overall critical reaction to it. Some specializing in African anthropology thought it impressive.
Oh, really? What does modern genetics and newer fossil evidence show? Thanks
Modern genetics shows that modern humans are a mosaic of different human species. A few years ago it was confirmed that humans interbred with Neanderthals, but not all humans, just the humans that left Africa. And it looks like the interbreeding was just something that happened at just one point in time and only with the first homo sapiens that left Africa. All non-Africans are between 1-4 percent Neanderthal (on average, some populations and individuals have more Neanderthal genes). 4 percent may not seem like much, but it's the equivalent of your great-great-great grandfather being a Neanderthal.
The interesting thing is that different populations carry different Neanderthal genes. This is due to genetic drift. So Chinese have different Neanderthal genes than Swedes, which may affect the different populations in different ways.
Also, recently it was discovered that Melanesian and Australian aborigines are 6 percent Denisovan, a newly discovered human species. So including Neanderthal admixture, they are at least 10 percent "other human."
But that is not the end of it. Now that geneticists know what to look for, they are finding evidence of archaic admixture in populations all over the world. West Africans have at least 13 percent of their genes from an unidentified human species.
The out of Africa model has been rewritten.
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