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Lead researcher Dr Eleanor Scerri, visiting scholar at the University of Oxford, said: 'This is the first time that scientists have identified that early modern humans at the cusp of dispersal out of Africa were grouped in separate, isolated and local populations. Stone tools are the only form of preserved material culture for most of human history. In Africa, owing to the hot climate, ancient DNA has not yet been found. These stone tools reveal how early populations of modern humans dispersed across the Sahara just before they left North Africa Read more at: phys.org...
originally posted by: rickymouse
They could have settled there from somewhere else long ago.
Now it appears that more than 500,000 years ago, human ancestors living in the Baringo Basin of Kenya collected lava stone cobbles from a riverbed and hammered them in just the right way to produce stone blades. Paleoanthropologists Cara Roure Johnson and Sally McBrearty of the University of Connecticut, Storrs, recently discovered the blades at five sites in the region, including two that date to between 509,000 and 543,000 years ago. "This is the oldest known occurrence of blades," Johnson reported Wednesday here at the annual meeting of the Paleoanthropology Society.
originally posted by: Kandinsky
I guess my question would be this. Has there been a similarly extensive study into the differences between lithics that predate early modern humans?
originally posted by: Xtrozero
originally posted by: rickymouse
They could have settled there from somewhere else long ago.
Where else would we have started? The Americas are the newest group so everything else has a flow from Africa, unless you have information otherwise.
If we go back 1 million plus years then we are not talking humans anymore if you are suggesting that there were ancients before then.
In introductory classes to biological anthropology, both instructors and the authors of numerous textbooks have been tempted to present the origin of modern humans as two equally plausible, mutually exclusive evolutionary scenarios: the Out of Africa hypothesis and the Multiregional Evolution hypothesis.
These models can be expressed succinctly on a single PowerPoint slide, have historically been both suggested and supported by influential scholars in the field, and can be massively simplified for undergraduate consumption and, hopefully, comprehension.
The good news is this: we can stop doing this now. The bad news is that a more current representation of the consensus that most researchers have reached is likely to be more complex and convoluted.
In addition, it can likely only be represented by models of human evolution destined to befuddle introductory students everywhere, complete with multiple slides, wandering migration arrows, question marks, and unapologetic blank spaces. (One Year in Biological Anthropology: Species, Integration, and Boundaries in 2010, 214)
The 2010-2012 studies could have been a boon to anthropology if we had defended the multiregional model, but they now put some standard anthropological accounts in an awkward position. Embracing the replacement hypothesis and Mitochondrial Eve–without further developing the multiregional model–leaves anthropology needing to reconfigure a response.
In retrospect, embracing the replacement hypothesis and Mitochondrial Eve was very problematic for anthropology. Although these problems should have been more obvious earlier, they are painfully clear in 2012:
Kathleen Fuller, PhD • 2 years ago
This is a good overview. I am among the small group of anthropologists who never succumbed to the lure of mtEve. It made no sense, and I am glad that further genetic analysis has supported the inclusion of so-called archaics into modern human diversity.
I lost respect for Gould when he came out in support of mtEve; mtEve was clearly a 'creation' event, not an example of speciation, and, therefore, not scientific.
I was shocked when so many anthropologists jumped on board the mtEve, recent out-of-Africa bandwagon.
Fortunately, my current and former students will not have to re-learn that Neanderthals were part of modern human heritage since that is what I've always taught.
originally posted by: rickymouse
a reply to: Hanslune
Since when do we have to choose something else to believe in just because we do not believe in a present theory. Isn't it good enough to say that it really doesn't matter where man came from?
originally posted by: peter vlar
a reply to: Lil Drummerboy
Not quite sure how civil unrest in moder day USA plays into cultural development of early modern humans or archaic Homo sapiens if you prefer..
originally posted by: Lil Drummerboy
originally posted by: peter vlar
a reply to: Lil Drummerboy
Not quite sure how civil unrest in moder day USA plays into cultural development of early modern humans or archaic Homo sapiens if you prefer..
Early man was kill or be killed, thumping his chest to communicate, steal what was not his, throw rocks act defiant..Kinda seems to fits side by side.. Many still havent evolved from that time period