Not All Out-Of-Africa:Bukit Bunuh Malaysia's 1.8MYA Human Settlement

www.usm.my...

LENGGONG, 14 Feb - The discovery of evidence in Bukit Bunuh has made it one of the most important Palaeolithic sites in the world because it has revealed a 4 km square Palaeolithic complex dating back more than 1.83 million years; 40,000; and 30,000 years. This has made Bukit Bunuh the oldest site in the world outside Africa and which has been chronometrically dated.

With this discovery in Bukit Bunuh, the evidence of prehistoric presence in Lembah Lenggong (Lenggong Valley)has been strengthened, and has turned it into one of the most important archaeological sites in the world.


"Evidence found during the research which has been on-going since 2001 in Bukit Bunuh indicates that this site had always been occupied," said Assoc. Prof. Mokhtar Saidin, the Director of the Centre for Global Archaeological Research.

www.heritage.gov.my...



What I find most interesting here, is even if this was disproven other human artificacts found here are 200,000 years old. That is still older than the 60,000 - 80,000 year time scale of the OOA theory.

As it is, the hand axes they are discussing are right now the oldest ones found anywhere. These pre-date the African finds.

More and more sites. Many in Asia.

What I think that is missing from the full view of the human descency, is that these theories only compete when people try to make ONE be the one and only theory. That humans could have been in and out of Africa, that certain groups would have be trapped in the temperate zones by the advancing ice numerous times is utterly logical.

The one thing that almost every group of humans has is a wandering habit after the herds. Follow the herd migrations, and you'll find the human settlements. Currently, theories are opposite to how the herds move. The herd movements up and out of Africa are opposite to how those herds would have moved in a temperate climate.

There had to be factors driving humans out of Africa, and it wasn't just the herds. Following one herd going S-N, and then hooking up to another going E-W.

I would suggest that the reason the Asian groups met up with the Africa groups is that they were following herds, and that sometimes the groups moving were being driven out of their area by climate change or....other humans. One of the most consistent reasons for humans to move out of a good climate to another is that they are being driven out by other humans.

That the 60,000-80,000 years ago dating for humans is actually when groups with several varieties met and the interbreeding produced some very successful descendents who took migrating to a whole new level.

I've never believed that we all came from Africa anyway and i am really interested in the Asian theiry that we all evolved from three different primates from different parts of the world.

reply to post by Aeons


S & F. Great article. Every year it seems like the timeline gets pushed farther and farther back.

reply to post by Aeons


...this doesn't challenge out of Africa...in fact, anything 1.8 million years old would not be a homo sapien. We already know that all sorts of non-sapien humans left Africa prior to homo sapiens. The most well known example would be neanderthals. Furthermore, we know that populations of erectus came out of Africa prior to sapiens emerging....so...nothing Earth shattering here beyond the advancement of a pre-sapiens strain of humanity.

If you have several groups of the same parent group spread around.....why do you think only one group would become a homo sapien?

You can see examples of parallel changes in isolated groups all over the World. Isolated Cro-Magon became Modern, without replacement from single source.

When you have human settlements showing evidence of continual population for 1.8 million years, all other things being equal, the simpliest answer is that the modern inhabitants are at least partially related to the modern ones.

reply to post by Aeons

If you have several groups of the same parent group spread around.....why do you think only one group would become a homo sapien?

Perhaps he thinks so because that is what the molecular record tells us. A lot of competing theories about early human migration and dispersal have been resolved in the last decade or so due to the availability of relationship data based on haplotype mapping.

I’m sure you’re already aware of such things as the HapMap Project. What scientific evidence makes you doubt their conclusions?

The fossil record and genetic evidence indicate that all humans today are descended from anatomically modern ancestors who lived in Africa about 150,000 years ago. Because we are a relatively young species, most of the variation in any current human population comes from the variation present in the ancestral human population. Also, as humans migrated out of Africa, they carried with them part but not all of the genetic variation that existed in the ancestral population. As a result, the haplotypes seen outside Africa tend to be subsets of the haplotypes inside Africa. In addition, haplotypes in non-African populations tend to be longer than in African populations, because populations in Africa have been larger through much of our history and recombination has had more time there to break up haplotypes.

By the way – madness also please note – the singular of Homo Sapiens is Homo Sapiens. Sorry to make a fuss, but ‘sapien’ really grates on the mind’s ear.

You can see examples of parallel changes in isolated groups all over the World.

Of course you do; parallel evolution is a biological commonplace. However, parallel evolution of physical traits does not equal parallel evolution of genes, which is what is needed if the evolved results are to be able to interbreed. The demands of streamlining have assured parallel phenotypic evolution in sharks and dolphins, but sharks and dolphins cannot even have sex, let alone produce viable offspring.

Yes, there were many different species of protohuman, and yes, they did evolve along separate, sometimes nearly parallel paths. But unless these related groups were still able to produce viable offspring, only one of those bloodlines led to Homo Sapiens. The one that did was confined to Africa until long after these Asian settlements came into being. We now know this for a fact, thanks to gene mapping.

When you have human settlements showing evidence of continual population for 1.8 million years, all other things being equal, the simpliest answer is that the modern inhabitants are at least partially related to the modern ones.

Simple answers to complex questions are most likely to be wrong, as they are in this case.

A bit of historico-cultural background is of relevance here. Malaysians and Indonesians – (more strictly speaking, West Malaysians and Javanese) are ethnically identical. The island of Java has long been known for human remains – fossil bones and cultural artefacts – of very ancient provenance. These have been identified as remains of Homo erectus, not Sapiens. Current thinking among paleoanthropologists, based on fossil and molecular evidence (the Out of Africa hypothesis) specifies that erectus was not an ancestor of Sapiens. However, this conclusion is quite recent; earlier, it was believed that erectus, known as Java Man (and also as Peking Man because of similar fossils found in China) was part of the human lineage. This was a vast source of pride, not just to Javanese, but to all Malays; it meant, or so they believed, that they could trace their own ‘race’ back to the early beginnings of Man, much further back than Johnny-come-lately Caucasians and even, at the time, Africans; it made the Malays the oldest people on Earth, and thus the ancestors of all the rest.

You can imagine what a blow it was for Malay ethnic pride, then, when increasingly compelling evidence for the Out of Africa hypothesis began to mount up and their treasured Java Man fossils were put out of the line of modern human descent. Frankly, the Indonesian and Malaysian scientific establishment has never recovered. Nor are they likely to see reason – on a personal note, I have dealt with senior Indonesian archaeologists when I used to work in the publishing business, and believe me, they are demigods in that country – no-one dares contradict them. It is very hard to do real science in hierarchical Asian cultures, where ethnic and national pride, as well as the social prestige of senior academics, are culturally of far more importance than mere objective truth.

Indeed, most Indonesian anthropologists and archaeologists still refuse – like you, OP – to accept the Out of Africa hypothesis as valid. That is why the Indonesian scientific establishment made such a fuss over the Homo floriensiensis (‘hobbit’) remains, hijacking them and initially refusing to submit them to examination by foreigners that would have made it clearer whether or not the hobbits were a genuinely new species. A new species would have restored Indonesia’s claim to be the cradle of the human race, and Malay ethnic pride with it.

The link in your post is to a Malaysian government Web site. Any official Malaysian or Indonesian word on human origins must be looked at very sceptically indeed. Even so, I notice that the site merely speaks of remains of ‘early man’ without specifying whether they are Sapiens or some other species. If they really are 1.8 million years old, they are almost certainly erectus remains and not related to the main line of human descent. Until it is proven that these are Sapiens remains, or the science of haplotype mapping is disproved, the Out of Africa hypothesis stands.

You miscategorize me. I don't reject OOA as invalid. I reject it as simplistic and its adhererents being illogical. OOA being true doesn't make competing theories false. Many theories are not mutually exclusive, but all of them are presented as if by finding truth in one makes the other theories false. This is simply illogical, since the theories are not mutually exclusive.

The genetic evidence is good support for a group of very successful breeders coming out of Africa. Since humans and proto humans seem to be the worst of the simian for breeding, a group of particularly good breeders either by being better physically for it, or having a supportive "culture" for it would make them end up with descendents everywhere very quickly. This is not replacement - this is subsuming other groups.

You want a model as to how this would happen, you can look at the European genetics compared to the founding mothers effect in South America. The Denisovian and the Neanderthals both being paleolithic examples of it.

And yes, there is evidence of parallel genetic evolution. mtDNA and Y-DNA groups with the same roots have shown the same adaptations in isolation. The same mutations happening at different times in divergent strains.

Either-Or isn't.

The genetic evidence is good support for a group of very successful breeders coming out of Africa. Since humans and proto humans seem to be the worst of the simian for breeding, a group of particularly good breeders either by being better physically for it, or having a supportive "culture" for it would make them end up with descendents everywhere very quickly. This is not replacement - this is subsuming other groups.

No, it is replacement, unless these later ‘good breeders’ interbred with those groups that had emerged from Africa earlier.

You want a model as to how this would happen, you can look at the European genetics compared to the founding mothers effect in South America. The Denisovian and the Neanderthals both being paleolithic examples of it.

What happened with Neanderthals and ‘Denisovians’ may have been interbreeding; despite all the media hype, it is really far too early to be sure. Remember that the Neanderthal and modern human lineages diverged less than a million years ago, possibly as recently as 700,000 years, and are morphologically so close that many anthropologists prefer the classification Homo sapiens neanderthalis. By comparison, erectus split off from the modern human line at least two million years ago (if it evolved in Africa) and possibly much earlier (if it is thought to have evolved, as you suggest, in Asia).

And yes, there is evidence of parallel genetic evolution. mtDNA and Y-DNA groups with the same roots have shown the same adaptations in isolation.

Interesting. Have you a source for this?