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.
edit on 7/6/11 by Astyanax because: of some typos.