New Type of Ancient Human Found—Descendants Live Today?

Not at all. The breeding that takes place at the A-B boundary also takes place at the AB-B 'boundary', etc. If you think this qualifies as 'migrating', then so be it. But this phenomenon is just not the phenomenon proposed by OOA for the spread of sapiens genes.Jon

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Ignorance is temporary; you should be able to overcome it. - nwr

By that definition, would anyone who possesses ample African-originated genetic material would qualify as African? Everything we know about the way people live, grow up, leave the nest, and start their own families suggests that the first exodus (of erectus) was of a slow, expansion-like typeurban sprawl in a hunter-gatherer fashion. A pattern of on-off isolation is not inconsistent with MH. Isolation doesn't only limit movement, but also interbreeding. So, once the populations become connected again, the sudden flooding of the world population with African genetic material neither contradicts the MH model nor supports the OOA model. You're still only addressing the movement of genetic material. The genetic evidence does not tell us whether there was 'coexistence' of the OOA variety or 'begetting' of the MH variety. Evidence that would support coexisting of the OOA variety would be something on the order of bones and such found in geographical proximity of both pre-sapiens and sapiens dated to identical time frames. Without such evidence, though, we're just left with the same mystery of why Clark Kent always disappears everytime Superman's in town. Well, there's always some Jon

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Check out No webpage found at provided URL: Apollo's Temple!
Ignorance is temporary; you should be able to overcome it. - nwr

You cannot really make such comparisons across water boundaries; humans cannot live on water. The movements of people from Europe to the Americas does show some 'rush' characteristics, but it is otherwise just a simple spreading out of folk, albeit taking advantage of new technologies to spread out to previously inaccessible places. Either way, such things are rarities in the course of day-to-day living. In what way? Perhaps you should clarify what you mean with 'migration'. It is clear that this term is getting us all a little caught up. Certainly folk moved about; the issue is how much they moved. What level of movement qualifies as 'migration' in your book? The type of movement I envision doesn't cut it in my book. Again, you keep saying this, but still do not offer evidence to support it. Again, this is one way for moving genes. It is not the only way. Without further evidence, we should not assume anything beyond genetic flow. What evidence is there for the supposed super exodus of sapiens from Africa? Yes; we know that if people migrate, their genes migrate with them. However, what allows us to assume the reverse relationwhen genes migrate, people migrating must be behind it?This is the question of the hour!Jon

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Check out No webpage found at provided URL: Apollo's Temple!
Ignorance is temporary; you should be able to overcome it. - nwr

I would say OOA proposes a very similar phenomenon. Interestingly, such events leave specific types of evidence; none of such evidence has been found, as far as I am aware, regarding sapiens and pre-sapiens. But our population boundaries aren't real; they're arbitrary. We don't actually have distinct and separate populations; we have just one. And we don't need massive migrations to move genes around within single populations. What happens in any population of interbreeding individuals? Do they evolve on a whole as a population, or does every evolutionary innovation require a massive migratory takeover by the members carrying the novel genes? Only some of these are the type of specific movements proposed by OOA, though. Certain of them are perfectly compatible with MH, along with being expected behaviors of early humans.Jon

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Check out No webpage found at provided URL: Apollo's Temple!
Ignorance is temporary; you should be able to overcome it. - nwr

The distance isn't important per se. What is important is that we have a single population, whose status as a single population is maintained by regular and frequent interbreeding of neighboring groups (what we've been calling the smaller populations).Jon

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Check out No webpage found at provided URL: Apollo's Temple!
Ignorance is temporary; you should be able to overcome it. - nwr

Indeed; and I would say unlikely even in past times during which pre-sapiens made the transition to sapiens. We have yet to find any modern population of people that has been isolated long enough to speciate, and the on-off isolation offered by oscillating geographical and environmental factors does not seem to provide sufficient time for speciation. It seems reasonable that the factors that have allowed people the world over to maintain their identity as members of the same human speciesincluding and especially those natural ones from pre-technological and pre-exploration timeshave been in effect since the erectus expansion.That said, it appears far-fetched to believe there was a group isolated enough in whichapparently quite rapidlyspeciation could take place disconnected from other groups of the world population. Yet, this is precisely the model proposed by OOA. It is interesting, I think, to note that aside from this one astronomical exception to what we know of humanity, no other valid speciation has been demonstrated in the world population following the erectus expansion. The speciations that are proposed are all tenuous re-definitions of the word 'species', and are usually just arbitrary lines drawn around random or expected regional variations whose presence in one group but not in another can be easily explained without the 's-word' (for example, the stockier build of neanderthalensis simply doesn't work in hotter Asia and Africa, thus explaining its confinement).Anyway, this is a slightly different problem than the migration issues we've been discussing, and I think I've said enough on it to initiate some decent discussion.Jon

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Check out No webpage found at provided URL: Apollo's Temple!
Ignorance is temporary; you should be able to overcome it. - nwr

The mass movements and replacements exemplified by the American rush and westward expansion do leave certain types of evidence, evidence that is different than a slow expansion and/or hybridization model. One type of evidence such movements leave is signs of each group existing simultaneously and distinctly in serious geographical proximity followed by the existence of only one of the groups in the entire geographical zonei.e., at layers dating to t₁ we have both groups existing near yet distinctly from one another, while layers dating to t₂ show just one group existing in the entire region (the group that did the replacing). Finding such evidence would add much needed support to the extraordinary claims of OOA. Again, you make this claim about migrations being necessary, but you show no evidence to back it up. People all over the globe have been pretty good at maintaining their identity as members of the same human species in spite of the infrequency of such migrations. Yet, you argue that such a migration was the only way of keeping genetic material linked at this one point in the past, ignoring the fact that it has been for all other periods of the past one of a rare and non-essential methods of maintaining a single world species. What is so special about this one period that makes it impossible for the world members of a species to have remained connected without massive migrations outward from the centers of any slightly-beneficial genetic innovation? I am not sure I understand. As far as MH is concerned, there was no 'entire genome' (I assume you mean the aspects that differentiate sapiens and pre-sapiens) that spread from a point of origin; there were, instead, genetic innovations that spread individually from a point(s) of origin, which, when accumulated, represent an 'entire genome' that can be said to have evolved within an entire world population as the individual genetic innovations that make up that genome accumulated in all members of that world population. Perhaps you could lay out the specific things you're referencing. As far as I am aware, genetic flow alone can spread both relevant and irrelevant traits alike. Not when the 'Paleo-African' groups were the largest, most dense, and central groups of the world population. Then the dominance is entirely consistent and expected given either the MH or OOA model. Genetic traits of the central, large, denser groups of a population will naturally dominate the population as a whole whether through hybridization or OOA-type migration. Dominance of African alleles does not necessarily support the OOA model anymore than it supports an alternative model. Yes, circular migrations, where populations move through ancestral routes with the changing of the seasons and harvest times, returning to their points of origin at the end. This is different from the move-and-stay migration (such as the American expansion westward discussed earlier) proposed by OOA. We call them both 'migration', but they are not the same thing; to argue that OOA is accurate in proposing migration type 2 because all nomadic, hunter-gatherer populations (the only type existing at the time) exhibit migration type 1 is an equivocation and does not support the migration models of OOA.Jon

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Check out No webpage found at provided URL: Apollo's Temple!
Ignorance is temporary; you should be able to overcome it. - nwr

No, it would not. The dominance of African traits in the human population is perfectly consistent with MH. See my post to Bluejay above about the importance of population densities.Jon

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Check out No webpage found at provided URL: Apollo's Temple!
Ignorance is temporary; you should be able to overcome it. - nwr

I don't think that that's been happening in this debate. We may disagree on whether certain varieties can be classified as different species, but that is beside the point being discussed. The main theme here is the origin of a particular variety and how that variety came to dominate, regardless of how we wish to classify that variety in relation to other varieties.Jon

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Check out No webpage found at provided URL: Apollo's Temple!
Ignorance is temporary; you should be able to overcome it. - nwr

Perhaps genetically, yes. But no one has yet disagreed with the genetic evidence; its interpretation is what is at issue here.Jon

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Check out No webpage found at provided URL: Apollo's Temple!
Ignorance is temporary; you should be able to overcome it. - nwr

I'm confused as to the point you're trying to make.Jon

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Check out No webpage found at provided URL: Apollo's Temple!
Ignorance is temporary; you should be able to overcome it. - nwr

I've answered this question a couple of times already. Here are some quotes from me regarding the matter:

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Jon in Message 65:

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Not when the 'Paleo-African' groups were the largest, most dense, and central groups of the world population. Then the dominance is entirely consistent and expected given either the MH or OOA model. Genetic traits of the central, large, denser groups of a population will naturally dominate the population as a whole whether through hybridization or OOA-type migration. Dominance of African alleles does not necessarily support the OOA model anymore than it supports an alternative model.

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quote:

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Jon in Message 39:

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Of course it can. Africa being the origin of pre-sapiens (who, of course, did migrate) and the location of the greatest population density, we would naturally expect Africans to make the highest contribution to the world-wide population gene pool. It would be ridiculous to expect less dense, peripheral populations to contribute an equal amount of genetic material to the world population (which includes themselves) as the denser, central populations.

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I await your critique.Jon

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Check out No webpage found at provided URL: Apollo's Temple!
Ignorance is temporary; you should be able to overcome it. - nwr

Hi, Bluejay; glad to see you're still with us! The evidence does not necessarily point to such a relationship. What has been found is a continuity of genetic information. A replacement (with some interbreeding) or a begetting model can both explain this. Thus, evidence of regional continuity of certain genetic material does not point to a co-existence.I hate to say this, but I'm afraid we'll have to look outside of the nucleotide for the kind of evidence that would point to co-existence. Mass, super-exodus migration, yesvery extraordinary that stuff. How could it be elsewise? I think the various oscillations of divergence-convergence cannot be explained strictly by genetic flow. However, genetic flow which is on-off interrupted due to various geographical, environmental, etc. factors can explain oscillations of divergence and convergence. Sure it has:

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Wikipedia on Selective Sweep:

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A selective sweep can occur when a new mutation occurs that increases the fitness of the carrier relative to other members of the population. Natural selection will favour individuals that have a higher fitness and with time the newly mutated variant (allele) will increase in frequency relative to other alleles. As its prevalence increases, neutral and nearly neutral genetic variation linked to the new mutation will also become more prevalent. This phenomenon is called genetic hitchhiking. A strong selective sweep results in a region of the genome where the positively selected haplotype (the mutated allele and its neighbours) is essentially the only one that exists in the population, resulting in a large reduction of the total genetic variation in that chromosome region.

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If this is the only movement you haverandom nomadic wandering that results in the occasional 'great escape', then I'd say you no longer have the movements proposed by OOA, but movements that would be more in line with an MH model.Jon

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Check out No webpage found at provided URL: Apollo's Temple!
Ignorance is temporary; you should be able to overcome it. - nwr

Perhaps our understandings of these models are different. I'm offering various alternatives that can work together to give us the same genetic layout seen presently without need of a super exodus from Africa. I am not proposing that any of these methods may have worked in isolation without input from other methods.JonEdited by Jon, : No reason given.Edited by Jon, : No reason given.

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Check out No webpage found at provided URL: Apollo's Temple!
Ignorance is temporary; you should be able to overcome it. - nwr

Huh? We're talking about the world as a whole, not just one region. And your assumption that folk in Asia just sat in Asia in complete obliviousness to the neighboring groups is nave and overly simplistic. No, it doesn't.Jon

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Check out No webpage found at provided URL: Apollo's Temple!
Ignorance is temporary; you should be able to overcome it. - nwr