The question then becomes, if the "out of Africa" hypothesis is an invalid one, then, from where or how did primitive humans emerge everywhere, it seems, to populate the globe, from one end to the other, in all sorts of climates and terrain?
After the "New World" was discovered by the "Old World," it was later surmised that the peoples of the Asian continent migrated eastwards across the Pacific and Bering Strait when ice levels were lower than now and they then further migrated throughout the Atlantic-Pacific continent, up, down, across, inside, from Coast to Coast, etc. And they migrated to Australia. And so on. And, various such theories and explanations of intentional or accidental migrations were given to account for the presence of primitive peoples just about everywhere. Further and further migration theories to explain anomalies and evidence. The explanations become more and more convoluted to me.
But, a different, more simple, direct explanation, hypothesis, supposition, an obvious one to me, exists that coincides better with the evidence. These people were THERE FROM THE BEGINNING. That is, the evolutionary antecedents of our modern human species populated the planet everywhere for millions of years and developed with different rates of change depending on accidental historical and geographical circumstances and isolation. Indeed, we can speculate, hypothesize that our evolutionary ancestors were distributed equally or unequally throughout the one large continent, Pangea, that existed prior to eventual continental drift and separation.
Just as Darwin noted species variations from place to place and, especially, on islands, we can postulate the same for human evolutionary precursors and development.
We can posit geographical pockets of human evolutionary existence with long and ancient continuity, comingled with relatively subsequent, modern, contemporary historical migrations and social overlap, interpenetration, integration, conquest, and so on.
If we begin with the above paradigm, assumption, theory, then, suddenly, questions and explanations shift dramatically.
That's the hypothesis. Now, it needs to be either proved or disproved.
So, I welcome comments from others...
2 comments:
two things as a quick reaction
wing@fin-less species can migrate mighty distances given enough time. the european ringworm drilled it's way thru the soil halfway across the NA continent in just a few centuries!
I think there strong arguments based on probabilities derived from genetics against your ideas. two things come to mind: 1) the blue eye gene can be traced back to a single man living about 30 to 50,000 years ago. so all blue eyed people migrated (mainly by foot) out over thousands of miles in only tens of thousands of years. 2) also, i seem to remember, if one looks at the diversity in people's genetic material, the diversity for people outside of a africa is small, indicating they left africa genetically speaking not long ago as a small more or less inbred group. conversely a small sub-sahara village can have the same genetic richness ie diversity as you'll find in a population of millions outside of africa.
Thanks, but, I'm afraid NONE of the present THEORIES, genetic or otherwise, are solid ones. Most of it is simply speculative. The evidence is NOT overwhelming, irrefutable, etc. You have just begged the question in #1, for example. How in hell did any group of primitive species 30,000-50,000 years ago migrate by foot and survive and settle ALL over the globe, in all terrains, from deep, tropical rain forests to cold, harsh climates, over oceans, etc., in "only" a few thousand years. THAT is THE unexplained problem from the genetic hypothesis. Genetic theories never explain HOW this extraordinary feat was accomplished, could have been accomplished. They simply say, it happened, SOMEHOW. Comparing humans to ringworms does not work. If humans could fly, or bore into the ground, we would have another hypothesis. The genetic explanation for "out of Africa" is implausible PRECISELY because of the insurmountable problems presented above. It's circular logic.
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