[HN Gopher] Age of the oldest known Homo sapiens from eastern Af...
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       Age of the oldest known Homo sapiens from eastern Africa
        
       Author : bryanrasmussen
       Score  : 25 points
       Date   : 2022-01-14 20:26 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.nature.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.nature.com)
        
       | fdgsdfogijq wrote:
       | Long story short, there is a political battle between the out of
       | africa theory and the multi origin hypothesis. You wont ever read
       | it explicitly, but if you squint hard enough and read between the
       | lines, things start looking alot like the rest of politicized
       | "science"
        
         | alcover wrote:
         | Could this battle be settled through genetic analysis ? There
         | have been large-scale populations sampling. Would it be
         | possible to backtrace and reveal how say there is a very
         | ancient asian source in Sapiens' makeup ?
        
           | bryanrasmussen wrote:
           | Mitochondrial Eve
           | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrial_Eve and
           | Y-chromosomal Adam
           | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y-chromosomal_Adam
           | 
           | on edit: to clarify, these do not go far enough back to show
           | the asked for source, so it seems unlikely that that would
           | happen.
        
         | badrabbit wrote:
         | Hasn't there been genetic research that proved single origin?
         | Read it a few years ago.
        
         | animal_spirits wrote:
         | That's how science has always been. People bet on hypothesis
         | and try to prove the validity of the hypothesis. It's hilarious
         | how much shit talking has gone on between scientists since the
         | 1700s. Science "battles" aren't new
        
         | ashurbanipal wrote:
         | This seems to be case. Google Jebel Irhoud to learn more.
        
         | archermarks wrote:
         | This doesn't have basically anything to do with the linked
         | article. This study suggests that the oldest known Homo Sapiens
         | fossils in Africa are even older than previously thought, which
         | gels with other evidence. Here's the abstract:
         | 
         | "Efforts to date the oldest modern human fossils in eastern
         | Africa, from Omo-Kibish and Herto in Ethiopia, have drawn on a
         | variety of chronometric evidence, including 40Ar/39Ar ages of
         | stratigraphically associated tuffs. The ages that are generally
         | reported for these fossils are around 197 thousand years (kyr)
         | for the Kibish Omo I, and around 160-155 kyr for the Herto
         | hominins. However, the stratigraphic relationships and tephra
         | correlations that underpin these estimates have been
         | challenged. Here we report geochemical analyses that link the
         | Kamoya's Hominid Site (KHS) Tuff, which conclusively overlies
         | the member of the Omo-Kibish Formation that contains Omo I,
         | with a major explosive eruption of Shala volcano in the Main
         | Ethiopian Rift. By dating the proximal deposits of this
         | eruption, we obtain a new minimum age for the Omo fossils of
         | 233 +- 22 kyr. Contrary to previous arguments, we also show
         | that the KHS Tuff does not correlate with another widespread
         | tephra layer, the Waidedo Vitric Tuff, and therefore cannot
         | anchor a minimum age for the Herto fossils. Shifting the age of
         | the oldest known Homo sapiens fossils in eastern Africa to
         | before around 200 thousand years ago is consistent with
         | independent evidence for greater antiquity of the modern human
         | lineage."
         | 
         | The African origin of Homo sapiens is pretty well established
         | these days.
        
         | AlotOfReading wrote:
         | This is an incredibly outdated view. There's no conflict
         | between the strong multiregional hypothesis and SRO because the
         | strong multiregional hypothesis is completely dead. To quote
         | wiki [1]:                   Outside of China, the Multiregional
         | hypothesis has limited support, held only by a small number of
         | paleoanthropologists.
         | 
         | What remains is largely a debate over when and how human
         | evolution occurred within Africa. The classical view is that
         | there's some singular population where H. sapiens evolved and
         | spread from. In that view, we just have to sort out the
         | chronologies and it'll work out. Opposing that is the
         | relatively newer 'weak' or 'african' multiregionalism depending
         | on who's talking. It argues that humans evolved as structured
         | populations across Africa before leaving. It's a lot nicer
         | conceptually and goes much farther to explaining the confusing
         | apparent chronologies, but it requires revisiting a lot of
         | prior work and assumptions. [2] is a good overview.
         | 
         | It's important to emphasize that these latter two aren't
         | diametrically opposed and most paleoanthropologists are
         | somewhere along the spectrum of both.
         | 
         | [1]
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiregional_origin_of_modern...
         | 
         | [2] https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2018.05.005
        
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