World’s scientists turn to Asia and Australia to rewrite human history

by Guest Sat Dec 09, 2017 3:19 pm

Where did we humans come from?
Some 40 or so years ago, our origins seemed quite straight forward.
But now we see that the human story is far more complex. As summarised by Christopher Bae and colleagues in their latest paper just published in Science, data from Asia and Australia is becoming vital in piecing this new history together.

The original story went something like this: modern humans (Homo sapiens) evolved to their current anatomical form in sub-Saharan Africa sometime after 200,000 years ago. They hung around for a bit, then groups started moving out of the homeland.

Arriving in Western Europe, a “human revolution” soon occurred (40,000 years ago), resulting in our much celebrated artistic and complex language abilities, a sort of creative explosion. These cognitively and technologically advanced peoples then out-competed the indigenous Neanderthals (and other archaic, or relatively ancient, human groups) and ultimately conquered the entire globe.
But fresh evidence has forced a rethink of this version of human history.

Modern humans

New analyses of human fossils have pushed back our earliest recognisable modern ancestors to around 310,000 years. And they weren’t found in eastern or southern Africa (like previous fossil finds), but from a site called Jebel Irhoud in Morocco. These findings have raised questions regarding exactly how – and where – we became “modern”.

https://theconversation.com/worlds-scientists-turn-to-asia-and-australia-to-rewrite-human-history-88697