Alternative models of Pleistocene biocultural evolution: a response to Foley

Antiquity ◽  
1989 ◽  
Vol 63 (238) ◽  
pp. 153-159 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. A. Clark
Keyword(s):  
Human Evolution ◽  
Modern Human ◽  
Human Populations ◽  
Human Origins ◽  
Single Source ◽  
Recent Discussion ◽  
Garden Of Eden ◽  
Biocultural Evolution ◽  
History Of ◽  
Origins Research

Human origins research has had a long history of vigorous debate. Recent discussion has been no exception, the more so perhaps as the strands of evidence — anthropological, archaeological, and now molecular-biological — are sufficiently diverse that not many can be well placed to deal fairly with them all. Here issue is taken with Foley's cladistic view of human evolution, and with the ‘Garden of Eden’ hypothesis of a single source in Africa for modern human populations.

2. Finding our place

2019 ◽  
pp. 7-23
Author(s):  
Bernard Wood
Keyword(s):  
Molecular Biology ◽  
Human Evolution ◽  
Scientific Method ◽  
Common Ancestor ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Modern Human ◽  
Human Origins ◽  
Modern Humans ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Common

When did the process of using reason to try and understand human origins begin, and how did it develop? When was the scientific method first applied to the study of human evolution? ‘Finding our place’ begins by reviewing the history of how first philosophers and then scientists came to realize that modern humans are part of the natural world. It then explains why, using advances in molecular biology, scientists think chimpanzees and bonobos are more closely related to modern humans than they are to gorillas, and why they think the common ancestor of the chimpanzee/bonobo and modern human clades lived between six and eight million years ago.

Paradigm crisis in modern human origins research

1995 ◽  
Vol 29 (5) ◽  
pp. 487-490 ◽  
Author(s):  
C.M. Willermet ◽  
G.A. Clark
Keyword(s):  
Modern Human ◽  
Human Origins ◽  
Modern Human Origins ◽  
Origins Research

scholarly journals Modern human origins: multiregional evolution of autosomes and East Asia origin of Y and mtDNA

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dejian Yuan ◽  
Xiaoyun Lei ◽  
Yuanyuan Gui ◽  
Mingrui Wang ◽  
Ye Zhang ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
East Asia ◽  
Molecular Model ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
Neutral Theory ◽  
Modern Human ◽  
Human Populations ◽  
Human Origins ◽  
Modern Human Origins ◽  
Southern Chinese ◽  
Public Data

AbstractThe neutral theory has been used as a null model for interpreting nature and produced the Recent Out of Africa model of anatomically modern humans. Recent studies, however, have established that genetic diversities are mostly at maximum saturation levels maintained by selection, therefore challenging the explanatory power of the neutral theory and rendering the present molecular model of human origins untenable. Using improved methods and public data, we have revisited human evolution and found sharing of genetic variations among racial groups to be largely a result of parallel mutations rather than recent common ancestry and admixture as commonly assumed. We derived an age of 1.86-1.92 million years for the first split in modern human populations based on autosomal diversity data. We found evidence of modern Y and mtDNA originating in East Asia and dispersing via hybridization with archaic humans. Analyses of autosomes, Y and mtDNA all suggest that Denisovan and Neanderthal were archaic Africans with Eurasian admixtures and ancestors of South Asia Negritos and Aboriginal Australians. Verifying our model, we found more ancestry of Southern Chinese from Hunan in Africans relative to other East Asian groups examined. These results suggest multiregional evolution of autosomes and replacements of archaic Y and mtDNA by modern ones originating in East Asia, thereby leading to a coherent account of modern human origins.

scholarly journals Something old, something borrowed: Admixture and adaptation in human evolution

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Dannemann ◽  
Fernando Racimo
Keyword(s):  
Human Evolution ◽  
Ancient Dna ◽  
Gene Pool ◽  
Recent Literature ◽  
Genetic Material ◽  
Modern Human ◽  
Human Populations ◽  
Modern Humans ◽  
Functional Assays ◽  
Over Time

Almost a decade ago, the sequencing of ancient DNA from archaic humans - Neanderthals and Denisovans - revealed that modern and archaic humans interbred at least twice during the Pleistocene. The field of human paleogenomics has now turned its attention towards understanding the nature of this genetic legacy in the gene pool of present-day humans. What exactly did modern humans obtain from interbreeding with Neanderthals and Denisovans? Were introgressed genetic material beneficial, neutral or maladaptive? Can differences in phenotypes among present-day human populations be explained by archaic human introgression? These questions are of prime importance for our understanding of recent human evolution, but will require careful computational modeling and extensive functional assays before they can be answered in full. Here, we review the recent literature characterizing introgressed DNA and the likely biological consequences for their modern human carriers. We focus particularly on archaic human haplotypes that were beneficial to modern humans as they expanded across the globe, and on ways to understand how populations harboring these haplotypes evolved over time.

scholarly journals Something old, something borrowed: Admixture and adaptation in human evolution

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Dannemann ◽  
Fernando Racimo
Keyword(s):  
Human Evolution ◽  
Ancient Dna ◽  
Gene Pool ◽  
Recent Literature ◽  
Genetic Material ◽  
Modern Human ◽  
Human Populations ◽  
Modern Humans ◽  
Functional Assays ◽  
Over Time

Almost a decade ago, the sequencing of ancient DNA from archaic humans - Neanderthals and Denisovans - revealed that modern and archaic humans interbred at least twice during the Pleistocene. The field of human paleogenomics has now turned its attention towards understanding the nature of this genetic legacy in the gene pool of present-day humans. What exactly did modern humans obtain from interbreeding with Neanderthals and Denisovans? Were introgressed genetic material beneficial, neutral or maladaptive? Can differences in phenotypes among present-day human populations be explained by archaic human introgression? These questions are of prime importance for our understanding of recent human evolution, but will require careful computational modeling and extensive functional assays before they can be answered in full. Here, we review the recent literature characterizing introgressed DNA and the likely biological consequences for their modern human carriers. We focus particularly on archaic human haplotypes that were beneficial to modern humans as they expanded across the globe, and on ways to understand how populations harboring these haplotypes evolved over time.

Archaeology and the population-dispersal hypothesis of modern human origins in Europe

1992 ◽  
Vol 337 (1280) ◽  
pp. 225-234 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
New Technology ◽  
Modern Human ◽  
Human Populations ◽  
Human Origins ◽  
Upper Palaeolithic ◽  
Archaeological Evidence ◽  
Modern Human Origins ◽  
The World ◽  
Two Populations ◽  
Behavioural Adaptations

The transition from anatomically ‘archaic’ to ‘modern’ populations would seem to have occurred in most regions of Europe broadly between ca.40 and 30 ka ago: much later than in most other areas of the world. The archaeological evidence supports the view that this transition was associated with the dispersal of new human populations into Europe, equipped with a new technology (‘Aurignacian’) and a range of radical behavioural and cultural innovations which collectively define the ‘Middle-Upper Palaeolithic transition'. In several regions of Europe there is archaeological evidence for a chronological overlap between these populations and the final Neanderthal populations and, apparently, for various forms of contact, interaction and, apparently, ‘acculturation’ between these two populations. The fundamental behavioural adaptations implicit in the ‘Upper Palaeolithic Revolution’ (possibly including language) are thought to have been responsible for this rapid dispersal of human populations over the ecologically demanding environments of last-glacial Europe.

Larger Genetic Differences Within Africans Than Between Africans and Eurasians

Genetics ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 161 (1) ◽  
pp. 269-274 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ning Yu ◽  
Feng-Chi Chen ◽  
Satoshi Ota ◽  
Lynn B Jorde ◽  
Pekka Pamilo ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Human Evolution ◽  
Nucleotide Diversity ◽  
Human Populations ◽  
Noncoding Dna ◽  
Single Nucleotide ◽  
Noncoding Regions ◽  
Coding Regions ◽  
Geographic Origins ◽  
History Of ◽  
Out Of Africa

Abstract The worldwide pattern of single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) variation is of great interest to human geneticists, population geneticists, and evolutionists, but remains incompletely understood. We studied the pattern in noncoding regions, because they are less affected by natural selection than are coding regions. Thus, it can reflect better the history of human evolution and can serve as a baseline for understanding the maintenance of SNPs in human populations. We sequenced 50 noncoding DNA segments each ∼500 bp long in 10 Africans, 10 Europeans, and 10 Asians. An analysis of the data suggests that the sampling scheme is adequate for our purpose. The average nucleotide diversity (π) for the 50 segments is only 0.061% ± 0.010% among Asians and 0.064% ± 0.011% among Europeans but almost twice as high (0.115% ± 0.016%) among Africans. The African diversity estimate is even higher than that between Africans and Eurasians (0.096% ± 0.012%). From available data for noncoding autosomal regions (total length = 47,038 bp) and X-linked regions (47,421 bp), we estimated the π-values for autosomal regions to be 0.105, 0.070, 0.069, and 0.097% for Africans, Asians, Europeans, and between Africans and Eurasians, and the corresponding values for X-linked regions to be 0.088, 0.042, 0.053, and 0.082%. Thus, Africans differ from one another slightly more than from Eurasians, and the genetic diversity in Eurasians is largely a subset of that in Africans, supporting the out of Africa model of human evolution. Clearly, one must specify the geographic origins of the individuals sampled when studying π or SNP density.

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