[HN Gopher] Age of the oldest known Homo sapiens from eastern Af... ___________________________________________________________________ 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 ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-01-14 23:00 UTC)