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Humans First Arose in Asia?
IZ Reloaded writes "Two archaeologists are proposing the idea that early humans first arose in Asia instead of Africa as previously thought. These early humans then migrate out of Asia to parts of the world. From National Geographic: 'The unresolved status of the intriguing Flores finds attributed to H. floresiensis leaves open the possibility that this species is the end result and last survivor of an ancient migration of very primitive humans, or even prehumans, that formerly existed more widely across Asia ... '"
Actually, it seems like they're proposing that humans (or, rather, their ancestors) migrated from Asia to Africa *before* what we already know about, so the two theories don't rule each other out. It all just depends on where you draw the line between "human" and "not quite human yet".
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
"I'm not debating their points (I've not read the article yet), but it would seem to require us to throw out the data that we already have."
No, it doesn't.
It just asks us to start looking in Asia also. "All the evidence" comes from Africa because all the digs are happening in Africa. Archaeology and paleontology are sciences which suffer from heavy biases in their observations. First off, what are the chances that any bone would become a fossil? Slim to none. Secondly, we can't ramdonly sample the whole earth's surface with dig teams. We dig in places where the lead researcher "has a good feeling", or gets word from a local farmer about strange rocks.
"If homo species migrated to the rest of the world from Asia, then it would have requires Lucy, a relatively primitive human to have gotten to Africa, then start a long series of descendents and multiple branches of evolution there, eventually resulting in homo sapiens."
Lucy, who was an Australopithecus afarensis (way before people -- not even Homo or same as us ) stays in Africa, as does her descendants, A. garhi.
Her even later descendents Homo erectus, H. habilis, or neanderthalis wanders out into Asia and becomes H. sapiens, who in turn wanders back to Africa, and of course, the rest of the world. Note that fossils of H. erectus, which is considered to be two species before modern humans, were found in Dragonbone cave in China.
A good understanding of this wikipedia entry for human evolution might help you understand the situation.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
That wasn't a snake. It was the Noodly Appendage of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. (The rest of the FSM was hiding further up the tree.) Oh, and it wasn't an apple that was offered to Eve - it was a tomato.
--Ender
Loose things are easy to lose. You're getting your hair cut. They're going there to see their aunt.
The article talks quite a bit about fossil evidence, but what about the genetic evidence? If you look at the variability of human genetics, you find that europeans aren't very genetically diverse. Similarly, American Indians aren't very genetically diverse, and Asians aren't either. Africans, on the other hand, are very genetically diverse. What this indicates is that the human race' history in Africa goes back much further than anywhere else. It appears that a subset of Africans left Africa and colonized the rest of the world. Here's a short article that talks about human genetic diversity compared to their location: http://info.med.yale.edu/genetics/kkidd/point.html
http://www.umich.edu/news/?Releases/2005/Oct05/r10 1805