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Australian Aboriginal DNA Suggests 70,000-Year History
brindafella writes with a link to an abstract at the journal Science that says "Scientists have obtained a DNA genomic sequence from a 100-year-old, voluntarily donated hair sample from a full-blood Australian Aboriginal man. [Analysis of the hair] shows 'Aboriginal Australians are descendants of an early human dispersal into eastern Asia, possibly 62,000 to 75,000 years ago. This dispersal is separate from the one that gave rise to modern Asians 25,000 to 38,000 years ago. ... [Their] findings support the hypothesis that present-day Aboriginal Australians descend from the earliest humans to occupy Australia, likely representing one of the oldest continuous populations outside Africa.' A news story gives more detail."
No. The evolution of the hominid family is WAY more complex than that. Basically you have a set of inter-breeding semi-distinct populations from 4 million years ago all the way to circa 30,000 years ago (maybe even as late as 20,000 years ago based on some finds of neanderthal tools). All the way through most of the populations would have been genetically similar enough to interbreed successfully (especially after H. ergaster and H. erectus 2 million years ago). H. heidelbergensis, neanderthalensis, and sapiens likely all interbred. Neanderthals were Europeans descendants of an earlier H. ergaster or H. heidelbergensis exodus from Africa. Australian aboriginals, like all modern humans, would be predominantly H. sapiens, with differing traces from the interbreeding with earlier populations.
Moreover, you've misunderstood the data on the Cro Magnon man. Modern humans arrived in EUROPE (Cro-Magnon is the place in France where skeletons were found) 35,000 years ago (as best as we can tell). They appear in Africa almost 200,000 years ago, and in the Middle East before 60,000 years ago.
Is it less advanced to live in sustainable balance with your environment than to rape and conquer it (and other cultures)?
Let's see how our "advanced" culture looks 75.000 years from now.
What an utterly stupid comment. I've read a lot of dumb comments on slashdot, but ... wow, yours might just be the stupidest thing I've read on the Internet.
First, yes, a culture that never invented writing or the wheel is not advanced, and is markedly less advanced than ones that discovered electricity, writing, forms of societal representation beyond "tribe," compasses, sextants, printing presses, base 10, windmills, aqueducts, gunpowder (I'm trying to pick a wide range of innovations from around the globe here, in case it wasn't obvious) or ones that built pyramids, dams, palaces, walls, houses, etc. I honestly can't see how any remotely rational person would even try to claim otherwise.
Secondly, and what really makes your post stupid, what on earth makes you believe that the Australian aborigines "live[d] in sustainable balance with [their] enviromnent [and didn't] rape and conquered...other cultures"? It's widely believed that aborigines caused the extinction of many species! http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/news/990/aborigines-blamed-big-mammal-extinction! So much for sustainability! Likewise, not only was warfare between aboriginal peoples very common, so was cannibalism.
But really, why let facts stand in the way of your Green Religion that makes being an allegedly noble savage with a small carbon footprint the ideal human life?
That's a bummer. When do you think you'll have some in?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."