Sunday 8 October 2017

ORIGINS: Homo Sapiens: Was the first wave out of Africa much earlier?

The New York Times has reported (July 4, 2017) research to suggest that homo sapiens evolved 300,000 years ago in Africa and left the continent around 30,000 years later - far earlier than had been thought previously.

400,000 years ago, Neanderthals developed separately in Africa and it had been supposed that there was some interbreeding with homo sapiens there around 100,000 years ago, as well as outside North Africa some 50,000 - 60,000 years ago.(2) But if modern humans had already started migrating long before, perhaps for the northern and eastern emigrants the interbreeding happened after the African exodus.

(1) https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/04/science/neanderthals-dna-homo-sapiens-human-evolution.html
(2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neanderthal