Ancestry Reimagined by Kostas Kampourakis;

Author:Kostas Kampourakis;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press USA
Published: 2022-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

It is important to note that there is no specific point in place or time that we can identify as the point of origin of modern humans. The available evidence generally supports an out-of-Africa theory of human evolution with some interbreeding with other humans outside Africa. However, we can distinguish among three main phases in human evolution.

1. The first phase spans the time from 1 million years to 300 thousand years ago and concerns the divergence of the ancestors of modern humans from other archaic human groups. The ancestors of Neanderthals and Denisovans are estimated to have diverged from the ancestors of modern humans between 500 thousand and 700 thousand years ago. Many details are unclear and fossil evidence is not always in agreement with genomic evidence (also, Denisovans are currently rather poorly known from the fossil record).

2. The second phase, between 300 thousand and 60 thousand years ago, concerns the African origins of modern humans. However, although Africa seems to have been the center of the evolution of modern humans, neighboring parts of Southwest Asia seem to also have been important areas of this process.

3. Finally, the third phase between 60 thousand and 40 thousand years ago concerns the dispersion of modern humans throughout the world and their contacts with archaic groups such as the Neanderthals and the Denisovans. There exist different scenarios for the number and timing of the expansion(s) into Eurasia. However, evidence from fossils in Africa, genomic evidence of interbreeding with archaic human groups outside of Africa, and the fact that most DNA diversity outside of Africa appears to be a subset of African DNA diversity support a recent African origin.31

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