Age and Origin of the Human Species The speciation event that produced Homosapiens sapiens could not

have occurred contemporaneously in more than a very few individuals. It follows that those few s. sapienswould have possessed a very restricted sample of the progenitor species' genetic diversity. However, the diversity observed in current populations implies that there were never less than several thousand breeding pairs in the human ancestry (Harpending et al., 199 !. "ccordingly, the founding s. sapiens and their descendants must have interbred with the progenitor species (and perhaps other pre#human populations! in order to preserve the diversity which e$ists today. %hile some changes in the genome must have occurred after the speciation event, the &lifetimes& of the genetic elements considered (in this conte$t and the wor's cited here! are far longer than new estimates of s. sapiens' age ((ountain et al.,199)!. "s a conse*uence, most current diversity must be the result of interbreeding with pre#human populations. +n this view we would e$pect to see the most hybridi,ed elements of the modern indigenes in those areas where pre#human population density was highest, such as "frica and -. .. "sia. "lso, we would e$pect those populations to have the greatest diversity today, because they would preserve more of the pre#human genome, which would have had much more genetic variety than was represented in the tiny, original population of s. sapiens. In fact, we do find that "fricans and some -. .. "sian populations have not only more diversity (/orde et al., 1990!, but central "fricans are said to have ancestral genetic elements as well (Tish'off et al., 1991!. It is also clear that the population which gave rise to s. sapiens had been separated from the sub#-aharan "fricans' ancestors for longer than our species' lifetime.1 This re*uires the proponents of the &"frican .ve2+ut of "frica& views to posit a segregation of central "fricans from the proto#modern population in which speciation occurred. -ince they also claim that modern humans originated in and radiated from "frica, Tish'off (for instance! is driven to suggest that this hundreds of thousand year se*uestration was somewhere in 3. .. "frica.4 This is an implausible, ad hoc suggestion. 5y contrast, it is natural to suppose that separation implies the population ancestral to humans was a part of the radiation out of "frica into .urasia, before the speciation event occurred. If the speciation event too' place in .urasia, we would e$pect that the descendant population would show a &bottlenec'& effect, and that those populations would possess low genetic diversity today, relative to central "fricans, which is what we do find. 6 5y contrast, central "fricans have always had a large effective population si,e (Tish'off et al., 1991!, and are characteri,ed by e$traordinary diversity (7idd et al., 199 !. "lso we would e$pect that "sians and .uropeans would be more closely related to each other than either are to "fricans, as is revealed in the discussion of cladistics below. This view also accounts for the e$istence of the .urasian types. 8et more impressive evidence for a common .urasian origin is the e$istence of a 499,999 year#old betaglobin lin'age common in "sia and rare in "frica (Harding et al., 1990! and the :ancient .urasiatic mar'er;< 3=8 binary polymorphism (106, whose particular significance is discussed below. The age of the human species had lately been estimated at between 1>9,999 and 4>9,999 years, based on studies of mitochondrial ?3". Those estimates were based on the assumption of clonal transmission of the mt?3", and the cited studies invalidate that ("wadalla et al., 1999@ Hagelberg et al., 1999@ .yre#%al'er et al., 1999!, but we do not 'now by how much the dates are off. .yre#%al'er has proposed that &.ve& may have lived twice as long ago as current estimates,) or as long as >99,999 years 5A.. If there were bottlenec's subse*uent to a mt?3" replacement event, which wiped out older lines, it would seem that the sweep occurred more recently than it really did. "ccordingly, new estimates of s. sapiens age preclude the possibility that such a replacement event too' place in, or mar'ed the origin of, our species. (ore than one group of researchers (such as Harpending and /orde! consider that the data support a &clean sweep& of earlier mt?3" lineages and this has fre*uently been raised in support of the &.ve2"frica& view. However, such ancient dates for an mt?3" replacement event would be consistent with radiation of pre#human species out of "frica, rather than the origin of s. sapiens. There has never been any reason to assume that the putative female (whose mt?3" is said to be ancestral to that found in all living humans! was, herself, a s. sapiens. The entire basis for the &.ve& hypothesis (that all modern, human mt?3" originated with one woman, or even in one restricted population! is falsified by recent research indicating plural lineages in the mt?3" genome. The putative B"frican .veC is probably neither chronologically nor causally related to the origin ofs. sapiens. In this circumstance, it is only reasonable to assume that the date of the human cultural e$plosion suggests the appro$imate era of s. sapiens speciation. =esearch on the 8#chromosome yields an

estimate of >9,999 years 5A. for the :most recent common DpaternalE ancestor;, (Fnderhill, et al, 4999! assuming no selection and population structure effects. Given that caveat, the #>9'yr date fits those of the earliest human cultural remains li'e a hand in a glove. "bout forty thousand years ago, people from central "sia migrated into .urope, and their descendants constitute a maHority of the population there today (-emino I Aassarina, 4999! so we 'now what type of people they were. They came from the general area of those earliest human cultural sites, and they shared a genetic mar'er designated as (106. The population which carried that mar'er must have e$isted for some time before their migration began, because derivative forms of it are found in -iberia and the "merinds, which implies that it was present in their common ancestral population that e$isted prior to )9,999 years 5A.. "gain, we have a good idea of what that ancestral .urasian type was, by inference from the populations it generated, and it seems li'ely to be as ancient as humanity itself. %hen was there time, within the human culture period, for evolution of the .urasian ancestral type from "frican immigrantsJ (oreover, the precursors to humanity are all present in .urasia (from H.ergaster, and heidelbergensis, through archaicsapiens! while no comparable se*uence has been discovered in "frica. .ven if, contrary to all the data adduced here, humanity had originated in "frica, it seems contrived to assume that s. sapiens would have immediately migrated from that continent, to leave their earliest 'nown (and all subse*uent! cultural artifacts in .urasia. 5ut if (on the "fro#origins view! they did, why did they evolve into the .urasian ancestral typeJ %hat mechanisms, events, and pressures would conduce to such a changeJ %hy did those other populations, said to be Bfirst out of "fricaC (on account of their genetic diversity! such as the "ndaman Islanders and tropical -. .. "sian types, not e$perience any such changeJ ?o the "fro#origin people perhaps agreethat the speciation event created the .urasian type from archaic sapiensJ The invocation of &genetic drift& and &founder effect&, as used to assert a counter# intuitive interpretation of the diversity gradient (Tish'off et al., 199 !>, will not serve. I believe it is incumbent upon those who support the view of s. sapiens origins in "frica to e$plain how and why they were converted to .urasian types so *uic'ly. "nd those who maintain that humans originated long before they began to leave cultural artifacts need to e$plain why@ what changed, that made them really humanJ %hy would humans evolve, long ago in "frica, but only begin to behave li'e humans once they arrived at northern latitudes< are we bac' to the climate theory of evolutionJ The authorCs view is that the only logical interpretation of all the available data, including the characteristics of e$tant populations, is that the speciation event occurred in a .urasian population, of archaic sapiens, with ancient indigenous roots, in which case it is obvious how s. sapiens' progenitors were se*uestered from central "frica. The current .urasian populations are lightly pigmented, and that is associated with high latitude species and populations in many other genera. It has often been suggested that the ancient ancestors of the .urasian types were part of a population that had been resident at high latitudes long enough to manifest the derived characteristic of light pigmentation. +n this view we would e$pect to find that light# s'inned people would display low diversity and a distant relationship to central "fricans, which is what we find. In fact, the genetic difference between "fricans and .uropeans is so distinct that the proportion of .uropean admi$ture in "fro#"mericans can be determined with a margin of error of only 9.94 (?estro# 5isol et al., 1999!. Harpending states that the population ancestral to s.sapiens was &small during most of the Aleistocene& and that &the number of our ancestors Hust before the e$pansion ('origin'! of modern humans was small, only several thousand breeding adults.& %e can compare this characteri,ation of our ancestral population with the evidence that "fricans have always had a large effective population si,e. It is this incongruity that forces Tisch'off to postulate that the pre#human population was both &isolated from the rest of the "frican continent& and &somewhere in 3. .. "frica.& 1 (oreover, this would have been for a very long time. Aerhaps in Kemuria or "tlantisJ The evidence indicates that humans came from a sparse population in .urasia@ that their diversity was further reduced by the speciation event@ that they subse*uently e$panded in every habitable direction@ and that they interbred with the populations they came in contact with, producing e$tant hybrid populations. Hence (ountain et al. (199)! reports that in the cladistic tree &the .uropean branch is significantly short relative to all other branches,& that &the neighbor#Hoining tree... places the .uropean sample close to the center of the tree with an e$tremely short branch,& and further that &.uropeans and northeast "sians are closely related.& The first two of these statements are inconsistent with origin and radiation out of "frica while the third does not lend it any support.

.vidence for radiation into "frica was found by Hammer et al. (199 ! and Tisch'off et al. (199 ! noted such evidence, but the latter went on to suggest that no attention should be paid to it. 0 The radiation of low#diversity s. sapiens from .urasia is also the best e$planation for the discoveries, dates, morphology and genetic data in -. .. "sia. There, s. sapiens and erectus lived in pro$imity for as long as 49,999 years (-wisher et al., 1991!. -o many of the human fossils from this area and era show a mi$ed suite of s.sapiens and erectus features that interbreeding is the most plausible interpretation of the data. (any students of fossil morphology have long contended that there is continuity between -. .. "sian Hominid fossils and e$tant indigenous peoples. Genetic data show these populations are distinct from northern "sian populations and of comparable diversity to "fricans (Lhang et al. 1991!.9 The 3gandong specimens, in particular, have occasioned much debate on account of their mi$ture of s.sapiens and erectus traits and their affinities with "ustralians.19 %e would e$pect that the crania of such hybrids would show affinities to both species, and that is why these fossils are so hard to classify. -ome authorities say they are clearly erectus, while others point to modern traits, and especially that very similar s'ulls (from overlapping dates! are found in "ustralia. (oreover, the traits in *uestion occur in the modern population. This is not merely consistent with, but constitutes strong evidence for, the view that radiating, low#diversity s. sapiens interbred with relic erectus populations, thus ac*uiring the near#"frican diversity and primitive morphological traits manifest in the "sian fossil record and e$tant indigenes. The hypothesis presented here uni*uely e$plains one particularly pu,,ling aspect of the "ustralian fossil record. The oldest fossils from "ustralia are the most modern in morphology. +n my view, this is e$plained by the fact that the first wave of humans who passed through -. .. "sia on their way to "ustralia were less hybridi,ed with resident erectus populations because they spent less time living among them. Aopulations that settled "ustralia later (leaving the 7ow -wamp#type s'ulls! had been living in -. .. "sia for as much as 49,999 years and were far more hybridi,ed in conse*uence. %olpoff accepts that the 3gandong s'ulls are representative of the population that produced the 7ow -wamp#type specimens, and left descendants in the modern population 5ut he e$plicitly reHects the view, as set forth here, that there was inter#species gene flow, and calls it &unacceptable&. This, however, is a socio#political rather than a scientific statement. He does not contend that it isnCt a reasonable construction of the data, but reHects it on grounds of dogma, because of its implication that some modern populations e$press a more primitive genome. %olpoff considers that the hypothesis of hybridi,ation is &unacceptable& because it &raises the specter that some human populations can be interpreted to differ from others because they have more genes from an e$tinct, primitive human species.& Thus, according to %olpoff and other adherents of this doctrine, scientific truths which conflict with their politically#correct &Hust so& paradigm are outside the bounds of contemplation. It is noteworthy that he is driven to contend that erectus is human (BtrueCman! in order to preserve logical consistency M at the e$pense of common sense. The people of the "ndaman Islands have also been the subHect of a study which has been reported as &supporting 'out of "frica.'&11 This is an e$ample of the almost universal, and usually unstated, assumption that there are only two possible hypotheses of human origins< the multi#regional, and "frican views. If the data conflicts with the multi#regional view it is said to :support; "frican origin. This not only begs the *uestion, but is arguably deceitful. In this case, the data, considered by itself, may not contradict "frican origin, but as part of the pattern already noted above, it actually supports the opposing hypothesis presented here. The "ndaman Islands are yet another of the places where s. sapiens interbred with a relic erectus population, were hybridi,ed, and e$isted in an isolated condition until the present. 3ot surprisingly, they show genetic affinities to central "fricans, because (li'e them, and some -. .. "sians! they preserve substantial portions of the pre#human genome. It is nonsense to suggest that the first groups of humans &out of "frica& immediately migrated to the ends of the earth ("ndamans, "ustralia, 3ew Guinea, etc...! or that the populations of all such remote places should possess such diversified and similar genomes by chance. The inferred pattern of hybridi,ation is the more parsimonious hypothesis. They are found in these out#of#the#way places because they were driven there by more advanced populations who supplanted such hybrids elsewhere. 8et another challenge e$ists to the claim that our species radiated out of "frica. There is a consensus among anthropologists that s. sapiens' cultural artifacts indicate a higher level of cognitive function than any previous species. The technical level and diversity of their tool industry alone would have set them apart. "dd to that, whole new categories of behavior< the creation of representative art, the domestication of the dog, etc... Thus, we would e$pect that populations which were hybridi,ed with predecessor species would be intellectually and cognitively disadvantaged in relation to low#diversity, .urasian populations In fact, we do observe that (Herrnstein and (urray, 199)!, which clearly reveals the direction of species

radiation. .$pressing this view, however, is li'ely to attract such vehement abuse that few dare. +nly those whose livelihood is not subHect to the fiats of &wimmin and minorities& can openly spea' the truth on this subHect, and their views are ruthlessly censored.

3otes 1. Harpending, et al. (199 !@ see especially the conclusions. 4. I 6. Tish'off, -. "., from a report in the -cience ?aily of 4> /anuary 1999 of a presentation at the annual meeting of the "merican "ssociation for the "dvancement of -cience in "naheim on 44 /anuary. ). .yre#%al'er, '=ecent Ninds in Aaleoanthropology' in "thena =eview vol. 4, no. 4 (19 (arch 4999!. >. -ee p. 169> and p. 1699, and generally, to account for the observed diversity clines, which intuitively support radiation out of .urasia by low#diversity s. sapiens, gaining diversity as they interbred with pre#human populations subse*uent to their speciation. 1. Tish'off, as *uoted in -cience ?aily (above!. 0. Tish'off et al. (199 !. +n page 1699, she postulates a &dramatic& founder effect and genetic drift. . %olpoff, (ilford H., submitted a post entitled &3o Homo erectus at 3gandong& to Human +rigins 3ews (http://www.proam.com/origins/news/article19.html! on 11 (arch 4999. He is perhaps the best 'nown proponent of the view that there is continuity between the ancient and modern populations@ saying, for instance, that the population represented by the 3gandong specimens is &incontrovertably& ancestral to some "ustralian fossils and living people. 9. Lhang et al. 1991, p. 9 notes the way (elanesians are genetically differentiated from other Aacific islanders and "sians (citing Nlint et al. (1996!!. Their figures 6 I > are somewhat pertinent. (ountain, op. cit., p. 1>11, notes clustering of pygmies and -. .. "sians. Nigure 1 shows how representative global populations cluster< the pattern is consistent (in the author's interpretation! with .urasian hybridi,ation of a species whose genome subsumed the diversity of the current (also hybridi,ed! "fricans. 7idd, op. cit. p. 44>, cites Harding (1990! concerning variation of betaglobin in -. .. "sians. /orde, op. cit., Nigure 4 shows -. .. "sians clustering with pygmies. Hagelberg (as cited in 11, below! finds affinities between pygmies and "ndaman Islanders. 19. %olpoff's post ( , above! seems to be in response to the statement of Ahilip =ightmire (cited as &an e$pert on the species&! in the 1> ?ecember 1991 issue of Human +rigins 3ews that &They D3gandong specimensE are une*uivocally H. erectus.& 11. Hagelberg, .. I No$, L. K. in an unpublished study, *uoted in -cientific "merican, '-cience and the Liti,en', /anuary 1999.

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Haplotype "nalysis of the (yotonic ?ystrophy Kocus@ Implications for the .volution of (odern Humans and for the +rigin of (yotonic ?ystrophy (utations', "merican /ournal of Human Genetics, 14< 16 9# 1)94. Fnderhill, Aeter "., Aeidong -hen, "lice Kin, Ki /in, Giuseppe Aassarino, %ei 8ang, .rin 7auffman, 5atsheva 5onne#Tamir, /aume 5ertranpetit, Aaolo Nrancalacci, (utanser Ibrahim, Trefor /en'ins, /udith 7idd, -. Qasim (ehdi, (ar' -eielstad, =. %ells, "lberto Aia,,a, =onald ?avis, (arcus Neldman, K. Lavalli# sfor,a, I Aeter +efner (4999! Ketter, Nature Genetics; vol. 41, 3ovember.%olpoff, (ilford H., in a post entitled< &3o Homo erectus at 3gandong& to Human +rigins 3ews (http<22www.pro#am.com2 origins2news 2article 19.html! on 11 (arch 4999.