New evidence of Homo sapiens

[Bells]

Black skin, brown skin pale skin----------all remains in doubt

DNA doesn't lie.

They were able to show when Europeans started to have paler skin and they know the genes that caused it, just as they are able to track the darker skin traits as well. Sure, we may not know the exact tone, but we know enough to show that someone with sub-Saharan features will more than likely not be white, especially if their DNA is also factored into the fray.

When an artist chooses to add a skin color to a reconstruction of an ancient collection of bones, he or she is voicing a personal opinion.

Forensic "artists" as you call them, usually have to go through extensive training in archaeology, anthropology and several subjects in the medical field to be able to reconstruct those faces and features. It's a fairly measured science. I knew a girl who went on to study that at university and she did it to go and work with the ICC and the UN and their war crimes tribunal, to reconstruct the faces of skeletons found in mass graves, to help with identification. We might refer to them as artists, but it takes a stupid amount of training. They don't do it as a guess. There are measurements they work from. It's not a matter of throwing clay and just guessing.

One rather convincing argument from the genome studies is that we got the genes for red hair and pale skin from our neanderthal cousins.(no mention was made as to where our cousins got those genes)

Actually no. Red hair and pale skin is not from our Neanderthal cousins.

Red hair, for example:

In 2000, Harding et al. concluded that red hair is not the result of positive selection but of a lack of negative selection. In Africa, for example, red hair is selected against because high levels of sun harm untanned skin. However, in Northern Europe this does not happen, so redheads can become more common through genetic drift.[39] Estimates on the original occurrence of the currently active gene for red hair vary from 20,000 to 100,000 years ago.[43][44]

A DNA study has concluded that some Neanderthals also had red hair, although the mutation responsible for this differs from that which causes red hair in modern humans.[45]​

And pale skin only developed in the last 10,000 years or so.. Some may be a bit earlier by 12,000 to 15,000 in the Nordic areas. Long after Neanderthals died out. Could it be a genetic link? Depends. Neanderthals ranged from very dark to pale. Much like Homo sapiens turned out to be.. They have been able to see through DNA found in various remains when Homo sapiens started to become paler in Europe and Asia, though. So we can get a general idea.

What we do not have is genomic studies for any ancestors and other hominids older that about 400,000 years.

430,000 or so, I believe.. That has been sequenced, either way.

Before that time, all is a guess.

Well yes and no. They can and do look at other fossils found and can trace back with DNA to a certain extent. I mean we can trace our lineage to a certain extent from fossil records. We know where we came from.

One error often repeated in anthropology is extrapolating backward from modern people's behaviours and morphology to ancient peoples.

You mean behaviour like revulsion at the thought that one's ancestors had black skin and attempting to rewrite human history so that they do not?

Very little in archaeology is certain, and guessing at origins is a prime example of people voicing their biased opinions and claiming them as facts.

There is very little to suggest that Europeans are somehow a different "race" of hominids that evolved in Morocco or Europe because the thought that modern man evolved in the Eastern region of sub-Saharan Africa is repulsive.. So I would agree with you there.

Opinion does not uncomplicate anthropology, and quite often serves an opposite function.

Just makes me sneer.

 

[Yazata]

Once again, Homosapiens does not come from Sub Sahara belt

Or at least evidence is growing that they didn't necessarily originate in Ethiopia or east Africa, as current orthodoxy has it.

This newest find, if it pans out, pushes more or less anatomically modern humans back as far in time as the Neanderthals. It also suggests that they were spread across the entire African continent and maybe even outside Africa. (If they are found in Morocco, will they be found in Spain as well? I believe that there was a Gibraltar land-bridge at times that they could have easily crossed.) Will their remains turn up in the Middle East or in Yemen?

There may have been multiple out-of-Africa events at multiple times. People already believe that Homo erectus left before anatomically modern humans, and the Neanderthal and Denisovan origins still need to be better understood. I suspect that the history for anatomically modern humans might be more complex as well. The current orthodoxy has them leaving Africa about 70,000 years ago, despite anatomically modern human bones being found in Israel dating from 90,000 years ago. So I'm a bit skeptical about one big wave out of Africa. Homo sapiens may have been trickling out for tens of thousands of years in small bands.

These Moroccan bones (lots of them, from multiple individuals, a much better sample than is usually found for early hominins) are associated not only with the use of fire, but with well-made stone blades, of a sort that have been found all over Africa. There have been long-standing questions about who was responsible for making the blades. If these very-early Homo sapiens were the ones that made them, they were already widely distributed. Of course, it remains possible that similar blade technology was used by more than one kind of early hominin. They may have been copying each other.

Apparently while these people had brains as large as ours, their brains weren't as round, and were shaped more like other early hominins. Nobody knows what difference that might have made to their cognition or language abilities.

 

[Yazata]

I care because I don't like the hypothesis that modern man had black skin and by moving north he lost its color,

I'm more inclined to speculate (that's all it is) that the earliest Homo sapiens probably had light brown skins and straight black hair. That's a generic phenotype that's found today everywhere from North Africa through the Middle East to Mexico. It seems to me that it might perhaps be typical of those who left Africa. My speculation is that the 'whiter' Caucasians, the darker frizzy-haired Negroes, and the Chinese-style East Asians are later evolutionary developments, evolutionary modifications on the earlier theme that appeared as human populations spread out geographically and became reproductively isolated. The Caucasians and the East Asians seem to me to have cold-weather adaptations that didn't likely evolve in Africa. In Africa, the Koisan-speakers in far southwest Africa may be the remnants of an earlier population. The more typical Negroes seem to have intruded on much of this population's territory relatively recently, associated with the spread of the Bantu languages as neolithic garden-farming and stock-raising spread.

So if modern man come from Morocco he not necessary would be what we call African black

True. I don't think that anyone really knows what their skin or hair looked like.

 

[Yazata]

Where did they come from ? Morocco ?

It's possible I guess. People have long assumed that humans evolved in East Africa. Why? Because the earliest fossil hominins are found there. So by the same logic, if the earliest remains of Homo sapiens (some 150,000 years older than any other known remains) come from Northwest Africa, the possibility certainly exists that Homo sapiens evolved from Homo erectus in Northwest Africa and not in Ethiopia as earlier assumed.

could they be an inbred of Neanderthal and denisovan ? You tell me .

Morocco is an area where contact with Neanderthals might have been likely. So interbreeding might have been likely too. I don't know what effect that might have had on the emergence of earliest Homo sapiens, but it probably has to be considered.

I have my hunch homosapien developed no farther south then Morocco.

It's possible.

The argument that Homosapien come from below the Sahara belt is a nonsense.

I don't think that it's nonsense by any means. But it might nevertheless be false.

I suspect that we might have new evidence that the emergence of Homo sapiens was more complex and more geographically dispersed than we previously thought.

 

[Bells]

I'm more inclined to speculate (that's all it is) that the earliest Homo sapiens probably had light brown skins and straight black hair.

I actually think the evidence is pointing that it is the other way around, that the skin started out darker, and then through adaptation to cooler climates, eventually lightened through adaptation.

It seems to me that it might perhaps be typical of those who left Africa.

Does not match what has been found. Dark brown skin traits in DNA of early European ancestors show that they had dark brown skin and developed lighter brown skin to pale skin much later on, within 10k years or so ago. That is what genetic studies are currently showing. Literally.

My speculation is that the 'whiter' Caucasians, the darker frizzy-haired Negroes, and the Chinese-style East Asians are later evolutionary developments, evolutionary modifications on the earlier theme that appeared as human populations spread out geographically and became reproductively isolated.

But they weren't that isolated. Migration was not just out of Africa, but also back to Africa for some groups. Paler Caucasians and the Asian characteristics appeared much later. "Negroes" or dark brown skin, was kind of the norm.

That is what the current genetic evidence is showing.

The Caucasians and the East Asians seem to me to have cold-weather adaptations that didn't likely evolve in Africa.

The climate in Africa was changing constantly.. And the colder adaptation would have occurred through Europe and parts of Asia due to the last ice age. Homo sapiens have shown that we can adapt, while other species died out..

In Africa, the Koisan-speakers in far southwest Africa may be the remnants of an earlier population.

Ermm..

Here are two articles about the Khoisan and their history.. You should read them.. Really..

The more typical Negroes seem to have intruded on much of this population's territory relatively recently, associated with the spread of the Bantu languages as neolithic garden-farming and stock-raising spread.

Wow..

Ermm..

The Bantu expanded from around 1,000 BC..

And really, this vision that you are trying to perpetuate that black people were somehow interlopers on paler skinned people in Africa way back when is out there.. Disturbing as hell for a variety of reasons that should be obvious even to you.. But it's out there..

True. I don't think that anyone really knows what their skin or hair looked like.

Except we know from the genes of early ancestors in Europe, that they had dark brown skin...

This reminds me of people who are convinced that Jesus had blonde hair and blue eyes.. While living in the ME thousands of years ago..

 

[Bells]

Timojin, my name is Bells. Not "woman".

You also missed the edit. Just as you appear to have not understood what is written.

You should also be made aware that Chinese scientists and American scientists, after a gene study of groups of people in China, found genetic markers that take them right back to Sub-Saharan East Africa, after looking for genetic markers that existed solely in populations in sub Sahara Africa around 80,000 years ago. Jin Li is the name of the Chinese scientists who headed the study in China. Was done several years ago.

 

[origin]

Woman read for yourself, and learn

What a dick...

 

[timojin]

What a dick...

Do yourself a favor report yourself to the administrator for insulting me .

 

[Kristoffer]

What a dick...

I prefer the term uneducated, misogynistic asshole.

Edit: forgot racist.

 

[Fraggle Rocker]

Except we know from the genes of early ancestors in Europe, that they had dark brown skin...

No, this can't possibly be true.

People in the tropics evolved dark skin in order to avoid half the population dying of sunburn. But the people in the northern regions had the opposite problem. The sun was much lower in the sky, so it would be impossible for their metabolism to synthesize enough Vitamin A, if they had retained the dark skin they developed in Africa.

This is the reason why (even now) people in the tropics tend to have dark skin, while those who live in subtropical or arctic regions tend to have very light skin.

Most of the native people in the Western Hemisphere are related by ancestry--although in many cases they arrived at disparate intervals. Compare the extremely light skin of the Canadian and Alaskan communities, against the much darker skin of the folks who settled in the Caribbean islands and in the equatorial continental regions.

The first Homo sapiens to arrive in Europe were the Cro-Magnon, who came the long way, walking from the western edge of Asia into Europe--or possibly sailing across the Mediterranean, which, a few millennia later, would host several seafaring civilizations.

 

[exchemist]

Do yourself a favor report yourself to the administrator for insulting me .

Got it! You are Borat.

And I claim my $500.

 

[sculptor]

According to Lee R. Berger of the University of Witwatersrand, numerous fossil bones indicate some populations of Heidelbergensis were "giants" routinely over 2.13 m (7 ft) tall and inhabited South Africa between 500 000 and 300 000 years ago. Recent findings in a pit in Atapuerca (Spain) of 28 human skeletons suggest that H. heidelbergensis may have been the first species of the Homo genus to bury their dead.

No dna (so far) that I know of.
Anyone wanna guess the skin color of the South African or european heidelbergensis skin color?

Distribution of known heidelbergensis during super interglacial mis 11

 

[Bells]

No, this can't possibly be true.

People in the tropics evolved dark skin in order to avoid half the population dying of sunburn. But the people in the northern regions had the opposite problem. The sun was much lower in the sky, so it would be impossible for their metabolism to synthesize enough Vitamin A, if they had retained the dark skin they developed in Africa.

This is the reason why (even now) people in the tropics tend to have dark skin, while those who live in subtropical or arctic regions tend to have very light skin.

Most of the native people in the Western Hemisphere are related by ancestry--although in many cases they arrived at disparate intervals. Compare the extremely light skin of the Canadian and Alaskan communities, against the much darker skin of the folks who settled in the Caribbean islands and in the equatorial continental regions.

The first Homo sapiens to arrive in Europe were the Cro-Magnon, who came the long way, walking from the western edge of Asia into Europe--or possibly sailing across the Mediterranean, which, a few millennia later, would host several seafaring civilizations.

What the genetic studies of a hunter gatherer from 7,000 years ago in Europe showed..

An ancient European hunter-gatherer man had dark skin and blue eyes, a new genetic analysis has revealed.

The analysis of the man, who lived in modern-day Spain only about 7,000 years ago, shows light-skin genes in Europeans evolved much more recently than previously thought.

The findings, which were detailed today (Jan. 26) in the journal Nature, also hint that light skin evolved not to adjust to the lower-light conditions in Europe compared with Africa, but instead to the new diet that emerged after the agricultural revolution, said study co-author Carles Lalueza-Fox, a paleogenomics researcher at Pompeu Fabra University in Spain.

Many scientists have believed that lighter skin gradually arose in Europeans starting around 40,000 years ago, soon after people left tropical Africa for Europe's higher latitudes. The hunter-gatherer's dark skin pushes this date forward to only 7,000 years ago, suggesting that at least some humans lived considerably longer than thought in Europe before losing the dark pigmentation that evolved under Africa's sun.

"It was assumed that the lighter skin was something needed in high latitudes, to synthesize vitamin D in places where UV light is lower than in the tropics," Lalueza-Fox told LiveScience.

Scientists had assumed this was true because people need vitamin D for healthy bones, and can synthesize it in the skin with energy from the sun's UV rays, but darker skin, like that of the hunter-gatherer man, prevents UV-ray absorption.

But the new discovery shows that latitude alone didn't drive the evolution of Europeans' light skin. If it had, light skin would have become widespread in Europeans millennia earlier, Lalueza-Fox said.
​

More links:

http://www.ancient-origins.net/news...eloped-europe-only-recently-8000-years-020287

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/04/how-europeans-evolved-white-skin

http://news.psu.edu/story/299166/20...-gene-across-global-populations-reveal-shared

The study referenced in the link above can be found here: http://www.g3journal.org/content/3/11/2059

In effect, the studies show that the changes in skin pigmentation to lighter skin colour, was more recent than previously thought and a lot of it appears to also be linked to dietary changes that occurred during those times (food production theory) and there is a lot of research that backs it up...

 

[iceaura]

People in the tropics evolved dark skin in order to avoid half the population dying of sunburn. But the people in the northern regions had the opposite problem. The sun was much lower in the sky, so it would be impossible for their metabolism to synthesize enough Vitamin A, if they had retained the dark skin they developed in Africa.

It's vitamin D, not A.
The species evolved in a warm climate with plenty of sunshine - the first hairless humans had dark skin, then, of necessity. All of them. The rest of us came along later.
It's possible for coastal humans with seafood diets to obtain Vitamin D from their diet. As it happens, along the coasts is also the easiest traveling and richest foraging and most benign weather and most likely implementation of stone tools. That seems a reasonable explanation for why we see dark skinned humans everywhere along the coasts and in the farthest reaches of migration on the planet, and very light skinned from one particular region only - inland Europe.

 

[Fraggle Rocker]

Many scientists have believed that lighter skin gradually arose in Europeans starting around 40,000 years ago, soon after people left tropical Africa for Europe's higher latitudes. The hunter-gatherer's dark skin pushes this date forward to only 7,000 years ago, suggesting that at least some humans lived considerably longer than thought in Europe before losing the dark pigmentation that evolved under Africa's sun.

The Homo sapiens in Africa did not plot a course directly to Europe. An ice age was in progress, so the Red Sea was much narrower than it is today, and the primitive boats that the Africans built were adequate for the task. Once they landed in Asia, they still did not turn north. They kept going east, and ultimately found themselves in Australia--which, due to the vagaries of the weather, was a paradise. The Native Australian people still have the genetic markers that identify them as closely related to the San (formerly known as the "Bushmen"), a tribe that lived in northeastern Africa at the time (making the hop across the Red Sea a short and easy voyage)... although since the desertification of the Sahara, the San, like the other inhabitants of northern Africa, were shoved south, and we can still find their DNA there.

It wasn't until several thousand years later, that another adventurous band of the San people managed to cross the Red Sea again. This time the climate was fine, so they had no reason to set out for Australia a second time, and they left their DNA everywhere.

 

[timojin]

The Homo sapiens in Africa did not plot a course directly to Europe. An ice age was in progress, so the Red Sea was much narrower than it is today, and the primitive boats that the Africans built were adequate for the task. Once they landed in Asia, they still did not turn north. They kept going east, and ultimately found themselves in Australia--which, due to the vagaries of the weather, was a paradise. The Native Australian people still have the genetic markers that identify them as closely related to the San (formerly known as the "Bushmen"), a tribe that lived in northeastern Africa at the time (making the hop across the Red Sea a short and easy voyage)... although since the desertification of the Sahara, the San, like the other inhabitants of northern Africa, were shoved south, and we can still find their DNA there.

It wasn't until several thousand years later, that another adventurous band of the San people managed to cross the Red Sea again. This time the climate was fine, so they had no reason to set out for Australia a second time, and they left their DNA everywhere.

Why they had to travel across the red sea, why not just follow the Nile river, the coast along the northern coast of mediterranean sea and then cross the Gibraltar strait ? Then meat the NeaNDERTHAL MAN and
interbreed. Neanderthal man was your San man.
Of course there could be some group that followed the coast along the South Arabian peninsula and ended in Australia.

 

[Fraggle Rocker]

Why they had to travel across the red sea, why not just follow the Nile river, the coast along the northern coast of mediterranean sea and then cross the Gibraltar strait?

Sorry, I wasn't there, so I can't answer the question.

Nonetheless, the San crossed across the Red Sea into Asia twice. The first was about 60KYA, during an ice age when food was scarce. When they found themselves in Australia, which just happened to be the warmest continent on the planet at the time, they liked it so well that they never left!

The second crossing of the Red Sea was about 10,000 years later, when the climate had warmed. Of course it was more difficult to sail across the Red Sea when it was considerably wider, but these folks had had ten thousand years to improve their boat-building technology and their understanding of how to steer a boat.

Then meet the Neanderthal man and inter breed. Neanderthal man was your San man.

There is absolutely ZERO evidence of Neanderthals inhabiting Africa, with the exception of some explorers who lived briefly at the very northeastern corner of the continent, and appear never to have actually established any permanent habitation.

Of course there could be some group that followed the coast along the South Arabian peninsula and ended in Australia.

Dr. Cavalli-Sforza is the leading scholar of the migrations of our ancient ancestors. Check out his work (there's quite a bit of it on Wikipedia) and it will answer a lot of your questions.

My favorite Cavalli-Sforza episode was when he sent a crew to Arizona to study the Navajo. (He's too old now to do the traveling himself.) A Navajo chief was explaining to the leader of the expedition that the Navajo have always been where they are now, all the way back to the beginning of time. Meanwhile, the chief's son was looking through some photos that the crew had collected in Siberia.

Suddenly, he was yelling, "Dad, Dad, you've gotta see this guy. He looks just like Uncle Ernie." The chief looked at the photo for quite a while, then he straightened up, looked directly into the camera, and said, "Then I guess what you white men have been trying to tell us is true. We really are all brothers."

 

[billvon]

Why they had to travel across the red sea

They didn't have to. They just could - and apparently did.

 

[sculptor]

I found this in a slide show:

Accurate?

 

[iceaura]

Accurate?

Only if it's irrelevant here - if the H sapiens leaving Africa evolved from H heidelbergensis in Africa, say.

The criteria for estimating or assessing where taxons evolved are not all that controversial, usually - one finds the seat of genetic diversity, the oldest evidence of existence, the presence of multiple and varied related taxons, the oldest variety in DNA, the core collection of common features, and so forth and so on, and puts a thumbtack in the map. In pine trees: present day Mexico. In H sapiens, NE Africa. It's provisional, of course - but it's the way to bet, the assumption to make.