All,
A National Geographic News article, which I picked up from David Meadows'
explorator@yahoo.com newsletter for January 1 this morning.
CLICK HEREThe NatGeo article refers to a paper published in the December 22, 2005 issue of
Nature,
CLICK HERE:
Review
Nature 438, 1099-1104 (22 December 2005) | doi:10.1038/nature04259
An Asian perspective on early human dispersal from Africa
Robin Dennell1 and Wil Roebroeks2
Abstract. The past decade has seen the Pliocene and Pleistocene fossil hominin record enriched by the addition of at least ten new taxa, including the Early Pleistocene, small-brained hominins from Dmanisi, Georgia, and the diminutive Late Pleistocene Homo floresiensis from Flores, Indonesia. At the same time, Asia's earliest hominin presence has been extended up to 1.8 Myr ago, hundreds of thousands of years earlier than previously envisaged. Nevertheless, the preferred explanation for the first appearance of hominins outside Africa has remained virtually unchanged. We show here that it is time to develop alternatives to one of palaeoanthropology's most basic paradigms: 'Out of Africa 1'.
This really isn't a 'revolutionary' proposal, as it's been tossed around for decades, but apparently, taking into account recent evidence from Dmanisi and Flores, it's time for a 'revival' (of sorts) for the idea that the origins of the genus Homo might be in Asia, rather than the current African paradigm. I haven't read the
Nature article yet, so I can't say much about this at present.
Dar
