A news article published today in
The Independent.
Artefacts support theory man came from Africa
By David Keys, Archaeology Correspondent
Published: 11 August 2006
Fragments of ostrich eggs, perforated beads and finely shaped arrowheads have provided the first firm archaeological evidence for the "out of Africa" origins of the world's human population.
Scientists have found stark similarities in the ancient cultural artefacts made and used by Stone Age people who migrated out of Africa and into Asia more than 50,000 years ago.
It is the first time that archaeologists have been able to link African and Indian artefacts so closely together even though they were discovered 3,000 miles apart - suggesting they were made by the same people, albeit of different generations.
Until now the "out of Africa" hypothesis, developed by physical anthropologists and geneticists, has relied almost entirely on the analysis of human skeletal remains or on DNA studies. But a comparative study of Stone Age artefacts found in Africa and India, carried out by Professor Paul Mellars, a Cambridge University archaeologist, has revealed remarkable cultural and technological similarities that suggest a common origin.....
.....The finds, which were discovered by various archaeologists over many years, come from southern and east Africa and from India and Sri Lanka. However it is the Cambridge University study which has for the first time demonstrated the similarities between the African and Asian material. Most of the African finds date from between 70,000 and 50,000 years ago, while the earliest Indian artefacts discovered so far are just 35,000 years old. Further research is expected to push the Indian dates back further.
Professor Mellars, whose findings are published in the journal Science, said: "We have long suspected that the archaeological evidence for African migration to Asia must exist - and now we seem to have found it."......(more) © 2006 Independent News and Media Limited
The above are selected paragraphs: Read the entire article from
The Telegraph HERE.
The journal
Science article is published this week as:
Science 11 August 2006:
Vol. 313. no. 5788, pp. 796 - 800
DOI: 10.1126/science.1128402
Review
Going East: New Genetic and Archaeological Perspectives on the Modern Human Colonization of Eurasia
Paul Mellars
The pattern of dispersal of biologically and behaviorally modern human populations from their African origins to the rest of the occupied world between 60,000 and 40,000 years ago is at present a topic of lively debate, centering principally on the issue of single versus multiple dispersals. Here I argue that the archaeological and genetic evidence points to a single successful dispersal event, which took genetically and culturally modern populations fairly rapidly across southern and southeastern Asia into Australasia, and with only a secondary and later dispersal into Europe.
Avalable to online subscribers from the abstract page
HERE.
This should be interesting. To date, all previous attempts to show a direct Africa-Eurasia archaeological connection as evidence for a ("behaviorally modern") Recent African Exodus (RAE) have generally been considered weak to non-existent. There's not much that I can say about this new review until after I've had a chance to read this week's issue of
Science at my local library (next week). But I'll probably find more to say about this.
Dar
