Out of Eden: Bones, Stones & Tonesmen (and women) can swithc off

From: richard01 (richardparker01_at_yahoo.com)
Date: 09/08/04 

Date: 8 Sep 2004 12:12:18 -0700

Out of Eden - Stephen Oppenheimer (Constable & Robinson, UK 2004 -
Paperback (Revised))

I have just finished reading this, and found it fascinating and quite
convincing. He traces (he is a practicing human/historical geneticist)
the spread of modern humans out of Africa and round the world.

He combines evidence of climatic changes (desert, savannah, ice-caps,
sea-levels, etc) with the latest genetic studies on mtDNA and the Y
chromosome (he confesses molecular clocks are not too reliable,
especially on the male line) to map out our spread.

Amongst controversial points he makes are:

- Our brains stopped growing long ago - H Rhodiense had 94% of Hom
Sap's brain size 1.2Mya, and we have lost 11% over the past 300,000
years.

- Most of the factors quoted for the Eurocentric 'Upper Palaeolithic
Revolution' which supposedly happened in Europe c 40-30,000ya (art,
beads, stone tools, etc) have been shown to have happened long before
(some up to 300,000ya) in Africa.

- European moderns were only an offshoot, coming from the Gulf (Iraq)

- Language not 'hard-wired' but inferred - bang goes Chomsky! "The
same phenomenon is seen in 'singing' non-primates, such as birds and
whales'.

- Language (of a sort) acquired maybe 2.5 Mya, shared by Homo and
Paranthropus, since nothing 'genetic' seems to have happened within
the last 100,000 years, while the brain adaptations were already there
long before.

- There was only one route for Out-of-Africa (about 85000ya - via
Eritrea to Yemen - a previous attempt via Suez died out at Skhul (or
nearby) because of yet another climate change

- Native Americans arrived before 22000ya (that is, before the last
Ice Age Maximum). He does a nice hatchet job on the Clovis-first
theory.

- The major migration route for Modern Humans was via the coast, from
Eritrea right round to Japan, and, on the way, up rivers -
Tigris/Euphrates, Indus, Ganges, Brahmaputra, Irrawaddy, Chaopraya,
Mekong, Red, Yellow, and Yangtse. He calls the originals the
'beachcombers', and shows how relict populations' genes (Andamanese,
Semang, Senoi, etc) genetics prove this.

- His reconstruction of 'Mongoloid' dispersion will not please Milton
Wolpoff, nor will:

- The multi-regionalist theory is as dead as a dodo.

- New Guineans go there first, and Australians (separately) got there
a bit later, while Maoris got to New Zealand a lot later still. His
migration maps show a whole continent sitting in the middle of all the
later migration paths completely ignored. Maybe Allan Thorne will have
something to say about this.

- Modern humans were not the only ones who might have followed the
same routes for the same reasons (climatic - deserts and ice-caps, and
lower sea-levels), but the travels of Homo erectus and 'archaic' homo
are not part of his book's remit.

He heard about Bob Walter's discoveries in Eritrea - Acheulian Axe
found in 125000 yr Coral Reef (see
http://exn.ca/hominids/outofafrica.cfm and
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AAT/message/26185) so went to see for
himself. He describes visiting the reef with Seife Berhe, its
discoverer. They saw 125000ya shell middens, an obsidian flake tool
embedded in the reef (nearest obsidian 20km away) and obsidian
microliths (not directly associated with the reef, but common on the
sand above). He puzzles over this, because microliths were not found
in Africa until 70000ya, and in Europe only about 8000ya.

His very confident (and well-backed) exposition of all this seems
(deliberately) to falter a little when he discusses the development of
the brain and intelligence:

"Something new these two genera (Homo and Paranthropus) were doing
gave them both a special advantage in this period of increasing
aridity...during this period (2Mya) our brains grew rapidly while our
bodies grew little....The most obvious candidate....speech. But, in
the absence of prehistoric cassette recorders ... most obvious
physical evidence ... stone tools...progress in tool-making was
painfully slow for a million years...'

Which doesn't say much. What does he think the 'something new these
two were doing', was, exactly?

Maybe that's for his next book.

Relevant Pages

  • Out of Eden: Stones, Bones & Tonesmen (and women) Can Switch Off
    ... the spread of modern humans out of Africa and round the world. ... Sap's brain size 1.2Mya, and we have lost 11% over the past 300,000 ... Semang, Senoi, etc) genetics prove this. ... He describes visiting the reef with Seife Berhe, ...
    (sci.anthropology)
  • Re: before Cantor there was Rantor
    ... >> say humanity evolved from the moment after Adam mated Eve, ... >> could the apes one day learn what random genetic animal freaks ... > they conduct rather sadistic experiments with human brain, ... making a new superhuman stud, then by comparison your genetics are merely random, you are a distant ...
    (sci.math)
  • Re: before Cantor there was Rantor
    ... >> say humanity evolved from the moment after Adam mated Eve, ... >> could the apes one day learn what random genetic animal freaks ... > they conduct rather sadistic experiments with human brain, ... making a new superhuman stud, then by comparison your genetics are merely random, you are a distant ...
    (sci.logic)
  • Re: "Liberal Creationism"
    ... The report doesn't conclude that genes explain racial gaps in IQ. ... I thought head measurement had been discredited as Eurocentric ... head size and brain volume is genetic. ... racial IQ genetics accept the idea that through natural selection, ...
    (soc.culture.african.american)
  • FWD: Found: A missing link!
    ... named Lucy as the scientists who found her were listening to the Beatles ... Selam's brain case also suggests that while her intellect was more ... started to evolve in the direction that would produce modern human ... antiquity and age at death combined make this find ...
    (alt.religion.christian)