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By Steven Strong with Andy Whiteley
Contributing Writers for Wake Up World
Scientific evidence refuting the theory of modern humanity’s African genesis is common knowledge among those familiar with the most recent scientific papers on the human Genome, Mitochondrial DNA and Y-chromosomes. Regrettably, within mainstream press and academia circles, there seems to be a conspicuous – and dare we say it – deliberate vacuum when it comes to reporting news of these recent studies and their obvious implications.
This article was inspired by a comment made recently by Australian historian Greg Jefferys. So before continuing a scientific assessment of DNA evidence, we will first open this discussion by outlining Greg Jefferys’ comments.
The whole ‘Out of Africa’ myth has its roots in the mainstream academic campaign in the 1990’s to remove the concept of Race. When I did my degree they all spent a lot of time on the ‘Out of Africa’ thing but it’s been completely disproved by genetics. Mainstream still hold on to it.
(Video) Debunking Out-of-Africa Theory in Under 15 Minutes - ROBERT SEPEHR
It did begin the early 90’s. And the academics most responsible for cementing both the Out-of Africa theory and the complementary common ancestral African mother – given the name of “Eve” – in the public arena and nearly every curriculum, were Professors Alan C. Wilson and Rebecca L. Cann. In their defense, the authors of this paper were fully aware that genealogy is not in any way linked to geography, and that their placement of Eve in Africa was an assumption, never an assertion. In their seminal paper The Recent African Genesis of Humans, they even stipulated “that all humans today can be traced along maternal lines of descent to a woman who lived about 200,000 years ago, probably in Africa.”
So how is it that their “probably” has morphed into our collective “definitely”?
Over time, even the two researchers came to discover that the research of Original Mitochondrial DNA was fundamentally flawed. Both separately conducted further tests on Mitochondrial DNA found within the blood of full-descent Original people, arriving at the same conclusion, both recanted their previous assumptions by acknowledging that Homo sapien sapiens originated in Australia.
Professor Alan Wilson came to Australia in 1987 and 1989 to personally supervise the collection of Original blood from a variety of locations throughout Australia. With a mutation rate of 70% from the samples analysed, which is manifestly higher than any other race, Wilson was compelled to admit that:
… it seems too far out to admit, but while Homo erectus was muddling along in the rest of the world, a few erectus had got to Australia and did something dramatically different – not even with stone tools – but it is here that Homo sapiens emerged and evolved.
Rebecca Cann was more expansive and specific in declaring that the Original “Mitochondrial DNA puts the origin of Homo Sapiens much further back and indicates that the Australian Aborigines arose 400,000 years ago from two distinct lineages, far earlier than any other racial group.” The notions of a “far earlier” time frame when estimating when, and the existence of “two lineages” in Australia when grappling with who, are constant themes that can be found within many other reports investigating the make up of the genes and chromosomes of Homo sapien sapiens.
The very recent mapping of the Original Genome only reinforces the stance taken by both Cann and Wilson twenty years earlier, and highlights the inconsistencies and illogicality of any and every Out-of-Africa theory. A Danish genetic research team, led by Dr. Eske Willerslev, found that Original people came into existence at least 70,000 years ago, 40,000 years before both the European and Asian race first appeared. They assumed that because Africans made their way across the entire Asian continent and never stopped or settled, and remained in transit until reaching Australia “some 50,000 years ago.” Once ensconced in this foreign land where they managed to keep “the whole continent to themselves without admitting any outsiders”, their genes should be very African.
The problem being, as they openly admit, such a premise is “based on a mixture of statistics and best guesses”, and more importantly as Wilson and Cann came to realise, “we really can’t put geography in there.” Granted, they did concede that “the Aborigine occupation of Australia presents a series of puzzles” and especially so in relation to “the nature of their stone tools found in Australia” which “are much simpler than the Upper Paleolithic tools… at the same era.” Professor Richard Klien (Paleoanthropologist Stanford University) highlighted the contradictory nature of the stone tool technology in Australia when observing that “I don’t understand why they looked so primitive.”
Basically this means that the people who invented and sailed the first boat capable of carrying many people over 100 kilometres of open sea, regressed markedly in technology once arriving on these new shores. Or perhaps in ancient days until quite recent times, no-one ever sailed to, but from, Australia, which would explain why the Original technology was so unlike anything outside their home base.
Noted by Dr. Savolainen from the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, even the arrival of the only dog to reach Australia until the British invasion is an “enigma”.
We would humbly suggest that proclaiming any genetic absolutes, when dealing with Australian history, is risky business and best left to the Original Elders.
What only complicates the convenient versions of history is the totally unexpected addition to the ever-expanding hominid family: the Denisovans. Just after the release of a paper on the mapping of the Original Genome from a piece of hair collected 100 years ago, the first news of a new species of hominid – called the Denisovans – reached the public arena. All evidence found – especially in relation to the mtDNA extracted from the little finger of a Denisovan woman believed to be 80,000 years old – widens the geographic boundaries and time-scales of this recurring “enigma”. First and foremost, the resulting mtDNA of this sub-species of modern humans was compared against every race and tribe on the planet, and the closest genetic match was, as we would have predicted, the Australian Original people.
Thirty thousand years before the first Africans supposedly entered Australia, Original, not African, genes turn up in Siberia. The real issue at stake is that the Denosovans are considered a lesser species of early human, placed somewhere below Neanderthals, while the Original people, according to every model, are fully Homo sapien sapiens. So how is it possible that this regression took place? And did so, so far from home?
Some commentators proposed that this contact was not due to Original people sailing from Australia, but the Denisovans sailing to Australia. But alas, to for the Denisovans to have done so is in opposition to every accredited theory on the rise of Homo sapien sapiens, where they alone mastered the art of sailing to other continents in numbers large enough to genetically sustain their founding populations. Apparently, the Denisovans, who are well down the Hominid tree, were able to communicate, construct a boat of sizeable proportions, and navigate a successful voyage of thousands of kilometers on the open seas. This hypothesis just doesn’t make sense. What does sound more logical was that Homo sapiens were actually sailing from Australia and bestowing wisdom, culture and genes, with the Denisovans gratefully receiving all of these gifts.
Now the plot thickens and unravels.
An article in the New York Times on 4th December 2013 lays claim to a “baffling 400,000 year old clue to human origins”. On this occasion, humanity’s indirect ancestry was traced back to Spain during pre-Homo sapien sapiens times, and once again Denisovan genes are at play. So it appears the same hominid who is most closely linked to the Original genes of Australia was wandering around the Spanish countryside some 400,000 years ago, well before any African Homo sapien could be claimed to have stepped in, on or outside African soil.
“Scientists have found the oldest DNA evidence yet of humans’ biological history. But instead of neatly clarifying human evolution, the finding is adding new mysteries”. The femur bone found in cave was analysed by Dr. Matthias Meyer (geneticist Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology). When Meyer and his colleagues “drilled into the femur, they found ancient human DNA inside, just as they hoped”.
But past this point, nothing went according to their script. Much to their surprise, the DNA they recovered – the oldest yet by over 100,000 years – “most closely resembles DNA from an enigmatic lineage of humans known as Denisovans”, originally thought to be 80,000 years old and confined to the Northern Asian region. This finding was the cause of great consternation. “Everyone had a hard time believing it at first” Dr. Meyer said. “So we generated more and more data to nail it down”. Not surprisingly, their further research only confirmed the original results.
As Meyer quite rightly observed: “right now, we’ve basically generated a big question mark”.
As was the case with the Genome studies of Original hair, “the new finding is hard to reconcile with the [accepted] picture of human evolution”. None of what they found fits into any traditional version of human ascension, and according to Dr. Luis Asauaga (Paleoanthropologist, Universdad Complutense de Madrid) this discovery demands that “we have to rethink the whole story”.
And that last statement by Dr. Asauaga really sums up the case for the entire Out-of-Africa theory: it is a “story”, it was never a fact. From the very beginning it was always a “probably” at best. But this is only one half of the story… all of the evidence we have presented relates to women’s side of the genetic pool, and until the male’s Y-Chromosome is factored into this ancient narrative, any “rethink” of the “whole story” is incomplete.
What really does reinforce Greg Jeffreys’ contention that the genetic evidence is in stark contradiction to any Out-of-Africa theory, is that time after time the many Y-Chromosome papers released over the last decade stand united in their denial of any African input. And this is by no means a recent occurrence, as evidenced by a paper released in 1999 by Australian researchers Vandenburg and colleagues. As it was with other studies, the results were as inconvenient as they were unexpected. Vandenburg found that “Australian Y-chromosome diversity is surprisingly limited”. In contrast with the Genome researchers’ assumption that Australian was literally sealed off genetically until their land was stolen in 1788, Vandenburg made note of “two haplotypes unique to Australian Aboriginals”. But if indeed Africans sailed to Australia and were immediately isolated genetically, this just should not happen – every Original haplotype should have close to an identical African match.
Further information added to the African inconsistencies, while also reinforcing an observation offered by Rebecca Cann in relation to mtDNA evidence that suggested the first Original Homo sapien sapiens were sourced from “two lineages”. The results gathered “were compared with other worldwide populations” which “produced 41 unique haplotypes”. Instead of an even spread amongst so many haplotypes, in Australia a far more intense clustering was present in that “most (78%) of Australian haplotypes fell into two clusters, possibly indicating two original, separate lineages of Aboriginal Australians”. To that end, since at least two Original haplotype groups have no African counter-part, there can be no African involvement, mtDNA or Y-chromosomes in either of the “two lineages”.
As such, a very recent paper on Y-chromosomes released in 2012, (Re-Examing the “Out of Africa” Theory and the Origin of Europeoids (Caucasians) in the Light of DNA Genealogy written by Anatole A. Klyosov and Igor L. Rozhanski) only confirms the denial of any African ancestry in Australia, and strongly supports the existence of a “common ancestor” who “would not necessarily be in Africa. In fact, it was never proven that he lived in Africa”.
Central to results of this extensive examination of haplogroups (7,556) was the absence of any African genes. So lacking was the sampling of African genetic involvement, the researchers stated in their introduction that:
“the finding that the Europeoid haplogroups did not descend from “African” haplogroups A or B is supported by the fact that bearers of the Europeoid, as well as all non-African groups do not carry either SNI’s M91, P97, M31, P82, M23, M114, P262 …”
There are 11 more entries in this list of non-starters, all missing from both Europeoids and “all non-African groups,” which obviously includes the Original Australians. With the Original people exhibiting an intense clustering into two groups, haplogroups not present in any African genes and an absence of dozens of African genetic markers, it is very difficult nigh on impossible to sustain any link between Africa and Australia.
The researchers are adamant that their extensive study “offers evidence to re-examine the validity of the Out-of-Africa concept”. They see no genetic proof substantiating an African precedence in the Homo sapien tree, and maintain that “a more plausible interpretation might have been that both current Africans and non-Africans descended separately from a more ancient common ancestor, thus forming a proverbial fork”.
We regard the claim of “a more plausible explanation” as a gross understatement, since there is absolutely nothing plausibly African turning up in any test tubes. In fact, the researchers made note of their repeated absence stating “not one non-African participant out of more than 400 individuals in the Project tested positive to any of thirteen ‘African’ sub-clades of haplogroup A”.
The only remaining uncertainty relates to the identity of this “more ancient common ancestor”. All that can be stated with confidence is that humanity’s ancestor did not reside in Africa, but “probably” Australia.
When an Original Elder of high standing recently declared that “all peoples of the world come from us”, it seems he had a large body of genetic science standing beside him.
About the authors:
Steven Strong is an Australian-based researcher, author and former high school teacher. Together woth his son Evan, his work is to explore the ancient story of the Original people, a narrative that was almost lost to aggressive European colonisation.
Andy Whiteley an average 40-something from Melbourne Australia who, like many people, “woke up” and realized everything isn’t what it seems. Since then, he feels blessed to be a part of Wake Up World and its amazing community of readers.
This article © Wake Up World.
FAQs
What is the evidence for the out of Africa theory? ›
Scientists have now dated the skull as being 36,000 years old. The great similarity of this skull to skulls of the same age from Eurasian finds confirms the "Out of Africa"-hypothesis. Modern humans broke out of their place of origin around 40,000 years ago - from Africa south of the Sahara - and populated the world.
Does all human DNA come from Africa? ›A new genetic study suggests all modern humans trace our ancestry to a single spot in southern Africa 200,000 years ago. But experts say the study, which analyzes the DNA of living people, is not nearly comprehensive enough to pinpoint where our species arose.
What is the Out of Africa theory of human evolution? ›The Out of Africa hypothesis is a model for the origin and dispersal of modern humans. The hypothesis contends that humans evolved in East Africa, dispersing to populate the rest of the world from c. 70,000 years ago, replacing, rather than interbreeding with, the archaic hominins that were resident outside of Africa.
How fossil evidence is used to support Out of Africa hypothesis? ›Supporting Evidence
The oldest Homo sapiens fossils are found in Africa around 195,000 years ago. Homo sapiens fossils found outside Africa are not nearly as old. As a general rue, the closer a country is to Africa the older some of it's Homo sapien fossils are. This supports an African origin.
The Out of Africa hypothesis— the idea of an African origin for a recent modern human species—owes its genesis to interpretations of mtDNA, which suggested that the ancestors of recent humans first appeared in Africa and replaced other populations because they were a new species that did not interbreed (Cann, Stoneking ...
Is it a fact we all came from Africa? ›Scientists are sure that Homo sapiens first evolved in Africa, and we know that every person alive today can trace their genetic ancestry to there. It has long been thought that we began in one single east or south African population, which eventually spread into Asia and Europe.
What's the oldest race in the world? ›A new genomic study has revealed that Aboriginal Australians are the oldest known civilization on Earth, with ancestries stretching back roughly 75,000 years.
Do Africans have the oldest DNA? ›But all of this DNA has something in common: Almost all of it comes from Europe and Asia. The oldest DNA from sub-Saharan Africa—the place where the whole human story began—dates back to less than 10,000 years ago.
Can DNA be traced back to Adam and Eve? ›No, it is not true. Scientists can trace our maternal and paternal lines back to a woman and man who lived a long time ago, but they are not the Biblical Adam and Eve. People refer to these two individuals as “mtEve” and “Y-Adam,” for reasons we'll explain below.
Could humans have evolved outside of Africa? ›As a result the scientists stated that modern humans could not have emerged in different places, but instead had to have come from one region, Africa. The oldest known remains of anatomically modern humans are the Omo I and Omo II skulls.
Why did Darwin think humans came from Africa? ›
The idea that humans evolved in Africa can be traced to Charles Darwin. In his 1871 book The Descent of Man, Darwin speculated that it was “probable” that Africa was the cradle of humans because our two closest living relatives—chimpanzees and gorillas—live there.
What is the Out of Africa theory According to this theory when did people first arrive in Australia? ›The most significant "recent" wave out of Africa took place about 70,000–50,000 years ago, via the so-called "Southern Route", spreading rapidly along the coast of Asia and reaching Australia by around 65,000–50,000 years ago, (though some researchers question the earlier Australian dates and place the arrival of ...
What is the proof of human evolution? ›Evidence of Evolution
Millions of stone tools, figurines and paintings, footprints, and other traces of human behavior in the prehistoric record tell about where and how early humans lived and when certain technological innovations were invented.
The first archaeological evidence of a human migration out of Africa was found in the caves of Qafzeh and Skhul, in present-day Israel. These sites, initially discovered in the 1930s, contained the remains of at least 11 modern humans. Most appeared to have been ritually buried.
What is the Out of Africa theory quizlet? ›What is the Out Of Africa Hypothesis? The out of Africa hypothesis is a well-supported theory that argues that every living human being is descended from a small group in Africa, who then dispersed into the wider world displacing earlier forms such as Neanderthal.
Is Out of Africa theory still correct? ›Yes its correct and the overwhelming majority of the scientific community agrees it's correct, which is why it is still used. All the evidence points to it being fundamentally correct. Are we absolutely positive that the out of Africa hypothesis is 100% true?
Do Africans and Europeans have different DNA? ›The average nucleotide diversity (pi) for the 50 segments is only 0.061% +/- 0.010% among Asians and 0.064% +/- 0.011% among Europeans but almost twice as high (0.115% +/- 0.016%) among Africans. The African diversity estimate is even higher than that between Africans and Eurasians (0.096% +/- 0.012%).
Who were the first people in Africa? ›One of the earliest known humans is Homo habilis, or “handy man,” who lived about 2.4 million to 1.4 million years ago in Eastern and Southern Africa.
Do we all come from one person? ›Basic math tells us that all humans share ancestors, but it's amazing how recently those shared ancestors lived. Thanks to genetic data in the 21st century, scientists are discovering that we really are all descended from one mother. It's Okay To Be Smart explores our common human ancestry.
Who were the first humans out of Africa? ›Homo ergaster (or African Homo erectus) may have been the first human species to leave Africa. Fossil remains show this species had expanded its range into southern Eurasia by 1.75 million years ago.
What is the largest human race in the world? ›
The world's largest nationality group is Chinese, with Mandarin being the world's most spoken language in terms of native speakers.
What are the 3 human races? ›Abstract. Using gene frequency data for 62 protein loci and 23 blood group loci, we studied the genetic relationship of the three major races of man, Caucasoid, Negroid, and Mongoloid. Genetic distance data indicate that Caucasoid and Mongoloid are somewhat closer to each other than to Negroid.
What is the oldest race in America? ›First run in 1905, the Dipsea is the oldest trail race in America. It is run every year on the second Sunday in June. The scenic 7.4 mile course from Mill Valley to Stinson Beach is considered to be one of the most beautiful courses in the world.
What nationality has the oldest DNA? ›DNA found in Greenland has broken the record for the oldest yet discovered. The fragments of animal and plant DNA are around 800,000 years older than the mammoth DNA that previously held the record, with older sequences perhaps still to be found.
How old is black DNA? ›The oldest DNA yet isolated from humans in Africa reveals long-range migrations around 50,000 years ago, which likely played a role in the Middle to Later Stone Age transition.
Who has the most ancient DNA? ›The oldest DNA sequenced from humans in Africa dates to about 15,000 years ago; in Europe, scientists have sequenced DNA from a Neanderthal that lived some 120,000 years ago.
Was Adam and Eve born in Africa? ›By charting the evolution of mitochondrial DNA, which is passed from a mother to her children, scientists in the 1980s placed her existence about 200,000 years ago, most likely in Africa. Comparable studies found that Adam, whose Y chromosome is shared by all men currently alive, lived just 100,000 years ago.
What language did Adam and Eve speak? ›The Adamic language, according to Jewish tradition (as recorded in the midrashim) and some Christians, is the language spoken by Adam (and possibly Eve) in the Garden of Eden.
How many years between Adam and Jesus? ›So 69 weeks amount to 483 years; for, from the said year of Darius, unto the 42nd year of Augustus, in which year our Saviour Christ was born, are just and complete so many years, whereupon we reckon, that from Adam unto Christ, are 3974 years, six months, and ten days; and from the birth of Christ, unto this present ...
What country in Africa did humans evolve from? ›sp. A new study suggests that the earliest anatomically modern humans emerged 200,000 years ago in what was once a vast wetland that sprawled across Botswana in southern Africa. Later shifts in climate opened up green corridors to the northeast and southwest, leading our ancestors to spread through Africa.
What does the eve gene mean? ›
For those who are new to the debate: a “mitochondrial Eve” refers to mitochondrial DNA, the unique genetic code that is passed down from female to female. Mitochondrial DNA, which is responsible for energy metabolism, is cordoned off from the rest of our DNA, sitting off on its own in its own container.
Did the ancestor of all humans evolve in Europe not Africa? ›Experts argue the jaws of an ancient European ape reveal a key human ancestor. The jaw bones of an 8-million-year-old ape were discovered at Nikiti, Greece, in the '90s.
Did Darwin say we came from Africa? ›Charles Darwin, who is arguably the most essential figure in evolutionary biology, first hypothesized that humans descended from apes, and he believed those apes were African, leading him to assume that our ancestors lived on the African continent.
Who came up with the out of Africa theory? ›The Out of Africa theory was bolstered in the early 1990s by research on mitochondrial DNA studies by Allan Wilson and Rebecca Cann, which suggested that all humans ultimately descended from one female: Mitochondrial Eve.
Where did Darwin think first humans evolved? ›In The Descent of Man, Darwin argued that humans evolved in Africa and, indeed, the fossil record shows a long history of hominins in Africa.
Did humans evolve from monkeys? ›Humans and monkeys are both primates. But humans are not descended from monkeys or any other primate living today. We do share a common ape ancestor with chimpanzees. It lived between 8 and 6 million years ago.
Is evolution a fact or a theory? ›Scientific understanding requires both facts and theories that can explain those facts in a coherent manner. Evolution, in this context, is both a fact and a theory. It is an incontrovertible fact that organisms have changed, or evolved, during the history of life on Earth.
Is DNA evidence for evolution? ›DNA is used as evidence for evolution because it shows that all species have one common ancestor. The more closely related the two species are, the more similar their DNA is, indicating they evolved from a recent common ancestor.
Is evolution a proven fact? ›Even if evolution were, hypothetically, rejected, contested by new data, scientists would have to study hard to find an alternative natural explanation that was able to explain everything that evolution explains today plus the new data that contested it. Evolution is a fact and a well-supported scientific theory.
How did humans get from Africa? ›Most likely, a change in climate helped to push them out. Experts suggest that droughts in Africa led to starvation, and humans were driven to near extinction before they ever had a chance to explore the world. A climate shift and greening in the Middle East probably helped to draw the first humans out of Africa.
What does the Out of Africa theory attempt to explain? ›
The second hypothesis is called the 'Out of Africa' theory. According to it, Homo sapiens originated in Africa between 100,000-200,000 years ago and then migrated worldwide. The two points of view agreed on one thing - that all humans descended from African ancestors.
What is the main idea of the Out of Africa theory? ›The first theory, known as the 'Out of Africa' model, is that Homo sapiens developed first in Africa and then spread around the world between 100 and 200,000 years ago, superseding all other hominid species. The implication of this argument is that all modern people are ultimately of African descent.
What is the Out of Africa theory and why is it a theory? ›The “out of Africa” theory holds that modern humans evolvedfrom a common homo erectus ancestor in Africa. Homo sapiens then left Africa and spread across the worldbetween 150,000 and 100,000 years ago.
What is mitochondrial evidence out of Africa? ›And what they found was that, in Africa, there was a greater diversity in the mitochondrial DNA than there was outside. So everybody outside has less diversity. And this is consistent with a model that suggests that a small subpopulation of Africans moved out of Africa and populated the rest of the world.
Which piece of evidence best supports the out of Africa model of the evolution of modern humans? ›Which piece of evidence BEST supports the "out of Africa" model of the evolution of modern humans? African populations show the greatest diversity in numbers at a short tandem repeat (STR) locus on chromosome 12.
Where in Africa did humans come from in the beginning? ›sp. A new study suggests that the earliest anatomically modern humans emerged 200,000 years ago in what was once a vast wetland that sprawled across Botswana in southern Africa. Later shifts in climate opened up green corridors to the northeast and southwest, leading our ancestors to spread through Africa.
Are we all descended from Mitochondrial Eve? ›Mitochondrial Eve is the most recent common matrilineal ancestor for all modern humans.
Where is the eve gene found? ›Over the years, as more genetic information was collected from more people, this Mitochondrial Eve– whose mitochondrial DNA profile is dubbed the “L0 haplogroup” — has been traced closer and closer to southern Africa, landing squarely among the click-speaking Khoisan people.
Who is the mother of all humans? ›'Mitochondrial Eve': Mother of all humans lived 200,000 years ago. Summary: The most robust statistical examination to date of our species' genetic links to "mitochondrial Eve" -- the maternal ancestor of all living humans -- confirms that she lived about 200,000 years ago.
Why is Africa so different from the rest of the world? ›The most important thing to know is that Africa is not a country; it's a continent of 54 countries that are diverse culturally and geographically. It's so diverse because Africa is really, really big — about as big as the combined landmasses of China, the United States, India, Japan and much of Europe.
What is the difference between the out of Africa and multiregional theory? ›
Both theories describe modern humans to relate back to common ancestors that came from Africa. However, the MRT assumes the Most recent common ancestor (MRCA) to have left Africa some 2 MYa. The OOA locates the MRCA in Africa much more recently at about 0.2 MYa (200,000 ya).