[questionmark]

www.newscientist.com said:

The discovery of an early human fossil in southern China may challenge the commonly held idea that modern humans originated out of Africa.

Jin Changzhu and colleagues of the Institute of Vertebrate Palaeontology and Palaeoanthropology in Beijing, announced to Chinese media last week that they have uncovered a 110,000-year-old putative Homo sapiens jawbone from a cave in southern China's Guangxi province.

Read more...

[Torgo]

The oldest known Homo sapiens are over 200,000 years old in East Africa. We are known to have left Africa by 140,000 years ago and spread rapidly. Furthermore, genetic testing of people from all over the world, including china, indicates we are one of the least genetically diverse animal species on the planet and can all trace our ancestry back to a group of circa 10,000 people living 140,000 years ago. Perhaps this is another offshoot of Homo erectus in East Asia - they were a fantastically diverse species which some people would divide into 5 or more species and others think are just one highly diverse species.

[Splodgenessabounds]

Out of Africa is thought to have occured 70,000 years ago, that's what's confusing me. When stacked up against all the evidence, this cannot be a modern human if it's dated circa 110,000. And can you really draw such a conclusion about what genus or species it is from a small fragment of jaw?

This post has been edited by Splodgenessabounds: 03 November 2009 - 07:51 PM

[Torgo]

Oops, looks like I got the one date wrong.

Yeah, one of the odd features of our particular branch of the Homo lineage is the prominent chin, but it need not be unique...

[Bullseye]

Torgo, on 03 November 2009 - 05:21 PM, said:

genetic testing of people from all over the world, including china, indicates we are one of the least genetically diverse animal species on the planet and can all trace our ancestry back to a group of circa 10,000 people living 140,000 years ago.
OK, Going to be very careful here,but is this actually true,or is it a Politically Correct veiw that we should all have ?,if you look at other (not domesticated) species of mammals or birds there is very little outward sign of diversification,morphology,colour,plumage etc,yes I know that there can be internal differences but I'm still not convinced,problem is because of possible racist "undertones" it's very difficult to get an honest debate on this,too many are apprehensive to say anything !.



Perhaps this is another offshoot of Homo erectus in East Asia - they were a fantastically diverse species which some people would divide into 5 or more species and others think are just one highly diverse species.
Taxonamists,lumpers or splitters,always a nightmare,especially with so few specimens,and if H. erectus (our alledged predesessor) could be so diverse why cant we.....oh,wait I just said that !.

[Torgo]

I was referring to genetic diversity - a quantifiable metric of the number of differences found in the DNA of different groups of a species. Humans have significantly fewer differences between two individuals than most wild animals. If I recall correctly approximately one in 1,000 base pairs are different from person to person, a figure which is up to an order of magnitude higher in many other large mammals. Domestic animals are a special case - they are all derived from small founder populations domesticated by humans.