Perhaps you saw the headlines last week about a research paper that claimed to locate the origins of modern humans in a region of what is now Botswana. Many outlets reported the conclusions as stated in the paper. Some coverage, like this BBC article, acknowledges skepticism but not necessarily in great detail. More specifically, the claim is that our collective ancestors first became Homo sapiens in an area centered in modern Botswana from around 200,000 years ago until 130,000 years ago when they began migrating outward. This conclusion is based on analysis of mitochondrial sequence data, linguistics and simulations of the climate in the region over the past few hundred millenia. The biggest challenge to the claim is fossil evidence of anatomically modern humans in eastern Africa but there are other questions as well.
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early human
Science Corner: The First SoCal Artisans
The history of humanity in the Americas is an ongoing point of curiosity. If we started out in Africa as is generally believed, spreading into Eurasia would have been fairly straightforward. Australia is basically the opposite situation, being so remote that arrival has to be by sea. But with the Americas, there is the tantalizing Bering land bridge and a proximity to Europe by sea that makes multiple “discoveries” at least theoretically possible well before Columbus. There are more than a few open questions, but evidence from various archaeological sites fairly consistently put us here no earlier than 15,000 to 20,000 years ago. So it is no small claim to say new evidence gives a date of 130,000 years for the first humans living on an American continent.
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