Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id WAA00869 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Sun, 10 Mar 2002 22:27:22 GMT X-Originating-IP: [194.117.133.84] User-Agent: Microsoft-Outlook-Express-Macintosh-Edition/5.0.3 Date: Sun, 10 Mar 2002 22:18:11 +0000 Subject: Fwd: Study suggests love conquered all From: Steve Drew <srdrew_1@hotmail.com> To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk> Message-ID: <B8B18BAB.2E7%srdrew_1@hotmail.com> In-Reply-To: <200203081251.MAA26906@alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk> Content-type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit X-OriginalArrivalTime: 10 Mar 2002 22:20:56.0700 (UTC) FILETIME=[D969A3C0:01C1C881] Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Hi Wade
> Date: Thu, 7 Mar 2002 20:32:24 -0500
> From: "Wade T.Smith" <wade_smith@harvard.edu>
> Subject: Fwd: Study suggests love conquered all
>
> Study suggests love conquered all
>
> Early man's evolution a process of mingling, not conquest, researcher
> says
>
> Robert Lee Hotz, Los Angeles Times
> Thursday, March 7, 2002
> =A92002 San Francisco Chronicle
>
> URL:
> http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=3D/c/a/2002/03/07/MN227595.D=
> TL
>
>
> Spreading out of Africa like starlings, early humans conquered the world
> by embracing the strangers they encountered around the globe, not by
> forcing them into extinction, as many researchers believed, according to
> a new analysis of human genetic history.
>
> In the textbook view, the founding fathers of modern humanity emerged
> suddenly from Africa about 100,000 years ago and swept into oblivion all
> other prehuman species -- Neanderthals, for example -- that they
> encountered.
>
> A new and elaborate computer genealogy of 11 inherited traits compiled by
> Alan Templeton at Washington University in St. Louis presents a very
> different slant on the origins of diversity.
>
> Templeton's work, published today in the journal Nature, suggests that
> "interbreeding, not replacement," was the rule for successive waves of
> primitive humans migrating out of Africa. By mingling, these ancestral
> human groups "strengthened the genetic ties between human populations
> throughout the world," said Templeton, who studies the history and
> geography of genes.
>
> In his view, the ancient world was a vast melting pot in which tribes of
> human ancestors scattered, rejoined and scattered again. As they did so,
> they gradually intermingled inherited traits across thousands of
> generations to mix the palette of modern humanity.
>
> Templeton's work is the latest riposte in a 20-year-long debate in which
> anthropologists, archaeologists, molecular biologists and population
> geneticists have battled over human origins with rounds of research
> papers scattered like hand grenades.
>
> For all their differences, both camps agree that the earliest ancestors
> of humankind evolved in Africa about 2 million years ago, before
> beginning waves of migration into Europe and Asia.
>
> Where the scientists part company is in deciding how those ancestral
> groups gave rise to anatomically modern people -- with their small
> pointed jaws, smooth foreheads, high rounded skulls and advanced mental
> abilities.
>
> Frustrated by the ambiguous fossil record, researchers have turned to the
> genes that code for growth and development to flesh out this missing
> chapter of human evolutionary history.
>
> To reach his conclusions, Templeton combined published data on 11 parts
> of the human genome. He analyzed mitochondrial DNA -- genetic material
> that each person inherits directly from his or her mother -- as well as
> data from genes carried on the Y chromosome, which is inherited only from
> fathers. He also looked at genes on other chromosomes that can be
> inherited from either parent.
>
> His computer analysis detected considerable gene mixing and evidence of
> two separate waves of migration out of Africa into Asia and Europe -- the
> first between 420,000 and 840,000 years ago and a more recent one between
> 80,000 and 150,000 years ago.
>
> Other researchers agree that there was generous mixing of valuable
> genetic traits. But they disagree about when it might have happened.
>
> "If those ancestral populations were all in different valleys in Africa,
> you would see the same thing," said Henry Harpending, a University of
> Utah anthropologist. "This may have been gene flow between ancestral
> populations in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania."
>
> Templeton made a "valiant effort," but his study "all seems too iffy to
> me, " Harpending said. "Going from his findings to this sweeping picture
> of human evolution is a jump I can't see."
>
> But University of Michigan paleoanthropologist Milford Wolpoff said he
> felt vindicated by Templeton's work. Wolpoff has long championed the idea
> that modern humans evolved more or less simultaneously around the globe
> by sharing their best characteristics.
>
> Templeton's analysis "shows that human evolution is about traits and not
> about kinds of people," Wolpoff said. "Lots of things separate human
> populations, but more things unite them."
>
> =A92002 San Francisco Chronicle =A0 Page=A0A - 2
Your link didn't go any where i'm afraid. However, i have seen a discussion
similar to this in New Scientist involving Wolpoff but I'm not convinced
there is enough evidence yet. They seem to be arguing over the
interpretation of the data with too little data itself. I'm reasonably
convinced that Neanderthal's were different from Homo Sapiens, though not
that much. To my mind Neanderthals do not seem to have hit the meme thresh
hold that H. Sapiens did. Another point is that, given the geography of the
world, if we are an amalgam of various independent, but similar strands of
Homonids, one could expect some type of isolated example thet did not manage
to amalgamate particularly given the relatively short evolutionary time
span.
But as i say, think Neanderthals were separate from H. Sapiens, but as for
there is just insufficient evidence one way or the other.
If you could check the link it would be appreciated,
Regards
Steve
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