Early Humans Lived in China 1.7 Million Years Ago, what about Africa

Our ancestral species discovered Stone Age technology roughly 4M years ago. This is when we find the first evidence of flint blades. These blades allowed them to scrape the bits of meat off of bones left by predators.

Until this time, all hominins (extinct ape species more closely related to Homo sapiens than to chimpanzees, our closest living relatives) were grazing herbivores, like the other apes. They had large guts hosting bacterial cultures that digested cellulose, and augmented this pathetic protein ration with the few arthropods and other small animals they could catch. Brains require an enormous amount of protein for maintenance, so this limited the size of their brains.

The addition of scavenged meat to their diet allowed their brains to grow larger, and indeed every subsequent species had a larger brain than its predecessor. Eventually those bigger brains allowed them to figure out how to use their flint blades in the construction of weapons, and they began to supplement their herbivore's and scavenger's diet with the flesh of animals they hunted. Suddenly their brains had more protein for maintenance and subsequent species had even larger brains.

Eventually they became full-time hunters, eating a meat-intensive diet. Their guts shrank and no longer provided the ability to digest cellulose. At this point one of our most recent ancestors (probably H. habilis or H. erectus if not both) became an obligate carnivore, with a brain so large that only a hunter's diet could support it. This makes humans a unique species: an obligate carnivore with no claws or fangs! We are successful hunters only because we can build tools, and because we can hunt cooperatively.

So when someone tries to convince you that it's "natural" for humans to be vegetarians (or worse yet, vegans), remind him that his body underwent millions of years of evolution, and the result is that it is fully adapted to a carnivorous diet.

 

The oldest fossils of hominins (apes that branched off from the chimpanzees to become the ancestors of humans) are found in Africa and only in Africa.

Ardipithecus is the transitional species. Ardi was clearly an erect bipedal walker (although not as fully adapted to that posture as subsequent species), yet retained one prehensile toe to facilitate rapidly climbing into the trees to escape predators. Ardi was found in Ethiopia, and there is zero evidence to suggest that any inviduals of this species ever migrated out of that region, much less to other continents.

Ardi's descendants also evolved in Africa. Eventually some of these later species migrated to Asia and one (Homo neanderthalensis) migrated to Europe. However, the earliest fossils of H. sapiens are all found in Africa, 150-200KYA. Clearly, our species originated in Africa, not on another continent.

It wasn't until 60KYA that the first successful migration of our species out of Africa occurred. They were looking for food during an ice age (rainfall is low during an ice age because so much water is locked in glaciers and icecaps, so food is scarce) and finally found it in Australia. These people were the ancestors of the Native Australians. The next migration out of Africa occurred ten thousand years later, during better weather. These people settled in Asia and eventually also populated Europe and the Americas. DNA analysis clearly shows the timing and routes of these migrations. Review the work of Dr. Cavalli-Sforza, whose 21st-century study of our ancestry was exhaustive and is universally respected.

There is no respectable evidence to contradict this.

Cavalli-Sforza clearly mapped the migration routes of the first H. sapiens population from Africa into southwestern Asia, and then into eastern Asia. He also correlated their DNA. There is no controversy over this. This occurred about 10K years after their arrival in Asia.

The migration into Europe happened about 10K years later; those were the people we call the Cro-Magnon. They died out, except, possibly, for the Basques, who may be their descendants. The current population of Europe are the descendants of the Indo-European tribes who migrated out of Asia very recently, about 2000BCE--either around the Caspian Sea through the Pontic Steppe, or across the Bosporus from Turkey, there is a tiny bit of evidence to support both possibilities. With their Neolithic (agricultural) technology they easily marginalized the Cro-Magnon and replaced them.

As noted, descendants of Ardipithecus made successful migrations to Asia and Europe. H. neanderthalensis appears to have evolved in Europe, and eventually spread to Asia. The Neanderthals were perfectly suited to cold weather so they tended to remain in northern latitudes. When the last ice recession began around 30KYA, H. sapiens began migrating into Europe, which was now much warmer. Our species was more comfortable in the warmer weather, and with our more agile build we were able to hunt the smaller faster-moving animals that migrated into Europe with us; while the Neanderthals kept chasing the shrinking population of woolly mammoths and other larger, slower animals.

It's clear that modern humans and Neanderthals mated with each other; the average modern European has about 5% Neanderthal DNA, which is not found in the DNA of Indians, Malaysians and Incas, for example.

It's not necessarily racist. It's simply bad science. The migration routes of our species have been clearly mapped and clocked. There is no more room for speculation on this topic. Cavalli-Sforza's work is so meticulous that he found traces of the DNA of Native Australians in some of the people who live at the very southern tip of India. Apparently during their long migration from Africa to Australia, a few hardy souls stayed behind and established a small but successful colony along the shore, where they could subsist by fishing. When the second wave of H. sapiens exploded out of Africa, they encountered these people and assmiliated them.

One might direct that admonition back at you. PBS ran a series on Cavalli-Sforza's work. In one moving scene his staff member was in Arizona, talking to the Navajo Indians. The Navajo are one of the largest tribes in the USA, with the largest of all reservations that extends into two states (part of it is New Mexico) and has its own government and police force. The Navajo are fiercely proud of their heritage and insist on the literal truth of their own creation myth: God created them right there in Arizona and they have always been there.

The researcher showed the local chief photographs of the Yenisei people in Siberia. His son grabbed one and yelled, "Look at this, Dad! This guy looks just like our Uncle Ernie!"

The chief looked at the photo for quite a long time. Then he sighed, composed himself, stared into the camera with great dignity, and said, "Then I guess what you white men have been trying to tell us is true. We really are all brothers."

Linguists have recently corroborated this connection: the Yenisei language appears to be related to the Na-Dene language family of North America, which includes Navajo.

All apes are descended from one ancestor. This includes the Lesser Apes (about 20 species of gibbons) and the Great Apes (the two species of gorilla, the two species of chimpanzee, the orangutan and humans). The first ancestral ape appears to have arisen in Africa (I'm not a biologist so I don't have access to university libraries), and many of his descendants stayed there. (Even H. sapiens stayed in Africa until 60KYA.) But both gibbons and orangutans now occur in southern Asia and Oceania, so clearly some of his descendants roamed farther away--including humans.

This is hardly remarkable. Wolves have spread to every continent except Australia and Antarctica--without the help of humans.

 

Actually the evidence is monumental and incontrovertible. There's another thread going on this subject and you need to review it.

Basically you appear not to be up to date with the work of Dr. Cavalli-Sforza in this century. Using DNA analysis of hundreds of subjects all over the world, he has compiled a map that traces the migration paths of all the major population groups. It even dates them so we can see who went where when, and who descended from them to start a new lineage.

Google his work and you'll find a zillion citations including the popular press. There was a PBS special that presents it all visually, and that's available in several installments on YouTube.

There are no longer any remotely respectable alternatives to the out-of-Africa theory. It's a done deal. Cavalli-Sforza can tell anybody who their ancestors were, and where they lived at key moments in their migrations. And every single one of them started out in Africa. In fact, all of us non-African people are descended from a single tribe, the San or "Bushmen," who once lived in northeastern Africa, but after the desertification of the Sahara they were pushed down into the southeastern region. We have very little genetic diversity, only 50,000 years after our ancestors came out of Africa. Our DNA is stunningly-clear San DNA.