1.5M-year-old fossil rewrites 'Out of Africa' theory

livescience.com

23 points·csee··8 comments

I don't understand why migrating humans seems to surprise anyone. With stone-age technology, people can walk across a continent within a lifetime or sail across an ocean (Polynesians). What obstacles would have stopped million-year old pre-humans? Could it be they were travelling all over the world quite often but many of them ended up not leaving any descendants or fossils?

Just to explain the title:

This find may mean the prevailing out of Africa theory is more likely than another, less common out of Africa theory.

TLDR: out of Africa is the only theory anyone takes seriously and this doesn't change that.

I'm not an expert, but I think you're referring to only one part of our lineage. Neanderthals, Denisovans etc. are also ancestral species for most of us and I don't believe they originated in Africa, did they?

The ancestors of Neanderthals and Denisovans came from Africa.

If you're referring to Homo heidelbergensis, I believe the jury is still out on that.

No, it's not. There's an enormous amount of fossil evidence now that humans evolved in Africa and radiated from there. There's also the genetic evidence that has solidified the already pretty iron clad evidence.

So, assuming this 1.5M fossil evidence is true, are we saying that there were at least 3 separate waves out of Africa that are known about?

- Non-homo sapien hominids (Neanderthals etc)

- Homo sapiens 1.5M years ago

- Homo sapiens a few hundred thousand years ago

More than that depending on what you mean. Homo habilis migrated out at least once I believe.

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