Dating the Arrival of Modern Humans in Asia

    Proponents of a coastal migration model for H. sapiens out of Africa argue that coastlines would have provided for a fast, directional population expansion with predictable resources and supplies of potable water.

    Those opposing, point out that there is little direct evidence to support a coastal-highway hypothesis and that there is evidence that early humans were able to make use of savanna and rainforest environments.

The cave in north east Laos being excavated here is well away from the coastline.

Later H.Sapiens evidence in the interior of S.E.Asia can be explained by coastal expansion followed by a later push into the interior (as there are early signs of H.Sapiens in coastal areas).

Early H.Sapiens evidence in the interior of S.E.Asia as old as coastal evidence supports the notion that expansion may have been through interior routes crossing steep terrains and passing through jungles.

Scientists, historians, everyone really attempts to show how they deal in facts, ones which mere mortals should just accept, but when you dig into any area, you will realise that its all highly ambiguous, whether that's the facts that are being presented, the way its presented, the money trail, the way it is framed, etc.

People disparage 'anecdotal experience' but to me its all any of us has. Its our 'golden source'. Whenever we start undertaking actions that are not coherent with our personal, lived experience, we are walking on thin ice.

I believe that the genetic adaptations to high altitude found on the Tibetan plateau are thought to be older than 200,000 years, the result of modern humans arriving and interbreeding with local homo erectus.

The oldest evidence* of modern humans (Homo sapiens) is about 300,000 years old. “Archaic humans” generally refers to a group that includes neanderthals and some other species, the oldest evidence being maybe half a million years old. First evidence of fire use is over a million years old. The first stone tools are over three million years old and predate the Homo family of species altogether. However the point where our ancestors diverged from chimpanzees was over eight million years ago so “primitive humans” if you will have a very long history.

In that time, primitive humans spread everywhere in the old world. Earliest evidence of tool use in Indonesia, for example, is on the order of 1.8 million years old. At that point the world was in the middle of an ice age and sea levels were much lower so Indonesia was part of the supercontinent and not an island. The oldest evidence of migration to colder climates is 800,000 years old. Our ancestors had already colonized the Old world several times over by the time “humans” left Africa.

It really depends on where you draw the line between “humans” and “hairless monkeys”

* Archaeological evidence survives and is discovered completely by random chance so we could be off by hundreds of thousands of years without straining credulity

A problem with investigations of physical evidence of bible stories is they are often paid for by christian organisations in the US, with the explicit goal of ‘proving the bible true’. As a result we get a lot of extremely low grade, deliberately misinterpreted amateur archaeology that’s really only designed to please the sponsors, but is obvious junk.

Any attempt to verify something from any form of scripture with modern adherents risks suffering from this problem of motivated reasoning.

New evidence = hypothesis falsified. New hypothesis needed.

That’s science working right.

Which is based on currently available archeological and genetic evidence. What do you wish to study? How ancient writings are contradicted by modern evidence?

Really? Does anyone outside India reject it?

It's true that there are many people inside India who reject it, but they are doing that for the most transparent, and stupid, ideological reasons. No one is proud of the Catholic rejection of heliocentrism today.

Not relevant for this discussion.

He would say to me and I'm paraphrasing obviously, "Look at my nose it is flat but your nose isn't you look like the people from the north. Look at my skin it is dark but the ones up north it is light like your skin" meaning Indians.

At the time I didn't realize he was most likely referring to the "Aryan Invasion" theory which is now seen as false. Even his own comment about his own nose I don't know if he knew nose shape was used to divide people into Aryan and Dravidian. Probably inspired by Eugenics ideas of the time.

Another person in our group was Mi'kmaq First Nations aka "Indian" he was also there when we were discussing this. So it was a bit bizarre or funny since the Indian was not an Indian and the Indian was Tamil and didn't consider themselves ethnically Indian.