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Hints of an early exodus of modern humans from Africa may have been detected in living humans.
People outside Africa overwhelmingly trace their descent to a group that left the continent 60,000 years ago.
But the results suggest this early wave of Homo sapiens all but vanished, so it does not drastically alter prevailing theories of our origins.
And two separate studies in the academic journal Nature failed to find the signal of a later movement.
Writing in Nature , Luca Pagani, Mait Metspalu and colleagues describe hints of this pioneer group in their analysis of DNA in people from the Oceanian nation of Papua New Guinea.
The researchers examining the DNA in Papua New Guinea found the traces of the earlier migration by subtracting the DNA from the more recent migration out of Africa 60,000 years ago and the DNA from the Denisovans.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Friday September 23 2016, @02:17AM
"less biological significance then one breed of chicken versus the next,"
I think that the difference between races is precisely the same as the difference between breeds of chicken. Or dog, or cat, or whatever.
And, for the sake of political incorrectness - there are measurable differences between the various breeds of animal. One chicken has a meatier breast, one race of man has a meatier ass. There are differences between the breeds. I'm so tired of attempts to ignore or hide the fact that we do have differences. Difference can be good. Monocultures are bad. What is there to discuss?
You will note that I've not indicated that any subspecies of man is in any way inferior to another subspecies. I've merely noted that there are differences, just as there are differences between subspecies of any other animal. We may literally "look down on" a Pygmy tribesman, that doesn't mean we have to "look down on" him figuratively.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 23 2016, @01:52PM
You will note that I've not indicated that any subspecies of man is in any way inferior to another subspecies. I've merely noted that there are differences
You're correct.
The thing is that some people with an ax to grind take a similar strategy or go into the "I'm just asking [disingenuous] questions" strategy. This is why some people will jump on comments like this with irrational ferver because they assume the parent was disingenuous (not a bad assumption for this topic) and they "know" that it is just a lead-in to the typical racist shit.
Unfortunately, the community of this site (or anywhere, really) are unable to have productive discussions on this kind of topic.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Friday September 23 2016, @02:03PM
Not really. There are no meaningful evolutionary pressures on humans. We're like alligators or big cats in the sense that once you hit the apex predator leagues you don't have any reason to change.
Skin color... Nose bridges... eye forms... If you put all the variance on a binary tree, the differences will be even lower then the difference between a farm animals.
You can quantify it all when looking how little difference there's between house cat and street cats breeds versus the big differences between dog races. Humans variance is much more like cats in the way it's all very superficial selection. Some skin colors here... Some fur there... A different nose bridge... Curly hair... A bit calmer... A bit stronger... But very little to do with meaningful adaptation that can't be picked up under a couple of generation of real pressure.
compiling...