h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

There is a major disagreement in the field of physical anthropology. Many feel that the modern human species arose 250,000 years ago (give or take a Tuesday or two) in Kenya (or thereabouts) and spread throughout the world, displacing and eventually destroying the previous nearly-modern-but-not-quite-modern-enough-humans. This idea is called the "Eve" theory. The idea being that a single group, a single person, started the modern humans rolling to all areas of the world.

Another theoy suggests that modern humans aose more than 1.4 million years ago (proabably around kenya) and spread to different areas at different times around the world. But in this theory the idea is that as people changed genetically they remained similar by inter-breeding with near-by groups. So the spectrum of huamnkind was altered in many different areas of the world at the same time, but we maintained the integrity of the species by continually sharing our genetic pools with our neighbors (isn't that sweet).

The difference in theories alters the date of the "first human" by more than a million years. Some argue that the multigeional arguement says that the difference between "races or ethnicities" has been arund for as long as humans have.

Pretty heavy stuff.

Feel free to call Chris Stringer at the National Museum or Milford Wolpoff (yes that's really his name) at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor to find the origins of the debate. Milford wrote a book about 7 years ago discussing the debate called "Race and Human Evolution". Although he wrote it he manages to present the history of the debate fairly and argues both sides quite well, eventually leaving up to the reader to decide.

Anyway, the Aquatic Man stuff is pretty cool, but so many anthropologist are wrapped up in this arguement that they really aren't paying a lot of attention to the Aquatic Man arguement.

Friar

Hi Friar! Thanks for reading and commenting. This is fascinating. I think if I'd been organising a project purely about evolution etc. I'd have wanted an entry on this subject because it touches people deeply to think about where they come from, and also because there are some really cool statistics (e.g. there is more basic genetic diversity between the populations within Africa than there is between the rest of the world's population put together).

The only reason that there isn't something like this is that it's very slightly off topic. The Aquatic Ape thing is in because, while it gives no comfort at all to Creationists, it conveniently demonstrates that science isn't the entirely objective, pure search for truth that we might like to think it is.



H.

I hope I wasn't misunderstood.
I really liked your research. I agree that my mention of the debate in anthropology was pretty tangential to your article.

I like being tangential. I like anthropology. If there was any money in it, I probably would have tried to make a career of it.

I know that writing thorough pieces of research is a double edged sword. You want to include everything to be sure nothing is missed, but you don't want to create an article so long that nobody will read the whole thing!

The conversation thread was simply added to point at the continually muddled waters of human history.
Friar

I hope I wasn't misunderstood.
I really liked your research. I agree that my mention of the debate in anthropology was pretty tangential to your article.

I like being tangential. I like anthropology. If there was any money in it, I probably would have tried to make a career of it.

I know that writing thorough pieces of research is a double edged sword. You want to include everything to be sure nothing is missed, but you don't want to create an article so long that nobody will read the whole thing!

The conversation thread was simply added to point at the continually muddled waters of human history.
Friar