If the evidence for archaic assimilation in living humans remains modest and is restricted to Africa and to the dispersal phase of modern humans from Africa, constituting less than 10% of our genome, I think ‘mostly out of Africa’ is the appropriate designation and, for me, that is still RAO. I would say that we are now looking at a version of RAO that most closely resembles Bräuer's early formulation (out of Africa + hybridisation), or perhaps a version of the assimilation model of Smith and Trinkaus, with a strong African predominance. These revelations have halted and reversed the pendulum swing, away from an absolute RAO. Moreover, traces of this nonAfrican DNA, attributed to ancient interbreeding events, have been found in recent human genomes, indicating that they are not purely of recent African origin. However, large amounts of autosomal DNA have now been recovered from Eurasian Neanderthals and from fragmentary fossils found in Denisova Cave, Siberia, revealing another ancient human population.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |