Fasces wrote:Let's worry about dates in a second. Which of the two do you, in general, find more convincing: the Wolpoff model or the out of Africa model? To clarify, do you believe that at some point the Americas were not inhabited by modern humans when other areas of the world were?
Wolpoff's multiregional model of evolution and the (out of Africa) single-origin model both have serious problems in terms of evidentiarily charting human evolution. Until
this year, for example, we were convinced that homo neanderthalensis was a separate species and that there was no significant gene flow between them, and homosapiens. This was based on mitochondrial DNA. It was pretty convincing stuff. However,
new data turns this on its head.
It's official: Most of us are part Neanderthal. The first draft sequence of the Neanderthal genome has provided the strongest evidence yet that modern humans and Neanderthals interbred and that all non-Africans today have Neanderthal gene fragments in their genetic codes.
So it's difficult to say which model is more convincing, because the answer to that is going to change as new information is discovered, and all the old models which were based on previous assumptions must be re-evaluated. Which model is more convincing
right now on December 16, 2010? I'd say the single-origin hypothesis, based on mitochondrial DNA and Y-chromosome DNA, taking into account the likliehood of subsequent 'waves' of out-of-Africa migration, and the mingling in some populations with homo neanderthalensis. However, the multiregional model was the first to suggest that there had been an ancient mixture of homo neanderthalensis with homo sapiens and recent analysis proves that this is true in some populations...
So I'd say both models have some things to offer, and a strict 'out of Africa' versus a strict 'multiregional' delineation is not necessarily helpful or relevant any longer.