Journal
QUATERNARY INTERNATIONAL
Volume 300, Issue -, Pages 32-47Publisher
PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD
DOI: 10.1016/j.quaint.2013.01.008
Keywords
-
Funding
- British Academy
- Leakey Foundation
- Leverhulme Trust
- National Geographic Society
- Natural Environment Research Council
- Society for South Asian Studies
- European Research Council [295719]
Ask authors/readers for more resources
The initial out of Africa dispersal of Homo sapiens, which saw anatomically modern humans reach the Levant in Marine Isotope Stage 5, is generally regarded as a 'failed dispersal'. Fossil, archaeological and genetic findings are seen to converge around a consensus view that a single population of H. sapiens exited Africa sometime around 60 thousand years ago (ka), and rapidly reached Australia by following a coastal dispersal corridor. We challenge the notion that current evidence supports this straightforward model. We argue that the fossil and archaeological records are too incomplete, the coastal route too problematic, and recent genomic evidence too incompatible for researchers not to remain fully open to other hypotheses. We specifically explore the possibility of a sustained exit by anatomically modern humans, drawing in particular upon palaeoenvironmental data across southern Asia to demonstrate its feasibility. Current archaeological, genetic and fossil data are not incompatible with the model presented, and appear to increasingly favour a more complex out of Africa scenario involving multiple exits, varying terrestrial routes, a sub-divided African source population, slower progress to Australia, and a degree of interbreeding with archaic varieties of Homo. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd and INQUA. All rights reserved.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available