
Oldest Homo sapiens fossil claim rewrites our species' history - Hooke
http://www.nature.com/news/oldest-homo-sapiens-fossil-claim-rewrites-our-species-history-1.22114
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FilterSweep
> The finds, which are published on 7 June in Nature1, 2, do not mean that H.
> sapiens originated in North Africa. Instead, they suggest that the species'
> earliest members evolved all across the continent, scientists say.

From the actual research(1, 2):

> Furthermore, it shows that the evolutionary processes behind the emergence
> of H. sapiens involved the whole African continent. > The emergence of our
> species and of the Middle Stone Age appear to be close in time, and these
> data suggest a larger scale, potentially pan-African, origin for both.

I'm a bit confused by this concept of pan-African evolution -

Wouldn't we have more stark differences such as the Chimpanzee and Bonobo?
Sure, we all look different but the differences we have across the globe are
scant compared to our closest primate relatives. If the evolution of _H.
Sapiens_ was considered "pan-African" \- I think of a few implications that
could/could not allow this to happen.... the environments are quite different
across Africa:

A) Bipedalism and our ability to traverse long distances, allowed a more
"cosmopolitan" evolution path for humans

B) H. Sapiens actually emerged even earlier than 300K years - but the "mosaic
of features" (source 1) should disprove this

C) Intermingling between other humanoid primates occured far earlier than 300K
years - creating the human mosaic disproven in B.

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sctb
Previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14508029](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14508029)

