Latest Recent single origin hypothesis Stories

April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online A multinational team of scientists led by the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology has sequenced nuclear and mitochondrial DNA extracted from the leg of an early modern human found in the Tianyuan Cave near Beijing, China. The Tianyuan human shared a common origin with the ancestor of many present-day Asians and Native Americans, the analysis showed. Moreover, the team found that the proportion of Neanderthal and Denisovan...

redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports - Your Universe Online Surrogacy, the act of a woman carrying a child for another person or couple, is a fairly standard and accepted practice in this day and age – unless, of course, you’re being recruited to give birth to the first Neanderthal baby in more than 30,000 years. Then it gets a little unorthodox. Yet, according to a series of reports published over the weekend, that’s exactly what Harvard Medical School geneticist George Church is...

Brett Smith for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Research and excavations by a Canadian researcher from sites in southern Tanzania could lead to a rethinking of the ‘Out of Africa’ narrative that describes the human diaspora around the globe, according to a new report in the journal Quaternary International. Led by Pamela Willoughby, the Iringa Region Archaeological Project has uncovered artifacts that suggest a constant human occupation between today and at least 200,000...

April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Africa, and especially South Africa, is one-step closer to being confirmed as the primary center for the early development of human behavior. Scientists have searched for the origin of modern human behavior and technological advancement among our early African ancestors for a long time. Wits University archaeologist Christopher Henshilwood, along with a team of international researchers, has published the first detailed summary...

[Watch NatGeo Video: Geno 2.0: The Greatest Journey Ever Told] Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online National Geographic unveiled the next phase of its Genographic Project, which aims to use DNA to map the history of human migration. The goal for the Genographic Project is to shine new light on humanity's past, offering up clues about humankind's journey across the planet over the past 60,000 years. "Our first phase drew participation from more than 500,000...

April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online A team of anthropologists, led by the University of Toronto, has found evidence that human ancestors used stone tipped weapons for hunting 500,000 years ago. This is 200,000 years earlier than previously thought, according to the new study published in Science. "This changes the way we think about early human adaptations and capacities before the origin of our own species," says Jayne Wilkins, a PhD candidate in the Department of...

Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online A discovery on the south coast of South Africa is leading to implications that modern humans evolved in this location. Scientists have found evidence for an advanced Stone Age technology that dates back 71,000 years at Pinnacle Point near Mossel Bay. The technology allows projectiles to be thrown at a greater distance and killing power. Considering the technology, along with other findings of advanced technologies and evidence for...

April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Thousands of years ago, a genetic mutation occurred which might be the answer to how early humans were able to move from central Africa and across the continent. This movement has been called "the great expansion." Three teams of researchers, from Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and University of Washington School of Medicine, have analyzed genetic sequence variation patterns in...

Brett Smith for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online A human skull that was recently found in Southeast Asia provides new details in the story of modern man’s migration out of Africa, through Asia, and beyond to the Pacific. While anthropologists have long theorized that humans emerged from Africa and into East and Southeast Asia around 60,000 years ago, there has been a significant lack of fossil evidence to support these claims. The earliest skull fossil evidence in the region had...

LOS ANGELES, Aug. 20, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- "Hitler wasn't an atheist; he was a Roman Catholic. But I don't care what he was. There is no logical connection between atheism and doing bad things, nor good things for that matter. Anybody who thinks you need religion in order to be good is being good for the wrong reason. I'd rather be good for moral reasons," said outspoken atheist Richard Dawkins in Playboy's September Interview (issue on newsstands and i.Playboy.com Friday,...