Stephen Oppenheimer Gaining Popularity in the Alternative History Movement

A genetic study recently has shown that the oldest known human DNA lineages are those of East Africans. The most ancient populations include the Sandawe, Burunge, Gorowaa and Datog people who live in Tanzania.

Researchers found a very high amount of genetic variation, or diversity, between the mitochondrial DNA of different individuals in these populations.

The so-called African Eve represents the ancestral mitochondrial genome that gave rise to all the different types seen in people today.

Several of the ethnic groups sampled in the study also live in countries surrounding Tanzania.

"It's entirely consistent with what we expected," said Dr Spencer Wells, a geneticist and author. "All the evidence is pointing to East Africa as the cradle of humanity."

Dr Wells added that the data ties in well with archaeological evidence of a long occupation of East Africa by modern humans and hominids.

But Professor Ulf Gyllensten, a molecular biologist at the University of Uppsala, Sweden, was cautious about claims that the oldest DNA lineages were confined to East Africa.

"I wouldn't be surprised if Dr Tishkoff has found old lineages there, but I think we're just skimming the surface," he said.

"Too little research has been done in Africa to get a clear picture. I don't know why, because it's clear there is a great resource of genetic diversity there," added Professor Gyllensten.

Dr Tishkoff's team have collected mitochondrial DNA samples from 1,000 Tanzanians since they began their research in 2001.

Although the data comes from groups living in Tanzania, the Burunge and Gorowaa migrated to Tanzania from Ethiopia within the last 5,000 years.

Dr Tishkoff said Ethiopia was also a good candidate for the region where modern humans evolved.

One of the populations sampled in the study, the Sandawe, speak a "click" language like that of Khoisan people from southern Africa.

The Khoisan were previously thought to possess the oldest DNA lineages, but those of the Sandawe are older. This suggests southern Khoisan originated in East Africa, according to Dr Tishkoff.

"That is surprising, because it has been presumed that the oldest populations were in the south," said Professor Gyllensten. Some of the oldest modern human archaeological sites in Africa are in the south of the continent.

Dr Tishkoff said she planned to carry out further research to narrow down the most ancient East African lineages.

In a new book  Stephen Oppenheimer (who earlier claimed civilization developed first around the Sunda shelf, the now submerged continent of  S.E.Asia)  now writes in "Out of Eden: the Peopling of the World" (UK) that an exodus took place 80,000 years ago via a little known southern route across the mouth of the Red Sea. It also argues that living Malaysian tribes provide an extant link of the route pursued from there, as modern humans beachcombed their way to Australia in the space of 10,000 years. These theories form an account of modern man's remaining journey around the world - to the Mammoth Steppe heartland of Asia, to the now submerged continent of Beringia, and on to the last great unpeopled lands of the Americas.

He also argues that only one, major exodus from Africa 150,000 years ago by migratory African ancestors was the entire non-African world in all its racial and cultural diversity ultimately populated. Oppenheimer traces the evolution of modern humankind out of a common African ancestry in opposition to the multiregionalists. Whereas they maintain that archaic human populations, like the Neanderthals in Europe and Homo erectus in the Far East, evolved locally into the races we know today. In his book Oppenheimer argues that European Neanderthals, for instance, are not ancestors of modern humans but cousins who have stemmed from the same African root.

Stephen Oppenheimer recently has gained popularity in the alternative History movement because rumor has it that Graham Hancock is re-tracing the footsteps of Stephen Oppenheimer for his next book.
 

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Esoteric and Science News, April 6, 2003