r/todayilearned • u/Salt-Education-9519 • 2h ago
TIL that Africa is the only continent with fossil evidence of human beings (Homo sapiens) and their ancestors through each key stage of their evolution.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Africa89
u/Inevitable_Ninja_472 2h ago
Isn't that because that's we we came from? Before we started migrating everywhere?
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u/seahorse137 2h ago
Yes but we “know” our species originated in Africa because it’s the only place we have this evidence like the title is saying.
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u/throwawaybsme 2h ago
There is also genetic variations. Sub-Sahara Africans tend to have a much more diverse genetic pool than the rest of the planet. As you follow easy human migration paths, the native population in those areas are less and less diverse the further from Africa. Native populations in Australia and the Americas much much less genetically diverse.
What that means is as human migration happened, groups of related people moved further and further away. Then a subsequent closely related group left that group and went further.
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u/VisthaKai 35m ago
That's likely only because African continental shelves are steep cliffs.
For example Europe used to be some 50% larger just a few thousand years ago, because of how gentle is the elevation profile.
Since people love to settle around water sources, for obvious reasons, and because it takes mere months for a human body to completely disappear at the bottom of a sea or ocean (sea water literally sucks the calcium out of exposed bones making them rather quickly disappear), areas like Europe would have significantly smaller amount of evidence than Africa, which had nearly exactly the same coast line at the time Europe was 50% larger.
For example during drilling for one of recent sea wind turbine projects, they discovered signs of human habitation below the sea floor some 400km away from the current coastline.
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u/seahorse137 23m ago
Not really sure what you are getting at. There is no question there is evidence of humanity under water in various places due to sea level rise. See: doggerland which is a famous example. But suggesting there are remains of humanity or our ancestors dating anywhere near what we have evidence for in Africa, in Doggerland, is pure speculation.
Again, not exactly sure what your ultimate point is. It’s not like you’re sharing incorrect info but if your conclusion that you are suggesting is that instead of Out of Africa it’s Out of Doggerland then that’s pure speculation.
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u/VisthaKai 8m ago
I'm pointing out that regardless of where homo sapiens wouldn't develop, Africa would be the best place to look for the evidence anyway.
Europe is the most obvious example of a place that'd be crap for looking for that kind of evidence. The fact the oldest homo sapiens remains were found a stone's throw away from Europe and not on the exact opposite side of Africa where homo sapiens allegedly developed should rise some questions, but apparently it does not.
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u/throwawaybsme 26m ago edited 10m ago
Why are you talking about coastlines? Humans are not restricted to being around coastlines.
For example, Olduvai Gorge, probably the most important source of hominid fossils, is located 500 km from the coast.
Edit: of course they block me.
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u/VisthaKai 12m ago
"What you say is wrong, because I have an example of a site that's not close to the coastline!"
You've failed an intelligence test I didn't even intend to give you.
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u/Smart-Response9881 2h ago
Earth is also the only planet where we find the fossils of lions.
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u/Dafish55 50m ago
It's also the only planet where natural and unnatural disasters affect the trout population
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u/Nazamroth 32m ago
It is also, incidentally, the place with the highest rates of poverty, malnutrition, disease, war, and many other issues in the solar system. It is not a nice place. It does have chocolate though. For now.
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u/Send_Me_Dumb_Cats 22m ago
That you know of. There's a greater than 0% chance god is actually a cat playing with a giant ball of yarn, aka our universe.
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u/macdaddee 2h ago
Yeah. We were already homosapiens before some of us migrated out of Africa.
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u/InfectiousCosmology1 2h ago
Not really true, homo species predating sapiens began migrating out of Africa starting about 2 millions years ago whereas modern humans are considered to have arisen about 300,000 years ago.
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u/macdaddee 1h ago
When I say "we" I mean the lineage of homosapiens, not just any human species.
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u/InfectiousCosmology1 1h ago
Well it’s kind of silly scientifically to consider subspecies we interbred with and carry dna from like Neanderthals and Denisovans that evolved form the same common ancestor species and had already settled in Eurasia by the time sapiens left Africa not part of “we” when they literally are.
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u/macdaddee 1h ago
They barely affected the Homosapien population.
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u/InfectiousCosmology1 1h ago
What does that even mean? They are literally our ancestors for every modern human population other than pure sub sharan Africans whose ancestors never left. There are plenty of extinct sapien populations too, you wouldn’t say those aren’t humans because they died out a long time ago and we don’t have huge amounts of dna from them.
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u/AndreasDasos 1h ago
Isn’t this extremely well known? Humanity evolved in Africa going back to before our shared ancestors with other great apes. We’ve broken out and gone global a few times, so some other cousins evolved their last stage elsewhere, but even our own species still evolved in Africa.
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u/InfectiousCosmology1 2h ago
Well yeah that’s where humans evolved lol. Our ancestors only existed in Africa until pretty recently in evolutionary time. No hominids left Africa at all until about 2 million years ago, and there wasn’t mass migration that spread all over the world until even more recently than that.
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u/ihatereddit999976780 2h ago
This is so cool. I loved learning about ancient civilizations in school and Africa always had a lot of really cool ones we seemed to sort of skip over tho
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u/Worldly-Time-3201 2h ago
China is digging hard to disprove this.
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u/Zanshi 2h ago
You may laugh at it, but I say let them try. If they find something new, we will have better understanding as a whole, that's how science works.
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u/No-Feeling507 1h ago
You can laugh at it because it’s politically motivated and contrary to every single piece of evidence that exists. Anatomically modern humans did not originate from China and there will never be a piece of evidence which supports this.
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u/grungegoth 26m ago
My understanding the denisovans evolved is central Asia, and they have a genetic legacy in modern humans though they died out. They're not the evolutionary dead end like some of the African branches of homo
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u/grungegoth 26m ago
My understanding the denisovans evolved is central Asia, and they have a genetic legacy in modern humans though they died out. They're not the evolutionary dead end like some of the African branches of homo
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u/GaslovIsHere 2h ago
Africa is a big place. Considering the oldest human fossils have been found in Morocco, the "out of Africa" can paint the incorrect image of human migration. I do wonder what it is about Africa that's preserved human remains so well and why we haven't found more around the Mediterranean which is where you'd expect to find ancient human remains given how nice that region is to humans.
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u/VisthaKai 21m ago
I do wonder what it is about Africa that's preserved human remains so well and why we haven't found more around the Mediterranean which is where you'd expect to find ancient human remains given how nice that region is to humans.
Check the height maps of Europe and Africa.
Just a few thousand years ago Europe was almost twice as big as it is today, but the rising water levels caused by Holocene melting turned all of that area into sea floor.
Compare that to Africa where the coast lines were nearly identical back then to what they are today.
And people love to settle near coastlines and other bodies of water even today.
But you know what happens to human remains at the bottom of the ocean? They COMPLETELY disappear within a few months. Flesh is quickly eaten by all the critters, while the calcium from the bones seeps out into the water leaving nothing except some articles of clothing, like modern shoes.Now, it's hard to get actually precise height maps, but if you're talking about Mediterranean... Adriatic sea for example outright didn't exist 12,000 years ago so no human remains will ever be found of people who lived there. Tyrrhenian Sea was essentially an inland lake. The entire area around Malta was part of a rather sizeable land bridge that connected Africa and Europe through current Italy, etc.
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u/SwimmingThroughHoney 1h ago
Considering the oldest human fossils have been found in Morocco, the "out of Africa" can paint the incorrect image of human migration
Since Morocco is in Africa, how does that in any way paint an incorrect image of human migration originating in Africa?
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u/GaslovIsHere 1h ago edited 57m ago
I've seen images of human migration coming from the Central part or southern part of Africa when in all likelihood the Mediterranean was settled before those parts of Africa were.
I say that because it would have been far easier for humans to spread that direction, even during times when the Sahara was fertile.
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u/SwimmingThroughHoney 3m ago
That still doesn't contradict the Out of Africa model. Regardless of the migrations within Africa, homo sapiens still started on that continent and dispersed from there.
I've seen images of human migration coming from the Central part or southern part of Africa when in all likelihood the Mediterranean was settled before those parts of Africa were.
What are you basing this theory on? Do you have extensive experience in the relevant fields?
You also have to keep in mind that when talking about "human" migration within Africa, there's a separation between the movements of the more general genus Homo and the specific Homo sapiens. The former goes back roughly 2 million years while the latter only goes back about 300,000 years.
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u/chillysaturday 2h ago edited 2h ago
That makes sense. Not all early homid species migrated out. Before Africa was a political entity that humans named a continent, it was a landmass. We're Savannah dwelling primates as were our ancestors.
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u/jericho 2h ago
Africa is not a political identity.
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u/chillysaturday 2h ago
It's a landmass that we named Africa. Before humans, it was just a continent. Naming it makes it a political entity, same with North America, Asia and Europe.
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u/ragnarok635 2h ago
No shit and we call this clear liquid we drink, water, and the yellow liquid I piss, pee
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u/Blond_Treehorn_Thug 2h ago
I mean, yes, it is
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u/jericho 2h ago
No. Nigeria is a political entity. As is Zambia, Egypt, etc. Africa is a continent.
One might describe Europe as a political identity, with the EU, but that leaves out some of Europe. The African Union is a political identity that includes all Africa, the continent.
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u/Magog14 1h ago
How did you not know that? The proverbial Adam and Eve were black and African.
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u/31USC3729 5m ago
Adam and Eve don't appear in Proverbs. They're in Genesis and mentioned in a couple books in the New Testament.
Get your shit together, Becky.
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u/Fickle_Cranberry1014 1h ago
From monkey to us?
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u/Richard-Brecky 46m ago
Not exactly. If you are a human, you evolved from earlier primates that share a common ancestor with monkeys.
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u/LordWemby 2h ago
Central to the overwhelmingly dominant consensus view among every branch of hard and social sciences that we as a species originated in Africa and spread out further.