It is a largely unchallenged claim of anthropologists that the human race emerged from the continent of Africa. However, claims relating to our evolution before our nomadic ancestors left the land of our origin have been left largely abstruse.
A new paper published on PNAS.org this week attempts to address this very problem through genetic analysis of several hunter gatherer societies in Africa including speakers of the nearly distinct N|u language. This was done because hunter-gather populations remain divergent in their variations at a level which is no longer maintained in the African population as a whole.
580,000 Single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) were analysed to calculate genetic relationships and diversity between the groups and propose possible evolutionary paths and branches.
Henn et al. (2011) propose that the genetics of those groups found in the south of Africa are the most diverse, and therefore the oldest, of any diversity found among other modern humans. This has caused them to suggest that the origins of modern humans may in fact be in southern Africa as opposed to the much more accepted view which is that we emerged from the east of Africa.
This assumed eastern viewpoint is a result of the earliest modern human skulls being found in the east and also the fact that humans in the rest of the world all carry a subset of genes found specifically in eastern Africa. However, until now, the populations represented in the study by Henn et al. (2011) have not been represented in previous genetic studies when making estimates of the whereabouts of our evolutionary origins.
Some dispute has arisen regarding these conclusions because the current whereabouts of these hunter-gatherer populations within Africa is not evidence to suggest that this is always where these populations have resided. These groups may have moved about and migrated from their original place of origin just as the rest of humanity has. Henn has retorted that, though this is a possibility, typically only a subset of a group moves to a new area, and this subset is less genetically diverse than the parent population. This would mean that if a group of humans left eastern African for southern Africa they would be expected to be less diverse in the population who moved and this contradicts the genetic data found in Henn et al. (2011).
References
Henn, B. et al. (2011) Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA doi:10.1073/pnas.1017511108
Regarding the possibility of population movement over time, I am inclined to agree (though my background is linguistic as opposed to genetic or anthropologic.) I’ve heard speculation that the Khoisan languages are the oldest/some of the oldest, and we’re pretty sure they’ve been moved all over the place relative to where they began. Though if we’re studying the oldest available fossils and not just sampling from modern-day hunter-gatherer groups I’d be more inclined to believe. Regardless I do agree with the final point regarding if a group left Eastern Africa for southern, and the subsequent loss of genetic diversity.
UPDATE:
It seems us genetic laymen always jump to conclusions too quickly. John Hawks, an Anthropologist at the university of Wisconsin, has reviewed this paper in his latest blog post and has come to the following conclusion (among others, if you’re interested you should really go and check out the blog yourself):