This theory holds that humans in different parts of the world are primarily descended from local hominids vs the commonly accepted theory that humans are all primarily and recently descended from a population somewhere in East or South Africa with a small amount of admixture with local hominids.
Most people consider the multiregional origin theory highly motivated reasoning and also completely garbage science.
As I understand it, it's somewhat encouraged by the government. China's the sort of place where, if the government has a preferred wacky theory, one may be inclined to smile and nod rather than arguing.
East Asians have the most Neanderthal DNA left in them. [0]
Regarding Denisovans:
A 2011 study found that Denisovan DNA is prevalent in Aboriginal Australians, Near Oceanians, Polynesians, Fijians, Eastern Indonesians and Mamanwans (from the Philippines); but not in East Asians, western Indonesians, Jahai people (from Malaysia) or Onge (from the Andaman Islands). [1]
Well, it's true in that the predominate theory is "humans are all primarily and recently descended from a population somewhere in East or South Africa with a small amount of admixture with local hominids" but the multiorigin theory is pretty much always brought up in the context of implying that different human populations are actually different species.
Xi Jinping has been on a quest to strengthen the ethnic identity of China, specifically the Han Chinese ethnic group, and this is probably part of it. If you look at the immigration policies of China, you'll find that they are some of the most restrictive in the world[1]. It is almost impossible for a Non-Chinese person to become a Chinese citizen. From what I've heard from people who know people in the Xi Jinping administration, they are embracing ethno-nationalism with incredible zeal. There's also a lot of ethnonationalist propaganda in China right now and western commentators have taken notice[2]. From what I've heard through sources, they're preparing for a future where it's eventually a zero sum game between China and the rest of the world, especially with regards to dwindling energy and other natural resources. For example China built six times as many coal plants as the rest of the world combined last year [3]. There is a huge denial of this in the west as westerners believe that racism and communism are incompatible, and at least China says it's communist.
> China serves as home to 56 official ethnic groups. The largest group, the Han, makes up over 92% of China's vast population, and it is the elements of Han civilization regraded as "Chinese culture"
> There is a huge denial of this in the west as westerners believe that racism and communism are incompatible, and at least China says it's communist.
I don’t think westerners put a lot of stock in China’s claim to be communist, nor do I think many westerners would deny that it’s an ethnonationalist country.
My bet would go to racism. China seems to very guilty on that regard, and racism against Africa and especially black people seem to have rose again on the last years.
Most people meaning most people who have an informed opinion, because the evidence (archaeological, genetic, etc.) is so ridiculously in favor of the out of Africa theory. You have to be at the denial level of “evolution is just a theory” to think otherwise.
From your wiki: "In its revised form, it is similar to the Assimilation Model, which holds that modern humans originated in Africa and today share a predominant recent African origin, but have also absorbed small, geographically variable, degrees of admixture from other regional (archaic) hominin species"
> Most people consider the multiregional origin theory highly motivated reasoning
As if the Out of Africa theory isn't highly motivated?
> and also completely garbage science.
But genetic evidence has proven that we all have different hominin dna. Science backs the revised multiregional model.
This reminds me of the clovis theory. The agenda driven people always front run any criticism of the clovis theory because they were on the wrong side of history and science.
My understanding, sorry for not having links at the ready for all this, is that many studying this currently think that Cro Magons, Neanderthals, and Denisovans all mixed to varying degrees at various times and emerged from a complex mix of pre humans like Homo Naledi. This makes the ancestry of Homo Sapiens more complex than simple lines of descent. Genetic analysis of these groups suggests that there was a third group that mixed with Neanderthals and Denisovans which has not yet been identified. None of this relates to the multiregion origin theory that you mention.
As populations from different regions have different levels of admixture from Neanderthals and Denisovans, the multi-regional origin hypothesis is validated.
That's the Assimilation Model. Both Multiregional and Out of Africa were wrong (or more accurately, incomplete), but Multiregional was probably a fair bit more wrong.
There’s actually a decent amount of evidence that points to it. I’m too tired to find it now, but humans didn’t descend from apes, instead we have a common ancestor that goes way further back
Humans didn't descend from apes. We are apes. Taxonomically speaking we are in the Hominidae, or great ape family. It is comprised of 8 extant species of which we are one of them.
If right now we found a weird island with a population identical to that "common ancestor that goes way further back", the general population would label that ancestor as an ape - while it's not the same as any of the modern species of great apes, they were morphologically similar to primates as such, not something totally alien or conceptually different.
You might want to debug your process for figuring out which information sources to trust because "humans didn't descend from apes" is about on the level of "birds aren't real"
I'm not an expert, but no-chin and that reinforced eyebrow area looks like the definition of a Neanderthal. A word that is strangely avoided several times, and does not appear in any part of the link.
Why is this so different as to claim a third entirely new type of humans? We know that both species hybridized, so maybe a sapiens x neanderthal?
The authors publishing this are members of school of thought not widely accepted in modern Anthropology. They argue that humans in modern East Asia are "primarily" descended from local archaic hominins, not "primarily" from humans out of Africa that admixed with archaic hominins as they migrated around the world.
This paper is specifically an argument for a "missing link" between archaic H. erectus and modern human morphologies, which pushes the emergence of these features back before Out-Of-Africa. So they avoid those terms because they're semantic distinctions the authors don't fully recognize.
I see, the old "China was first" that mix a pinch of science with a little of politics. Is an old anthropological war but Africa and Europe provided much more evidence until today If I remember correctly.
Even if they don't recognize neanderthals, is a well established taxon, and this does not differ a lot of them (in my non expert opinion), so they should show why this is enough different to deserve a second "oriental neanderthal" species. I can imagine easily neanderthals following migrating animals and conquering most of the northern hemisphere just walking from Atlantic to Pacific coasts in several generations.
It's pretty clearly what used to be called "archaic Homo sapiens", which is split today into at least Neanderthals, Denisovans, and "other". The article said they ruled out Denisovan, but didn't say on what basis. Denisovan morphology is not well known; the species/subspecies is defined mainly on a genetic basis. This article only looks at morphology, so all they really can be saying is that this mandible doesn't look just like the one known Denisovan partial mandible.
I think future techniques will be able to extract DNA from things up to 1 million years old. Sure, DNA breaks down in the environment, but when you start with 60,000,000,000,000 copies of a genome in a human, I think there is a very high chance that enough fragments of that will remain to reconstruct one copy - the only hurdle is coming up with a method to do it practically.
In a hypothetical world where we could have infinite compute power and a map of the exact location of every atom in a skull, I don't think there would be any issue getting a DNA sequence.
Then we can draw the full family tree and know for sure.
read sapiens and other books by yuval noah harari, and later there were articles that many things he claimed in his book were incorrect, or later proven to be incorrect. always blows my mind that we still just have theories of how humans spread across the world, and how the languages and culture developed. if the human development and migrations are clarified definitely, many of the regional conflicts will end.
Readit News
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiregional_origin_of_mode...
This theory holds that humans in different parts of the world are primarily descended from local hominids vs the commonly accepted theory that humans are all primarily and recently descended from a population somewhere in East or South Africa with a small amount of admixture with local hominids.
Most people consider the multiregional origin theory highly motivated reasoning and also completely garbage science.
Seems to stem from the discovery of the Peking Man: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peking_Man
> primarily descended from local hominids
More like 'secondarily' descended from local hominids, but there was mixing for sure.
Regarding Denisovans:
A 2011 study found that Denisovan DNA is prevalent in Aboriginal Australians, Near Oceanians, Polynesians, Fijians, Eastern Indonesians and Mamanwans (from the Philippines); but not in East Asians, western Indonesians, Jahai people (from Malaysia) or Onge (from the Andaman Islands). [1]
[0]https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23410836/
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denisovan
[1]https://www.crownrelo.com/intl/en/article/four-toughest-plac...
[2]https://thediplomat.com/2023/06/riding-the-tiger-ethno-natio...
[3]https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/npr/2023/03/02/1160441919...
> China serves as home to 56 official ethnic groups. The largest group, the Han, makes up over 92% of China's vast population, and it is the elements of Han civilization regraded as "Chinese culture"
I don’t think westerners put a lot of stock in China’s claim to be communist, nor do I think many westerners would deny that it’s an ethnonationalist country.
But I don't get it ~~ what's the motivation to branch off as distant rather than share some common ancestor?
Who and why would want to promote that? I don't get it.
Deleted Comment
> Most people consider the multiregional origin theory highly motivated reasoning
As if the Out of Africa theory isn't highly motivated?
> and also completely garbage science.
But genetic evidence has proven that we all have different hominin dna. Science backs the revised multiregional model.
This reminds me of the clovis theory. The agenda driven people always front run any criticism of the clovis theory because they were on the wrong side of history and science.
Race is a bad idea to begin with. There is no major difference, we are all human.
Deleted Comment
Why is this so different as to claim a third entirely new type of humans? We know that both species hybridized, so maybe a sapiens x neanderthal?
This paper is specifically an argument for a "missing link" between archaic H. erectus and modern human morphologies, which pushes the emergence of these features back before Out-Of-Africa. So they avoid those terms because they're semantic distinctions the authors don't fully recognize.
Even if they don't recognize neanderthals, is a well established taxon, and this does not differ a lot of them (in my non expert opinion), so they should show why this is enough different to deserve a second "oriental neanderthal" species. I can imagine easily neanderthals following migrating animals and conquering most of the northern hemisphere just walking from Atlantic to Pacific coasts in several generations.
In a hypothetical world where we could have infinite compute power and a map of the exact location of every atom in a skull, I don't think there would be any issue getting a DNA sequence.
Then we can draw the full family tree and know for sure.
For a 300,000 year old copy of a genome to survive there’d need to be 2^600 copies to begin with.
Dead Comment
Dead Comment