For those who missed the Discovery Channel's presentation on "Eve" the web
site is:
http://dsc.discovery.com/convergence/realeve/realeve.html
Here is the beginning:
"The greatest journey ever undertaken left behind a trail of unanswered
questions: How did our species arise and spread around the globe to become
the most dominant creature on the planet? Part of the answer came two
decades ago, when scientists stunned the world with the finding, based on
genetic research, that all humans alive today can claim as a common
ancestor a woman who lived in Africa some 150,000 years ago dubbed,
inevitably, "Eve." But while the notion of an African origin of the human
family has grown to be accepted by most scientists, the details of how
Eve's ancestors swept out of Africa to populate the rest of the world have
remained murky.
Now a team of scientists claim that, based on research on the ancient
climate, findings in archaeology and a new, clearer genetic picture of how
the human family tree has branched over the eons, the ancient itinerary of
the human diaspora can finally be pieced together. It is an epic story of
escape from starvation, glaciers and volcanoes and braving shark-infested
waters in flimsy rafts. And like any good tale, it has a surprise ending:
Contrary to established thinking, it appears that our human ancestors took
a more southerly route out of Africa, traveling east across the Red Sea
into what is now Yemen, and then through India and all the way to the far
reaches of Australia, before they swung up into Europe. "There was only one
migration out of Africa," says Stephen Oppenheimer of Oxford University,
who is a leading proponent of this new synthesis of our species's
incredible journey. "They couldn't go north that was blocked by a
desert so they had to go south."
A crucial cornerstone of Oppenheimer's piecing together of the human
itinerary is the recent finding by Huddersfield University geneticist
Martin Richards and his colleagues that the world's entire population can
be traced back to a family tree that has its roots in Africa and a single
branch leading out of the continent and into the rest of the world. Based
on analysis of thousands of DNA samples from people worldwide, Richards'
research reveals a detailed map of the human family tree and its various
branches."
Dick Fischer - The Origins Solution - www.orisol.com
"The answer we should have known about 150 years ago"
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Apr 22 2002 - 09:33:19 EDT