Rewriting the Human Evolution

We always found it neat and convenient piece of information that a single population of was the ancestor of all living humans. However, modern research shows that it is not consistent with the data.

It has always been a subject of great debate, the origin of the modern human, the evolution, where did we come from, the great journey through the ages. However, we need to confirm that there is an identifiable point in time and place that we can refer to as the “origin” and also a related implication that there exist a definable entity called the “modern humans”.

Modern research throws new light on the evolution of the “modern human”. As more researches are taking place it is becoming clearer that the “modern human” actually did not come from a single population but rather there seem to be an introgression. There seems to have been a definite transfer of genetic information from one group to the other as a result of hybridization between different populations by repeated backcrossing.

The genetic research confirms the fact that there was a definite admixture between the archaic and the modern and the genes exchanged. The Neanderthals and the Denisovans interbred and strengthened the immune system of the modern humans. The modern humans interbred not just with the Neanderthal and the Denisovans but yet another mystery population. These groups had actually interbred amongst each other. This introgression of genes was necessary and important for these humans to survive the tough challenging environments that they lived in.

There are multiple views about when and how the modern human came in to existence, one theory says that the earliest modern humans of Africa derived morphological traits that set them on the path of modernity. However, true modernity only came into existence when there was a change in the adaptive beneficial neurological change, which in turn prompted behavioral innovation. This provided the Africans a fitness advantage over other archaic humans.

There are still different views with emergence of modernity. Different research points to the fact that the emergence of the modern human was more of a continuous dynamic process rather than the outcome of a single point of origin, there does not seem to be a clear starting point but rather a continuous process where there was divergence and hybridization at different points in the process of evolution over thousands of years.

By: Madhuchanda Saxena

Content: http://www.anthropology-news.org/index.php/2018/09/18/where-do-we-come-from/