h:\doc\web\2000\05\asplit.txt To: From: "Peter Frost" Date sent: Thu, 27 Apr 2000 11:46:56 -0400 Subject: [h-bd] Euro-East Asian split [ Double-click this line for list subscription options ] From: Steven Tripp > > So, when exactly did the Euro-Asian split take place? If you ask four different anthropologists, you'll get four different answers. Part of the problem is lack of good data. We have few skeletal remains from this transitional period and some well-intentioned people are working hard to re-bury remains that could shed light on the question (e.g., Kennewick Man). Much of the problem, however, is disagreement over the underlying paradigm. The anthropological community is bitterly divided between two models of recent human evolution: 1) the "Out of Africa" model, which postulates that all modern humans are the descendents of a small founder population that expanded out of Africa in the last 200,000 years, perhaps as recently as 60,000 years. 2) the "Multiregional" model, which postulates that archaic humans gave rise to modern humans in different areas of the world. Thus, Peking Man would be ancestral to modern East Asians, Neanderthals would be ancestral to modern Europeans, etc. There are different variants of the above two models. The earliest proponent of the Multiregional model was Carleton Coon, who used it to argue that human races were extremely ancient. C. Loring Brace supports the Multiregional model, but emphasizes gene flow between these different geographical "clusters" (he dislikes the term "race"). Because these clusters have been open to gene flow with each other for so long, any genes of adaptive significance within each cluster would have long ago escaped and adopted a "clinal" mode of variation (i.e., each gene would have its own geographic pattern of variation; only the unimportant ones would still cluster within geographical groups). Some proponents of the Out of Africa model, like Chris Stringer, believe that modern humans did not intermix with archaic humans as they spread out of Africa. Others believe that some intermixture took place. Others again see a two-stage expansion out of Africa, with an earlier line of expansion along the south Asian coast and into Australia and a later one into Europe. Most Out of Africa people (including Cavali-Sforza) see the Caucasoid/Mongoloid split as taking place in the Middle East, ca. 45,000 years ago, with proto-Europeans spreading into Europe and proto-East Asians following the coastline of South Asia and ending up in East Asia. We now have good evidence for the existence of a South Asian route, but it seems to be ancestral to such groups as the Andaman Islanders, Australian aborigines, a large chunk of India's current gene pool, and part of the southeast Asian gene pool. Rogers (1986) has argued that the Caucasoid/Mongoloid split occurred further north, when proto-Europeans spread eastward into Asia through the Eurasian tundra belt. About 20,000 to 15,000 years ago, at the height of the last ice age, this Eurasian population was split in two when ice sheets (merging of the Fenno-Scandian and Ural icecaps) and large glacial lakes along the Ob (Lake Mansi) formed an east-west barrier to gene flow in western Siberia. In support of this model, there is much more linguistic similarity along the north of Eurasia than along the south . The deep structural affinities among the language families of northern Eurasia, particularly between Uralic and Yukaghir, and more generally between these two and Eskimo-Aleut, Chukotko-Kamchatkan, and Altaic, point to a common origin and not simply to word borrowing. Archeological evidence (characteristic lithic technology, use of grave goods with red ocher, and sites with small shallow basins) also suggests a common cultural tradition throughout Europe and Siberia 20,000 to 15,000 years ago, from which the Clovis culture in North America was apparently an offshoot. Finally, dental and cranial remains from Mal'ta (20,000-23,000 BP), in southern Siberia indicate strong affinities with Upper Paleolithic Europeans although the incisors display some shoveling. Reference: ROGERS, R.A. 1986. Language, human subspeciation, and ice age barriers in northern Siberia. Canadian Journal of Anthropology 5:11-22. ------------------------------------------------------------------- Dr. Peter Frost Groupe d'études Inuit et circumpolaires Pavillon De Koninck Université Laval Sainte-Foy (Québec) G1K 7P4 CANADA L'homme qui veut faire l'ange finit par faire la bête. Tel. (418) 683-1740 Website: http://www.globetrotter.net/gt/usagers/pfrost ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Shower mom with love & roses! FREE bouquet of chocolate roses with Mother's Day purchase. Plan ALL your celebrations in one place at GreatEntertaining.com. Click now. http://click.egroups.com/1/3527/7/_/64659/_/956850381/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ How to contribute to H-Bd: 1. To reply privately to just the sender of this message, click the "Reply" button on your email package. 2. To reply publicly to the entire H-Bd list, click the "Reply All" (or equivalent) button on your email package. 3. 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