Multiregional origin of modern man

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In paleoanthropology, the hypothesis of the multiregional origin of modern man (also: multiregional model ) is the assumption that “the characteristics characteristic of today's large groups of people - such as the Asians , the natives of Australia or the Europeans - will develop over a long period of time and that this also happened roughly where these people live ”. The proponents of this hypothesis on the human tribal history therefore exclude "dramatic migration and displacement scenarios and assume demic diffusion (that is, a mixing of the gene pool of the various populations due to constant gene flow ) with selection ."

The hypothesis of the multiregional origin of modern humans forms the opposite pole to the out-of-Africa theory , according to which anatomically modern humans ( Homo sapiens ) developed from precursor species in Africa , 50,000 to 60,000 years ago via the Middle East to Asia and Australia and later reached Europe and the already resident populations of the genus Homo displaced.

The multiregional hypothesis has also been used to explain the origin of human races and is represented by "a small group of passionate supporters" - particularly from China. However, detailed genetic analyzes of Asian ethnic groups also show that Homo sapiens immigrated to this region from regions west of India.

The "majority of population geneticists", on the other hand, today, as they did in the mid-1990s, support the out-of-Africa theory as "most biologically logical."

Historical background

The designation Homo sapiens as a species name for humans was introduced in 1758 by Carl von Linné in the 10th edition of his work Systema Naturae (p. 20); Linnaeus had previously assigned humans to the genus Homo without an epithet , but additionally named four regional variants that can be distinguished by skin color (Europaeus albese, Americanus rubese, Asiaticus fuscus, Africanus nigr.). As in all previous editions, Linné continued to forego the so-called diagnosis , i.e. a precise description of the characteristics typical of the species.

In the following decades, various lists of species-typical characteristics were created. Also in 1959 , the botanist William Thomas Stearn subsequently specified a certain individual as a scientific specimen copy by declaring Carl von Linné ("Linnaeus himself") to be the lectotype of the species Homo sapiens ; Since Linnaeus is buried in Uppsala Cathedral, his remains are inaccessible. The catalogs of characteristics contributed in principle to differentiating humans from other animals living today; However, they proved to be of little help in assigning the hominine fossils known today to the species Homo sapiens or to differentiate them from it. The 2010 Yearbook of Physical Anthropology stated: "Our species Homo sapiens has never been the subject of a formal morphological definition that would help us to identify our conspecifics in any useful way in the documented fossil finds."

The lack of a generally accepted description of the typical characteristics of humans also had an impact on anthropology in the 19th century . The Dutch doctor and naturalist Philippe-Charles Schmerling described two fossil skulls (Engis 1 and Engis 2 ) and several other bones from a cave near Engis , in his book Recherches sur les ossements fossiles découvertes dans les cavernes de la province de Liège in 1833 he assigned it to the "Diluvium" ( Pleistocene ) based on animal fossils and stone tools that were also discovered . With reference to the Genesis , from which such an old age could not be derived, and in the absence of sufficiently precise delimitation criteria , this first scientifically described Neanderthal find was misunderstood as "modern". In 1863 the correct assessment of the geologist Charles Lyell did not change anything, since - also in 1863 - even the influential supporter of Darwin's theory of evolution, Thomas Henry Huxley , discovered the find from Engis as coming from a "man of low civilization" and discovered it in 1856 Find from the Neandertal - as others before him - described as lying within the range of variation of the now-humans. Like Huxley, other anthropologists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries assigned the increasingly numerous hominine fossils to the human "races" as their early representatives, for example the finds from Balzi Rossi . At the same time, suspicions about a polyphyletic origin of these "races" were repeatedly published and, for example, the Malays and the orangutans were ascribed a closer phylogenetic relationship than the African great apes and the other "races" of Homo sapiens .

The existence of precursor species of the species Homo sapiens was finally recognized by experts at the latest in 1950 with Ernst Mayr's lecture on "Taxonomic categories in fossil hominids" during the Cold Spring Harbor Symposium on Quantitative Biology , but Mayr also had no criteria for the delimitation of the species named. The statement made by Franz Weidenreich in 1947 that Asian hominine fossils are the remains of the ancestors of today's Asians and that Neanderthal fossils are the remains of the ancestors of today's Europeans could continue to exist. This interpretation of the fossils was brought to a head in 1962 in the race theory of the American anthropologist Carleton S. Coon , who - like Charles Darwin in his 1871 work The Descent of Man and Sexual Selection - found Africa as the most likely place of the origin of Homo sapiens looked. However, it left Africa at a very primitive stage of development and split into five evolutionary lines. From these lines ('capoid' = South African Bushmen , 'negroid', 'caucasoid', 'mongoloid', 'australoid') the “races” of anatomically modern humans emerged, with some races having reached the developmental stage of Homo sapiens earlier than other.

The basic assumptions

According to the “multiregional model”, the anatomical characteristics of today's Africans, Asians, Europeans and Australian natives developed independently of one another via “archaic intermediate forms” from an originally African population of Homo erectus, despite the constant flow of genes .

The current version of the hypothesis of the multiregional origin of modern humans was developed in the mid-1980s by the American anthropologist Milford H. Wolpoff ( University of Michigan ) and the Chinese paleoanthropologist Wu Xinzhi ( Institute for Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences ) formulated as an explanatory scheme for the course of recent human evolution .

One of the basic assumptions for this hypothesis, which Milford H. Wolpoff and his Australian co-author Alan G. Thorne published in English and German in 1992 and again in 2003, assumes that the out-of-Africa theory is implausible: “We have Difficulties with the claim that a single group of hunters and gatherers worldwide completely replaced all other groups of people in a very short time - beginning about 200,000 years ago. ”In 1994 this basic assumption was formulated even more pointedly; Accordingly, the findings show that "the earliest 'modern' people are not Africans and do not have the group of features that characterize the Africans of that or any other epoch." A second basic assumption was derived from an observation in the present and is: " Today's populations retain their physical characteristics despite migration and mixing. But it has always been like that as long as man inhabits Europe and Asia ", specifically since" people left Africa for the first time at least a million years ago. "Against the background of these basic assumptions, it is possible to explain why the gay populations in Africa, Asia, Australia and Europe on the one hand lived separately from one another for hundreds of thousands of years and were able to develop different physical characteristics “which have survived to this day”, although “there was such a strong gene exchange between the groups that humans were only one Species have persisted. ”In 2000, Wolpoff et al. Explained that this gene flow between the continents could already be sustained by“ a few people per generation ”, possibly by a single immigrant individual per generation.

Based on these basic assumptions, the fossils assigned to the genus Homo are interpreted by the proponents of the hypothesis of a multiregional origin of modern humans. To this end, Wolpoff, Wu and Thorne published a longer list of morphological features in 1984, which are particularly typical for the people of the past and present in the area of ​​China. “This compilation is largely based on descriptions by the Frankfurt anthropologist Franz Weidenreich , who analyzed the relics of the Peking man in China during the 1930s and early 1940s .” The results are neither for East Asia (fossil homo : Peking man) nor for Indonesia (fossil Homo : Java man ) anatomical "signs [found] that in these regions characteristics characteristic of Africa have ever replaced the formerly typical there." The Zhirendong finds were also interpreted in this sense.

The same continuity - the smooth transition from Homo erectus to Homo sapiens , largely independent of one another in several regions - was derived in 1992 and again in 2003 by Thorne and Wolpoff from fossils discovered in Europe. The 70,000-year-old, late Neanderthals from La Ferrassie , for example, can serve as evidence of this , which - in contrast to older Neanderthals - has "a slight protrusion of the chin", a characteristic that is considered typical of early Homo sapiens . The development of this feature is interpreted by other researchers in the sense of a parallel evolution, as originating independently of one another. Thorne and Wolpoff, on the other hand, suspect "that the Neanderthals either developed themselves into later human forms or mixed with them, perhaps both." This thesis was confirmed, for example, in 2001 by comparing a 13,000 to 15,000 year old skull (Willandra Lakes Hominid 50 = WLH 50) from New South Wales ( Australia ), which undoubtedly belongs to Homo sapiens , tries to underpin it with alleged hybrid Cro-Magnon / Neanderthal skulls from Mladeč ( Czech Republic ) and Homo erectus finds from Java . The anatomical similarities described by the authors were cited as evidence that a displacement of the original homo- populations by immigrated Homo sapiens individuals “can be excluded”. The aim of the argument is to “recognize the Neanderthals as ancestors”. However, since the human remains from Mladeč were clearly assigned to Homo sapiens on the basis of their teeth and were dated between 31,000 and 27,000 BP , there is a considerable gap in time to securely dated late Neanderthals. Even in the hybrid discussion that arose around the Gravettian grave by Lagar Velho found in 1998 , supposed Neanderthal features were limited to anatomical parameters that were not clearly defined . Similar objections exist to the hypothesis of some Israeli scholars that Homo erectus was replaced 400,000 years ago in what is now Palestine by a new hominine species that "gave rise to the later [ Homo sapiens ] populations in the Levant ."

The studies of human mitochondrial DNA , known since 1987 under the catchphrase mitochondrial Eve , which are considered to be the methodologically independent support of the Out-of-Africa theory, which was initially only derived from fossils, are carried out with reference to allegedly questionable basic assumptions about the speed of the molecular clock (“ a watch that is worthless in any case ”).

criticism

Richard Leakey had already discussed the pros and cons of the multiregional hypothesis in 1994 and admitted that he had been sympathetic to this hypothesis for a while. However, his conclusion was that it was "unlikely to apply". Leakey justified his skepticism with several arguments, which - more than 20 years later - are still being put forward by other scientists.

On the one hand, Leakey referred to a series of fossil finds from several caves in Israel ( Qafzeh and Skhul ); the remains of Homo sapiens had been found there, which were older than neighboring finds of Neanderthals. The Neanderthals could not be the direct ancestors of Homo sapiens - unlike previously derived from the chronological sequence of dated Neanderthals and now human finds . With this, “one of the most convincing pillars supporting the hypothesis of a multiregional evolution” had broken away. Leakey also argued, referring to the roughly 90,000 year old finds of Homo sapiens from Skhul: "No human fossil of this age has been found anywhere in the rest of Asia or Europe." Further arguments, completely independent of the anatomical features of the fossils, were for Leakey distinguishable tool production of Homo sapiens and the other populations that have emerged from Homo erectus and - thirdly - the genetic findings on the so-called mitochondrial Eve known since 1987 .

Chris Stringer and Peter Andrews had already argued in a similar way , who in 1988 for the first time put the genetic findings published in the previous year in relation to the fossil record in a specialist publication. For Europe and Asia, they referred in this study, among other things, to the lack of transitional forms between Neanderthals and now humans, although there is numerous fossil evidence of both homo- species. You mentioned the evidence of Homo sapiens in the Levant decades before the Neanderthals (presumably immigrated from the north). The gradual transitions from Homo erectus to Homo sapiens claimed for fossils from Asia - and especially from China - they ultimately interpreted as an overinterpretation of less relevant features (of homoplasia ) due to the complete lack of evidence from the crucial period from 100,000 to 50,000 years ago : According to a study by Chinese experts and according to Peter Brown , between the 125,000 to 104,000 year old Xujiayao fossils and the either 10,000 or a maximum of 24,000 to 29,000 year old Upper Cave skulls, there is not a single finding of hominine bones in China could be reliably dated.

To the present day, the three main arguments against the hypothesis of a multiregional origin of modern humans (lack of Neanderthal / now human continuity; misinterpretation of transitional forms in Asia; genetic analyzes) have been rejected by their supporters. In 2004, Milford Wolpoff confirmed his interpretation of the Neanderthal finds in an emphatically titled specialist publication (“Why not the Neandertals?”). In 2009, Wu Xinzhi presented another lower jaw, the age of which was given as around 100,000 years and attributed to an early Homo sapiens , and the genetic one Findings are still classified as unusable because they are unreliable.

In contrast, there are various studies that compared the catalog of allegedly typical morphological features of today's Chinese, published in 1984 - by means of which the continuity of Homo erectus to Homo sapiens - with the features of people from other regions. The German palaeoanthropologist Günter Bräuer , who analyzed the African finds and their dating at the end of the 1970s and, together with the South African Peter Beaumont, is the founder of the out-of-Africa theory, summarized their findings as follows:

“The results ranged from serious doubts about the probative value of these characteristics for continuous human evolution in China to vehement criticism. One of the studies showed that the characteristics in question were not only found in East Asia, but also worldwide with Homo erectus and archaic Homo sapiens . According to another study, these marks appear even less in today's Chinese than in other populations today. "

See also

literature

  • Alan G. Thorne, Milford H. Wolpoff : Multiregional Origins of Modern Humans. In: Spektrum der Wissenschaft , 6/1992, pp. 80-87
  • Alan G. Thorne, Milford H. Wolpoff: The multiregional evolution of humans. In: Scientific American , 2/2003, pp. 46–53, full text (PDF; 196 kB)
  • Jeffrey H. Schwartz and Ian Tattersall : Fossil evidence for the origin of Homo sapiens. In: American Journal of Physical Anthropology. Volume 143, Supplement 51 (= Yearbook of Physical Anthropology ), 2010, pp. 94-121, doi: 10.1002 / ajpa.21443
  • P. Raghavan, G. Pathmanathan, I. Talwar: The evolution of the anatomically modern or advanced Homo sapiens: time, place, process, affinities and variations. In: Singapore Medical Journal. Volume 50, No. 6, 2009, pp. 556-562. ( Review Article , full text )
  • Robin Dennell : Where Evolutionary Biology Meets History: Ethno-nationalism and Modern Human Origins in East Asia. Chapter 11 in: Jeffrey H. Schwartz (Ed.): Rethinking Human Evolution. MIT Press, 2017, pp. 229–250, ISBN 978-0262037327 , full text

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Alan G. Thorne, Milford H. Wolpoff : Multiregional origin of modern people. In: Spectrum of Science. No. 6/1992, p. 80
  2. ↑ Winfried Henke , Hartmut Rothe : Stammesgeschichte des Menschen. An introduction. Springer Verlag, Berlin 1999, p. 283, ISBN 3-540-64831-3
  3. ^ A b Richard Stone: Signs of early Homo sapiens in China? In: Science . Volume 326, 2009, p. 655, doi : 10.1126 / science.326_655a ; Literally: "A rival idea with a small band of ardent backers holds that those who left Africa interbred with humans they met on other continents."
  4. ↑ Xinzhi Wu : On the origin of modern humans in China. In: Quaternary International. Volume 117, No. 1, 2004, pp. 131-140 doi : 10.1016 / S1040-6182 (03) 00123-X
  5. ↑ Asians come from Africa. On: orf.at ( ORF website ), accessed on November 12, 2015.
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  7. ^ The HUGO Pan-Asian SNP Consortium: Mapping Human Genetic Diversity in Asia. In: Science. Volume 325, 2009, pp. 1541–1545, doi : 10.1126 / science.1177074
    A detailed graphic on the settlement routes in Asia is contained in: Dennis Normile: SNP Study Supports Southern Migration Route to Asia. In: Science. Volume 325, 2009, p. 1470, doi : 10.1126 / science.326.5959.1470
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    Michael D. Petraglia et al .: Out of Africa: new hypotheses and evidence for the dispersal of Homo sapiens along the Indian Ocean rim. In: Annals of Human Biology. Volume 37, No. 3, 2010, pp. 288-311, doi: 10.3109 / 03014461003639249
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  12. ^ Philippe-Charles Schmerling : Recherches sur les ossements fossiles découverts dans les cavernes de la Province de Liège. P.-J. Collardin, Liège 1833, pp. 1-66
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  36. ^ Olaf Jöris, Martin Street: At the end of the 14 C time scale - the Middle to Upper Paleolithic record of Western Eurasia. In: DS Adler, O. Jöris (Ed.): Setting the Record Straight: Toward a Systematic Chronological Understanding of the Middle to Upper Paleolithic Boundary in Eurasia. In: Journal of Human Evolution. Volume 55, 2008, pp. 782-802 doi : 10.1016 / j.jhevol.2008.04.002
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  38. ↑ Thorne and Wolpoff, 1992, p. 87
  39. ↑ literally: "My sense of it, however, is that the multiregional-evolution hypothesis is unlikely to be correct." Here quoted from the paperback edition by Richard Leakey : The origin of humankind. Phoenix, London 1995, p. 99. ISBN 1-85799-334-9
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  44. ↑ Peter Brown : Chinese Middle Pleistocene hominids and modern human origins in east Asia. In: Lawrence Barham and Kate Robson Brown (Eds.): Human Roots. Africa and Asia in the Middle Pleistocene. Western Academic & Specialist Publishers, Bristol 2001, p. 144, ISBN 978-0953541843 , full text (PDF; 3.5 MB)
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