Here begins the interesting point in the history of the human brain, the point (and place) of its most important development:
Which brings us neatly to an ape that lived about 14 million years ago in Africa. It was a very smart ape but the brains of most of its descendants – orang-utans, gorillas and chimpanzees – do not appear to have changed greatly compared with the branch of its family that led to us. What made us different?
It used to be thought that moving out of the forests and taking to walking on two legs lead to the expansion of our brains. Fossil discoveries, however, show that millions of years after early hominids became bipedal, they still had small brains.
We can only speculate about why their brains began to grow bigger around 2.5 million years ago… [But] the overall picture is one of a virtuous cycle involving our diet, culture, technology, social relationships and genes. It led to the modern human brain coming into existence in Africa by about 200,000 years ago.
And what a beautiful brain it is. And completely made in Africa. Nowhere else in the known universe but Africa. Europe? No. Asia? No. Only (or to use a wonderful Shona word, chete) the geography of Africa, the skies and clouds of Africa made this brain you all are enjoying right now.
I can hear the heads of racists exploding already.
Austalopithecus started using stone tools to get at marrow in bones. Changed everything.
@2 -That has always been the “chicken or egg” question of anthropology: did tool use make our ancestors more intelligent, or did increased intelligence allow us to start using tools?
Charles, your constant belaboring of the African genesis of man is wearying, and carries the stench of insecurity about it. Maybe go back to posting pictures of houses or white women for a while.
@3 Our brains need a great deal of energy. The kind of energy we get from meat.
Good Morning Charles,
Your conceit notwithstanding, it’s reasonable to assume humans along with their brains evolved in Africa. That’s fine. However, I find it just as fascinating that we humans “moved” to other parts of the planet after that development. Think of the harsh terrain our ancestors had to cross by foot (!) and endure to get to where we are today. I find human survival absolutely incredible considering. Thank you brain.
Obviously extra-terrestrial eugenicists caused the big brain. And then the new Alien-Ape looked about himself and got the fuck out of Africa.
Charles, you sound like my mother. Am I supposed to call Africa to thank them for the brain and the sweater they sent me?
What does continental drift mean for your love of Africa?
Thanks, Africa!
Imagine if the people who would populate the rest of the world had left Africa before the human brain was as developed as it is now. Imagine their minds had traveled entirely different paths. Their bodies would be recognizably human–following down a path already set in Homo erectus–but their minds would be adapted to whatever niches they fell into instead of having to stay so flexible. Would those of us who had stayed in Africa pity these lost children and try to guide them, or simply treat them like particularly clever, hairless apes? Would they interbreed once they came across one another again (it was possible with Neanderthals, after all), or would it be far too repulsive an idea?
The diversity and difficulty of Africa itself is responsible for our minds. It’s fascinating to imagine what could have happened without that influence.
As always, where it went is much more interesting (and important) than where it came from.
From the perspective of someone who has to give birth to a giant-brained baby through a pelvis designed for upright walking, fuck all y’all.
I heard a lecture about genetic evidence – people didn’t leave Africa until (IIRC) 60k years ago. This is an absolute blink of the eye in evolutionary terms. Even compared to written history – we have cave pictures dating back to 30k years ago, and the Bronze Age started 6k years ago (around the first pyramids were being built). Writing came along soon after, a bit over 5k years ago.
Of course, it’s possible up to 1-4% of European genes come from Neanderthals, who weren’t African at all.
Obsession …. not just a perfume.
Genetic evidence for archaic admixture in Africa
Michael F. Hammer a,b,1,
August E. Woerner a,
Fernando L. Mendez b,
Joseph C. Watkins c, and
Jeffrey D. Wall d
+ Author Affiliations
aArizona Research Laboratories Division of Biotechnology,
bDepartment of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, and
cMathematics Department, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721; and
dInstitute for Human Genetics, University of California, San Francisco, CA 94143
Edited by Ofer Bar-Yosef, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, and approved July 27, 2011 (received for review June 13, 2011)
Abstract
A long-debated question concerns the fate of archaic forms of the genus Homo: did they go extinct without interbreeding with anatomically modern humans, or are their genes present in contemporary populations? This question is typically focused on the genetic contribution of archaic forms outside of Africa. Here we use DNA sequence data gathered from 61 noncoding autosomal regions in a sample of three sub-Saharan African populations (Mandenka, Biaka, and San) to test models of African archaic admixture. We use two complementary approximate-likelihood approaches and a model of human evolution that involves recent population structure, with and without gene flow from an archaic population. Extensive simulation results reject the null model of no admixture and allow us to infer that contemporary African populations contain a small proportion of genetic material (≈2%) that introgressed ≈35 kya from an archaic population that split from the ancestors of anatomically modern humans ≈700 kya. Three candidate regions showing deep haplotype divergence, unusual patterns of linkage disequilibrium, and small basal clade size are identified and the distributions of introgressive haplotypes surveyed in a sample of populations from across sub-Saharan Africa. One candidate locus with an unusual segment of DNA that extends for >31 kb on chromosome 4 seems to have introgressed into modern Africans from a now-extinct taxon that may have lived in central Africa. Taken together our results suggest that polymorphisms present in extant populations introgressed via relatively recent interbreeding with hominin forms that diverged from the ancestors of modern humans in the Lower-Middle Pleistocene.
Too bad that new patent law wasn’t in place back then…Africans could be receiving royalties for The Brain.
Fred Karger ’12
http://fredkarger.com
“Where you from, soldier?”
“Nairobi, ma’am. Isn’t everyone?”
—
I wonder if our brain didn’t start, ahem, expanding due to the action of various genomic parasites similar to the ones that “dramatically changed the way mammals reproduce”.
Who knows? Maybe we just found encephalitis sexy?
@14: Spot on, except Neanderthals were in fact descended from our common African ancestor.
@16: Well, that’s quite interesting.
Now tell me in your own words what that study suggests.
Dang. @19 beat me to it. Neanderthals were as African as any other human population. They clearly didn’t change too much other than in appearance, after all. We could breed with them.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18…
Chinese Challenge to ‘Out of Africa’ Theory
Phil McKenna, New Scientist, November 3, 2009
Jin Changzhu and colleagues of the Institute of Vertebrate Palaeontology and Palaeoanthropology in Beijing, announced to Chinese media last week that they have uncovered a 110,000-year-old putative Homo sapiens jawbone from a cave in southern China’s Guangxi province.
{snip}
If confirmed, the finding would lend support to the “multiregional hypothesis”. This says that modern humans descend from Homo sapiens coming out of Africa who then interbred with more primitive humans on other continents. In contrast, the prevailing “out of Africa” hypothesis holds that modern humans are the direct descendants of people who spread out of Africa to other continents around 100,000 years ago.
The study will appear in Chinese Science Bulletin later this month.
Out of China?
“[This paper] acts to reject the theory that modern humans are of uniquely African origin and supports the notion that emerging African populations mixed with natives they encountered,” says Milford Wolpoff, a proponent of the multiregional hypothesis at the University of Michigan.
Others disagreed. Erik Trinkaus, an anthropologist at Washington University in St Louis, Missouri, questioned whether the find was a true Homo sapiens.
“You need to keep in mind that ‘Homo sapiens’ for most Chinese scholars is not limited to anatomically modern humans,” he says. “For many of them, it is all ‘post Homo erectus,’ humans.”
@21 Neanderthals had larger brains.
C’mon Mudede, when are you going to embrace the Aquatic Ape Hypothesis? I did, and recommend surgery to reweb fingers and toes.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-enviro…
16 September 2011 Last updated at 11:43 ET
Skull points to a more complex human evolution in Africa
By Daniel Boettcher BBC News
Scientists have collected more evidence to suggest that ancient and modern humans interbred in Africa.
Reanalysis of the 13,000-year-old skull from a cave in West Africa reveals a skull more primitive-looking than its age suggests.
The result suggests that the ancestors of early humans did not die out quickly in Africa, but instead lived alongside their descendents and bred with them until comparatively recently.
The results are published in PLoS ONE.
The skull, found in the Iwo Eleru cave in Nigeria in 1965, does not look like a modern human.
It is longer and flatter with a strong brow ridge; features closer to a much older skull from Tanzania, thought to be around 140,000 years old.
Prof Katerina Harvati from the University of Tuebingen in Germany used new digitising techniques to capture the surface of the skull in detail.
The new technique improved upon the original measurements done with callipers by letting researchers see subtler details about the skull’s surface.
The cast of the Iwo Eleru skull shows marks of a more ancient ancestor
“[The skull] has got a much more primitive appearance, even though it is only 13,000 years old,” said Chris Stringer, from London’s Natural History Museum, who was part of the team of researchers.
“This suggests that human evolution in Africa was more complex… the transition to modern humans was not a straight transition and then a cut off.”
Prof Stringer thinks that ancient humans did not die away once they had given rise to modern humans.
They may have continued to live alongside their descendants in Africa, perhaps exchanging genes with them, until more recently than had been thought.
…
Separate research published earlier this month suggests that genetic mixing between hominin species happened in Africa up to 35,000 years ago
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/201…
Neanderthal Genome Yields Insights Into Human Evolution and Evidence of Interbreeding With Modern Humans
ScienceDaily (May 6, 2010)
After extracting ancient DNA from the 40,000-year-old bones of Neanderthals, scientists have obtained a draft sequence of the Neanderthal genome, yielding important new insights into the evolution of modern humans.
Among the findings, published in the May 7 issue of Science, is evidence that shortly after early modern humans migrated out of Africa, some of them interbred with Neanderthals, leaving bits of Neanderthal DNA sequences scattered through the genomes of present-day non-Africans.
…
The researchers identified a catalog of genetic features unique to modern humans by comparing the Neanderthal, human, and chimpanzee genomes. Genes involved in cognitive development, skull structure, energy metabolism, and skin morphology and physiology are among those highlighted in the study as likely to have undergone important changes in recent human evolution.
All Non-Africans Part Neanderthal, Genetics Confirm
Analysis by Jennifer Viegas
Mon Jul 18, 2011 10:25 AM ET
If your heritage is non-African, you are part Neanderthal, according to a new study in the July issue of Molecular Biology and Evolution. Discovery News has been reporting on human/Neanderthal interbreeding for some time now, so this latest research confirms earlier findings.
Damian Labuda of the University of Montreal’s Department of Pediatrics and the CHU Sainte-Justine Research Center conducted the study with his colleagues. They determined some of the human X chromosome originates from Neanderthals, but only in people of non-African heritage.
“This confirms recent findings suggesting that the two populations interbred,” Labuda was quoted as saying in a press release. His team believes most, if not all, of the interbreeding took place in the Middle East, while modern humans were migrating out of Africa and spreading to other regions.
The ancestors of Neanderthals left Africa about 400,000 to 800,000 years ago. They evolved over the millennia mostly in what are now France, Spain, Germany and Russia. They went extinct, or were simply absorbed into the modern human population, about 30,000 years ago.
Neanderthals possessed the gene for language and had sophisticated music, art and tool craftsmanship skills, so they must have not been all that unattractive to modern humans at the time.
“In addition, because our methods were totally independent of Neanderthal material, we can also conclude that previous results were not influenced by contaminating artifacts,” Labuda said.
This work goes back to nearly a decade ago, when Labuda and his colleagues identified a piece of DNA, called a haplotype, in the human X chromosome that seemed different. They questioned its origins.
Fast forward to 2010, when the Neanderthal genome was sequenced. The researchers could then compare the haplotype to the Neanderthal genome as well as to the DNA of existing humans. The scientists found that the sequence was present in people across all continents, except for sub-Saharan Africa, and including Australia.
“There is little doubt that this haplotype is present because of mating with our ancestors and Neanderthals,” said Nick Patterson of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard University. Patterson did not participate in the latest research. He added, “This is a very nice result, and further analysis may help determine more details.”
David Reich, a Harvard Medical School geneticist, added, “Dr. Labuda and his colleagues were the first to identify a genetic variation in non-Africans that was likely to have come from an archaic population. This was done entirely without the Neanderthal genome sequence, but in light of the Neanderthal sequence, it is now clear that they were absolutely right!”
The modern human/Neanderthal combo likely benefitted our species, enabling it to survive in harsh, cold regions that Neanderthals previously had adapted to.
“Variability is very important for long-term survival of a species,” Labuda concluded. “Every addition to the genome can be enriching.”
http://news.discovery.com/human/genetics…
What are you trying to tell me, Alleged? Timmy fell down a well?