As widely reported, including in this article in Nature, “[m]odern people evolved all across Africa, not from a single location, a new study exploring the diversity of human genomes has found.”
The study adds to the scepticism about the long-popular “single-origin theory.” Reportedly, what sets this study apart is that it uses more parameters than earlier models to establish the idea of “the weakly structured stem”:
“The ancient hominin species, or ‘ancestral stem’, had localized populations which are thought to have interbred with each other over millennia, sharing any genetic differences that they had evolved. They also moved around Africa over time. […] The intertwining of these stems, separated only weakly by their genetic differences, gave rise to a concept of human evolution that the researchers described as a “weakly structured stem” — more like a tangled vine than a ‘tree of life’.”
Apparently, this study gives a “clearer explanation for the variation seen in humans today” than the explanations previously put forth.
Read the full Nature report on the study here.
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