Where in the world did anatomically modern humans come from? | Gene Expression

Where in the world did anatomically modern humans come from? | Gene Expression: "

The Pith: I review a recent paper which argues for a southern African origin of modern humanity. I argue that the statistical inference shouldn’t be trusted as the final word. This paper reinforces previously known facts, but does not add much that both novel and robust.

I have now read the paper which I expressed a touch of skepticism toward yesterday. Do note, I did not dispute the validity of their results. They seem eminently plausible. I was simply skeptical that we could, with any level of robustness, claim that anatomically modern humans arose in southern vs. eastern, or western, Africa. If I had to bet, my rank order would be southern ~ eastern > western. But my confidence in my assessment is very low.

First things first. You should read the whole paper, since someone paid for it to be open access. Second, much props to whoever decided to put their original SNP data online. I’ve already pulled it down, and sent off emails to Zack, David, and Dienekes. There are some northern African populations which allow us to expand beyond the Mozabites, though unfortunately there are only 55,000 ...

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