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0 pointsmilesrout5mo ago0 comments

It is also the consensus position for a lot of bad reasons though.

There is an assumption that belief in, or even reasonable agnosticism towards, any other theory can only be motivated by racism.

There are many people that believe OOA because they want to believe it, because they want to believe we are all more similar than we are different, etc.

Multiregional hypotheses are perfectly plausible. We have very limited information one way or another. Out of Africa may be more likely but it is far from certain.

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AlotOfReading5mo ago

Just to be clear about what the term multiregionalism means, it's an argument that there's anatomical continuity between archaic hominin populations around afroeurasia and modern human populations. That is, anatomical modernity didn't evolve once in Africa, but multiple times all over the world in populations that are still extant today. A multiregional hypothesis might say that modern Chinese people evolved from archaic populations in Asia.

This is completely and unequivocally rejected by the genetic evidence. The evidence is so absolutely overwhelming that even fucking Wolpoff came around and now says:

    It is broadly agreed that all recent/living human populations ultimately descend from Africans.

Now, if you mean something completely different to the commonly understood definition of multiregionalism, I'm willing to hear it.

bilbo0s5mo ago

There are many people that believe OOA because they want to believe it

But, also, There are many people that [do not] believe OOA because they [do not] want to believe it.

That's why we look at genetic evidence, to eliminate nonsense. That evidence strongly points to chimps, gorillas, humans etc all coming from the same place.

If it makes you feels better, think of it this way:

we don't believe OOA because the evidence says we're related to blacks. We believe it because the evidence says we're pretty much hairless apes. (And a lot of us aren't even hairless!)

There, feel better about it now?

mikert895mo ago

theres actually almost zero clarity around the common ancestor between apes and humans, and a lot of speculation that the common ancestor lived 6-8 million years ago.

otabdeveloper45mo ago

> That evidence strongly points to chimps, gorillas, humans etc all coming from the same place.

No. Non-African humans have genetic lineages that do not occur anywhere in Africa.

This doesn't mean OOA is necessarily false, but does makes it much less likely.

Also, lumping in primates is a red herring. The resolution of our gene clade knowledge doesn't go that far back. Dreaming about some hypothetical ape ancestor is a vibe, not a science.

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