Out of Africa — A Personal History

Abstract

To the general public and the media (but certainly not for all palaeoanthropologists) two evolutionary models dominate current debate about the origins of modern humans. These are the model of multiregional evolution, which traces the origins of modern human anatomy and racial diversity to variation developed over the period 1,000,000 to 100,000 years ago during the evolution of Homo erectus and so-called “archaic Homo sapiens” and the recent African origin (“Out of Africa”) model, which argues for an African origin probably within the last 200,000 years, and a subsequent radiation and diversification of early modern humans around the world during only the last 100,000 years. However, when I began my research over twenty years ago on recent human evolution, the present versions of these models did not exist and to my knowledge the Out of Africa model had not been proposed in any form. It is instructive to examine the way in which the Out of Africa model has developed since 1970, both from my own perspective and more generally, because there have been many misunderstandings and misrepresentations of the idea, both in the media, which perhaps can be absolved of some blame through ignorance, and also by some expert opponents. It is seen as retrograde and antievolutionary by some, and a return to a “pre-sapiens” model of modern human origins. Others see it as implying the dispersal of “killer Africans,” who wiped out other human populations in a Pleistocene holocaust.