Did races emerge before homo sapiens evolved?

[Conservationist]

The OoA theory says that it was the African erectus that became modern man, then came the races, so the species Hs (and the subspecies Hss) arose before the races; the Multiregional theory says that there was an Asian erectus race and an African erectus race and they both became modern man, so the races came before the species Hs. And this book says the races arose before erectus, with Australopithecus, so the races came before the genus Homo.

Erectus Walks Amongst Us by Richard D. Fuerle (http://erectuswalksamongst.us/)


Found this one online.

[Osweo]

I don't think we can usefully look at such questions without a good understanding of a similar process in another species.

We should look at something with long extended clines, maybe the black-backed seagull, and see if the whole range moves on as a species, retaining mutual fertility and so on.

Or has the behavioural revolution set us free from the usual constraints of nature? Are we evolving on a different set of parameters? Have we shifted the goalposts ourselves? Blacks can sufficiently acculturate, on perhaps a superficial level, but enough to make continued genetic exchange between our populations a high frequency phenomenon. In the animal world, geography and different mating habits would have had us labelled different species long ago.

[Vulpix]

You can download the full ebook Erectus Walks Among Us here (http://www.theapricity.com/forum/showthread.php?t=803&highlight=erectus).

[Lenny]

I have read parts of Erectus Walks Amongst Us, and he offers pretty much irrefutable physiological proof that the East Asian erectus were the ancestors of today's Orientals (Japanese, Chinese, etc.)*, and that today's Caucasoids are descended from West-Asian erectus, who in Europe mixed to a small extent with the native Neanderthals [European genetics may be 2-3% Neanderthal, which was very beneficial in various ways, he explains... Another fascinating part of that book shows that Neanderthals were far closer genetically to modern Europeans, than modern Europeans are to modern blackAfricans; Neanderthals were simply our larger-boned cousins].





* - One of these that I remember was a peculiar trait of the tooth structure found only in modern Orientals, also found on Peking Man (erectus from 500,000 years ago in China), found in no other ancient fossils and no other modern populations. The only counter-argument, against continuity from PekingMan to modern Orientals, is that after homo-sapiens from Africa "totally replaced" humans in East Asia, these Africans independently developed this same exact [non-useful] tooth peculiarity in a few thousand years. There and nowhere else. (Which is absurd).

[Lenny]

In response to the obvious skeptical reaction: How could the races develop before Homo-Sapiens did? Isn't that counter-logical? This is how it went:

Fuerle cites the Multiregionalist literature to the effect that the Last Common Ancestor of all humans may have been 2, 3 or even 4million years ago. (Strict Out of Africa claims all humans are 100%-descended from Africans living near present-Kenya ~60,000 years ago). Different groups of Australopithecenes spread out and slowly started to specialize for their environments, the "birth of the different racial stocks of Man".

The Earth is big, but it's not THAT big. So there had always been a small amount of gene flow between the different groupings of humanity over the hundreds of milennia. Advantageous traits (especially intelligence) that arose somewhere slowly spread out in this way [even one intelligent man with beneficial genes having one surviving child with one woman in a more-primitive group; those genes may be selected for and eventually spread out into the entire population over a number of generations]. This process slowly drove evolution from the australopithecenes to homo, and then from primitive-homo like erectus to today's homo-sapiens. The basic racial stocks (Caucasoid, Mongoloid, Negroid, Khoisanid, Australoid, Negritos, and possibly many others that are long extinct), though, had been distinct for a long time. There was some outright replacement here and there (e.g. the hobbit race of southeast Asia being wiped out and the pushing-out of the Australoids off the mainland), but things were mostly stable, with humans evolving into "Thinking Man" [homo sapiens] slowly, via either a harsh local environment selecting the local genepool for intelligence or gene flow from more intelligent groups, or both.

(Some modern races are not anthropologically homo-sapiens; Fuerle's title implies that the Australoids and perhaps some other groups today are obviously late-erectus and not homosapiens, judging by their skull structure (http://erectuswalksamongst.us/Images/Figure%2027-5.GIF). This is because of a lack of enough gene flow allowing advantageous traits to proliferate and the fact that their environments did not put selective pressure on them for intelligence).

Here is a chart with notes to help get a handle on this complicated issue: http://erectuswalksamongst.us/SecIV.html

In Fuerle's Out Of Eurasia theory, Africa was always on the receiving end of the beneficial gene-flow. Since life was easy there (no winters), they didn't have much selection and so didn't advance much on their own. I.e., the precise opposite of Out Of Africa is true. The fact that Out Of Africa dominates modern anthropology is an interesting phenomenon sociologically, but it is bad science.


As for "why have all the ancient skeletons been found in Africa", he addresses this too: All of the great finds of ancient hominids and australopithecenes have been made in a certain location that is perfect for preserving ancient fossils, the great rift valley of Kenya. Conditions in other parts of the world are much worse for preserving bones, and human numbers were always very low until the last few milennia. Still, some ancient hominid bones have been found elsewhere, like proto-Mongoloid Peking Man in China and the proto-Caucasoid Georgicus in the country of Georgia.

[Agrippa]

Actually it seems to be quite likely, but in a different way many believed, namely a distinction inside of Africa, between a rather archaic Subsaharan and the more progressive East African group, from which all Eurasians descend from, while there were different waves too, one of the earlier being that which brought the Australids to their current homeland.

The Subsaharan Africans seem to have been "updated" by a back migration from East Africa+Eurasia, at least this seems to be plausible at the moment:

Human line 'nearly split in two'
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7358868.stm

Compare with a recent study of craniological variation in Africa:

Observed disparity patterns imply a mix of differences and similarities across populations, with no apparent support for genetic bottlenecks, which is likely a consequence of migrations that may have influenced differences in cranial form; supporting data are found in recent molecular studies. The Pygmy sample had the most distinctive cranial morphology; characteristically small in size with marked prognathism. These features characterized, although less strongly, the neighboring Bateke, and are possibly related to similar selective pressures in conjunction with interbreeding. Small cranial size is also involved in the considerable distinctiveness of the San and Khoikhoi.

From:
http://www.anonym.to/?http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2009/04/geometric-morphometric-quantification.html

Paper:
http://www.anonym.to/?http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/122271082/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0

Now those are, according to some concepts today, those groups which had the lowest impact of the East African-Eurasian backmigration, whereas the Negrids had a higher.

This shows a remarkable correlation with primitive traits in Africa, which decrease from North Africa-East Africa to Negrid proper - Palaenegrid (admixed with Bambutid) - Khoid (mixed with Negrid and Aethiopid) - Sanid - Bambutid (African Pygmy).

Therefore the most likely gap we can observe in sapiens being caused by a split of the African populations (East Africa vs. rest of Subsaharan Africa) before the expansion Out of Africa.

[Dr. Bambo]

I bumbed interesting threads from the past.