Human Ancestors were Not Out of Africa

This New Scientist video argues that the theory about humans being out of Africa is false.

The new evidence is a Chinese skull that was previously thought to be Homo Erectus, but has been re-analyzed to be a million-year-old Denosivan. This is surprising because it was thought that Homo Sapiens, Neanderthals, and Denosivans only split 600k years ago. Now it is thought that they must have split more than a million years ago, maybe 1.3M years ago. That split is said to be form "Ancestor X", the presumed common ancestor.

The video is confusing in places, because it refers to Homo Sapiens as "us", but all three of those human groups are ancestors to today's non-African humans. Also, it is still thought that human ancestors left African 60k years ago, and interbred with Neanderthals and Denosivans.

Okay, but if this Denosivan lived in China, then maybe Ancestor X did also, and large brains could have evolved in Europe or Asia, not Africa. Then perhaps Ancestor X migrated to Africa, and descendants later migrated out.

There are missing pieces to this story, so it will probably get revised again.

BBC reports

The earliest known evidence for early Homo sapiens in Africa is 300,000 years ago, so it is tempting to conclude that our species might have evolved first in Asia.

It is also tempting to think that China artifically expanded the fossil skull to make it look like humans evolved in China.

This podcast claims that there are humans in Africa today that would be considered a different species, if humans were categorized by other animals.

You might wonder why anyone cares about this stuff. It seems to say something about what it means to be human.

Later on the video attacks Pres. Trump and says:

It's truly heartbreaking to know that these actions will put children, pregnant people, and 23:08 vulnerable groups in harm's way.