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Out of Africa: Africa and the Origins of Humankind

Out of Africa: Africa and the Origins of Humankind. Paleontologist Louis Leakey with Australopithecine skull fossil. “The first and perhaps, greatest contribution of Africa to human progress is the evolution of man himself.” – Louis Leakey. What does Leakey mean?.

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Out of Africa: Africa and the Origins of Humankind

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  1. Out of Africa:Africa and the Origins of Humankind

  2. Paleontologist Louis Leakey with Australopithecine skull fossil “The first and perhaps, greatest contribution of Africa to human progress is the evolution of man himself.” – Louis Leakey

  3. What does Leakey mean? • Scientists, paleontologists and archaeologists tell us that Africa is the place where almost all of the critical stages of human evolution took place. • Human beings developed their earliest and most significant technological and cultural adaptations in Africa • Africa is the “cradle of humankind.”

  4. Stages of Human Evolution • 1. Australopithecines • (Australopithecus afarensis& Australopithecus africanus) • Earliest ancestors of humans • Bipedal • Lived about 4-2 millions years ago • Fossils found in eastern and southern Africa

  5. “Lucy” (Australopithecus afarensis) Discovered in a dried lake in Ethiopia in 1974 Aged 3.2 million years old

  6. Other stages of human evolution • 2. Homo habilis (“handy man”) • About 2.5 million years to 1.5 million years ago • Larger brain size than australopithecines • 3. Homo erectus (“Upright Man”) • Emerged about 1.6 million years ago • Associated with the development of “Acheulean” hand axe • Capable of some degree of complex language • 4. Homo sapiens (modern human) • Emerged in eastern & southern Africa about 200,000 years ago

  7. “Acheulean” hand axe One of the most versatile tools of prehistoric human H. Erectus spread out of Africa and took the acheulean tools

  8. Science in Support of History • A. Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) analyses of women from all over the world conducted in the late 1980s. • … concluded that all humans share incredibly close genetic relationships, so close that all human beings could trace their ancestry to a single female who lived in Africa about 150,000 years ago. • This is what scholars call the “Africa Eve” thesis

  9. More science in support of history • B. “Y chromosome sequence variation and the history of human populations.” Research by a group of scholars from several universities across the world in 2000. • Y-chromosomes are inherited only from fathers, and hence can be used in population studies to trace common ancestors • Research Conclusion: “A minority of contemporary East Africans and Khoisan represent the descendants of the most ancestral patrilineages of anatomically modern humans that left Africa between 35,000 and 89,000 years ago.” • Translation: All men/males in the world have Y-chromosomes that are traced back to an African ancestor

  10. Some references • http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/v26/n3/full/ng1100_358.html • http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11062480 • http://genome.wellcome.ac.uk/doc_WTD020875.html • http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/02/080221-human-genetics.html • (Read the National Geographic new-story)

  11. The 1st 100,000 to 150,000 years of human history was an exclusively African history • Development of earliest human culture and social skills • Emergence of first human language • Development of earliest human technological innovations • Earliest form of religious ideas • Earliest forms of economic activities

  12. Humans started to migrate out of Africa between 60,000 and 100,000 years ago

  13. Human migration out of Africa

  14. Africa and the 1st modern human in global perspectives • So, what does all these mean for our understanding of the position of Africa in global history? • Discuss pages 38-39 of Gilbert & Reynolds.

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