ABOUT THIS EPISODE
The past ten years... even the past five years... even the past two and a half years have totally rewritten a lot of the story of human prehistory. In this episode we review a large lump of scientific papers, few having made it into popular culture or general knowledge so far, but all painting a picture of human prehistory that is much deeper and longer than the old theorists behind recent Out-of-Africa migration theories.
We talk about human settlements in unexpected places and unexpected times, hidden genetic lineages and Neanderthal seafaring, language and construction. Too often do the "Well, actually!" crowd focus on listening to partial evidence instead of using their head, and we see how this has harmed the theories in the field of paleo-history. Soon, we'll move the microscope closer to home and talk about what early humans might've been up to all that time...
Readings and LinksNote that pay-walled academic articles may be obtained by feeding their URLs to sites like Sci-Hub.
- Smith et al. 2018. Humans trived in South Africa through the Toba eruption about 74,000 years ago. Nature 555.7697. Pages 511-515.
- Richter et al. 2017. The age of the hominin fossils from Jebel Irhoud, Morocco, and the origins of the Middle Stone Age. Nature 546.7657. Pages 293-29.
- Schlebusch et al. 2017. South African ancient genomes estimate modern human divergence 350,000 to 260,000 years ago. Science 358.6363. Pages 652-655.
- Hodgson et a. 2014. Early Back-to-Africa Migration into the Horn of Africa. PLOS ONE 10.6.
- Groucutt et al. 2018. Homo sapiens in Arabia by 85,000 years. Nature Ecology and Evolution 2.5. Pages 800-809.
- Demeter et al. 2015. Early Modern Humans and Morphological Variation in Southeast Asia: Fossil Evidence from Tam Pa Ling, Laos. PLOS ONE 10.4.
- Westaway et al. 2017. An early modern human presence in Sumatra 73,000-63,000 years ago. Nature 548.7667. Pages 322-325.
- Pringle, Heather. 2011. Texas Site Confirms Pre-Clovis Settlement of the Americas. Science, New Series 331.6024. Page 1512.
- Raghavan et al. 2015. Genomic evidence for the Pleistocene and recent population history of Native Americans. Nature 505.7481. Pages 87-91.
- Skoglund et al. 2015. Genetic evidence for two founding populations of the Americas. Nature.
- Ferentinos et al. 2012. Early seafaring activity in the southern Ionian Islands, Mediterranean Sea. Journal of Archaeological Science 39. 2167-2176.
- Jaubert et al. 2016. Early Neanderthal constructions deep in Bruniquel Cave in southwestern France. Nature 111.534. 111-114.
- Coop et al. 2008. The Timing of Selection at the Human FOXP2 Gene. Molecular Biology and Evolution 25.7. Pages 1257-1259.
- The Not Related! website: notrelated.xyz
- Donations will be read in the middle of each episode: donate.notrelated.xyz