The Sun's not yellow it's chicken

There’s this completely debunked theory on human origins that goes like this:  Sometime around 100 thousand years ago, and 60 thousand years ago and less than 40 thousand years ago modern humans materialized out of thin air, down in Africa, and then they spread out across the planet.  Again, this theory has been debunked — past tense.  We know it didn’t happen that way, yet here is a story (amongst countless others) that perpetuate the myth.

Most of the issue seems to center on racism.  This, of course, is idiotic.  No racist gives a damn whether Europeans (or Asians) were separated from their home African population some 400 thousand years ago or only 40 thousand years ago. (After the first few 10,000 years one number is as good as another for them)

On the other end of the spectrum, there was plenty of gene flow, more than enough to keep us one species.  Plus an estimated 60% of the human population was in Africa back then anyway, so most of the genes would have been heading out of Africa. And, finally, Every population had it’s origins in Africa in the first place. Neanderthals didn’t spring up out of the ground in Europe.  They were simply regionally-adapted variants (or inbred) of a population from Africa.

We humans share 68% of our DNA with Fruit Flies, and nearly all of our DNA with Chimps. If we’re THAT close to insects, just how different do you imagine Asians are from Africans, or Africans from Europeans?

Answer:  In the grand scheme of things, roughly squat.

Racists haven’t defiled Paleoanthropology, the academics did that all on their own.  And that’s really too bad, because human origins is an important subject, one that can truly enlighten us, and yet Paleoanthropology isn’t a real science.