The History of Mankind

Ok so from basically reading wikipedia and then checking in my oodleplex of books on early human evolution etc… I have ascertained that modern humans appeared 200, 000 yrs ago according to genetics rather than fossils (which say 195, 000) – I’m going with the genes on this one.

There appear to be 14 anscestoral cluster wwith sucessive bottle necks in populations bringing the numbers of breeding pairs dangerously low, possibly as low as 1000 breeding pairs!

Homosapiens was spilt into subspecies Homo Sapien idalti (wise man) and possible Homo Sapien Neanderthalensis (extinct 30, 000 years ago and possibly diverged 500, 000 yrs ago from us!). Another possible sub-species is Homo rhodesiensis (though I want to check that one out more).

We are Homo Sapien Sapien.

50, 000 yrs ago we had full modern ‘culture’ this would be the Upper Paleolithic.

We left Africa 70, 000 (of course some of us stayed put but you know what I mean!). It is this exodus that is thought to have driven our sister species into extinction all of whom came from Homo erectus 2 Ma.

Mitochondrial Eve was 140, 000 yrs ago

Y Chromosomal Adam 60-90, 000 yrs ago (the big gene bottle neck is supposed to be 70, 000 yrs ago and possibly related to a Super Volcano eruption in Indonesia – Toba).

Because I am working on fiction here and not a scientific paper I am reading all the ‘alternative’ theories and stuff too – personally I do think there is a time discrepency with human evolution – I think we’ve missed something in the archeological record and/or the fossil record personally – this leads to fun things to play with for story writing 🙂

I have also started reading a big thick book called Gods of The New Millennium by Alan F. Alford which is full of interesting ideas for my novel! But it is going to take some reading :/

Posted: Saturday, October 17th, 2009 @ 2:50 pm
Categories: Uncategorized.
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2 Responses to “The History of Mankind”

  1. Marty Says:

    Isn’t research FUN!

    Just don’t get lost in it like I sometimes do. 🙂

  2. admin Says:

    I am loving the research but I think its also my largest problem were finishing stories are concerned :/

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