Lone Survivors Read Online Free PDF

data. For me, it gave greater confidence that even where the fossil evidence was patchier or more ambiguous, such as the Far East and Australasia, the story of replacement that I had read from the European record probably applied there too.
    In 1987 the archaeologist Paul Mellars and I co-organized an international conference in Cambridge where recent fossil and archaeological results were compared with the new DNA data, and the discussions were electric at times, as experts got to grips with the rapidly changing landscape of recent human evolution. A year later, taking the conference discussions and DNA analyses fully on board, I wrote a review of that emerging picture for the journal Science , with my Natural History Museum colleague Peter Andrews. We laid out the two contrasting models of Multiregionalism versus Recent African Origin and what would be expected from the fossil, archaeological, and genetic data if either model was an accurate representation of recent human evolution. (I actually prefer to use the term Recent African Origin [RAO], despite the popularity of Out of Africa, because we know from more ancient fossils that there were earlier human dispersals from Africa. Hence some people distinguish them as Out of Africa 1, Out of Africa 2, et cetera, although we don’t actually know how many there were—and no doubt there were some “into Africa” events as well!)
    Overall, we showed that RAO was best supported, although we recognized that the archaeological record in general and the fossil records of several regions in particular were still not adequate to test the models properly. I was shocked, though, by some of the vitriolic reactions to that paper. Both in the anonymous reviews that some other scientists sent to the journal before publication, and in letters and media comments afterward, scorn was poured on our views and interpretations, a scorn that seemed to extend to personal abuse at times. Relations became strained with a number of scientists, some of whom were people I certainly counted as my friends. Cordiality was eventually restored in most cases, but for a few people, what was seen as an extreme position, in league with the heresy of Mitochondrial Eve, was not easily forgiven or forgotten.

    Two of the architects of the Recent African Origin model, Günter Bräuer (left) and Chris Stringer, pictured in the 1980s.
    As more fossil and, particularly, genetic data emerged to support a recent African origin, what we can term the classic RAO model was developed by a number of researchers, including me, working separately or in collaboration. By the turn of the millennium, this had become the dominant view. Fleshing it out with the consensus view for earlier human evolution, the classic RAO model argued for an African origin of two human species— Homo erectus and Homo sapiens —and perhaps also of Homo heidelbergensis between them (in my view, though, the derivation of heidelbergensis is still unclear). Having evolved from something like the earlier species Homo habilis in Africa nearly 2 million years ago (Ma), Homo erectus dispersed from Africa about 1.7 Ma, in the event commonly known as Out of Africa 1. The species spread to the tropical and subtropical regions of eastern and southeastern Asia, where it may have lingered on, evolved into other forms, or died out. About 1.5 Ma, African erectus developed more advanced stone tools called handaxes , but these did not spread far from Africa until they turned up rather suddenly with the descendant species Homo heidelbergensis in places like southern Europe, and then in Britain, 500,000 to 600,000 years ago.
    So my view was that H. heidelbergensis subsequently underwent an evolutionary split around 300,000 to 400,000 years ago: it began to develop into the Neanderthals in western Eurasia, while the line in Africa had evolved into the ancestors of modern humans by about 130,000 years ago. The origin of modern Homo sapiens must