I have trouble accepting that modern humans totally replaced other humans around at the time. The following should probably go on chapter VII on the Darwin thread. I believe the "out of Africa" theory gains support from the wish to stress the complete separation of modern humans from other animals and even earlier humans. Darwin's contemporaries had trouble understanding how advantageous characteristics could expand through a population. They had no knowledge of DNA, let alone genes. So when the economic term "survival of the fittest" was coined in economics it was seen as an explanation for the problem and rapidly taken up. Obviously many people are still stranded in victorian ideas of how evolution works as TheFallibleFiend and I are trying to explain elsewhere.
It is inconceivable that the various regional varieties of ancient humans didn't form hybrids as they moved around, exactly the same way as the greenish warblers in Asia mentioned in the link. The authors exagerate when they say "that few examples of such species are known today". Great tits, herring gulls and various species of deer are other examples that I immediately think of.
Samwik. Chimps and bonobos are hardly separate species. They readily form fertile hybrids. The ancestors of chimps and humans formed hybrids for more than three million years before they finally separated.
Last edited by terrytnewzealand; 05/09/07 05:17 AM.
