300,000 BCE Ben G Thomas subscribers special

Red Baron Farms

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Red Baron Farms
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The Earth 300,000 Years Ago | 300,000 Subscribers Special
I have been subscribed to and watching Ben G Thomas' YouTube channel for years now, but this newest video he made seems rather far fetched indeed.



African populations of Neanderthals? @26:30 ????? Come again? That's a claim that certainly needs heavily supported since the general consensus is that Neanderthals never had any populations in Africa! Where is the evidence for this bold claim? At first I just thought he misspoke accidently saying the wrong continent. But then he doubled down at @27:20 claiming by this time Neanderthals migrated out of Africa and spread to Eurasia! What???? Neanderthals originated in Africa and migrated to Eurasia? :jaw-dropp Come again again???? Where is this evidence???? Then again a third bold claim that I am almost certain has no evidence at all: Denisovans migrated out of Africa at about the same time as Neanderthals????? WOW talk about pure speculation! Who is the "we" in the claim he makes about "we think"???? I can't even find anyone even remotely making claims anywhere close to this, so where is this controversy he talks about in the scientific literature?

I have always been impressed with this channel, but maybe naively? Because this certainly sounds almost as ridiculous as any YEC argument to be!

Is there anyone here that can support his claims at all?
 
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rjh01 said:
Neanderthals did come from Africa. Otherwise, they would have had to evolved in Europe from another type of human. Does not take too much googling to find this out.


https://www.livescience.com/28036-n...als originated,the Middle East, to Uzbekistan.

Hint: It often takes two people to solve an issue like this. One to find the issue, the other to solve it.
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Well I congratulate you for finding that! It seems there may be a controversy after all.:eek: I just had never heard of it before.

Neanderthals never lived in Africa, but their genes got there anyway

and

Where did Neanderthals live?
Neanderthals evolved in Europe and Asia while modern humans - our species, Homo sapiens - were evolving in Africa.

Is there some better source you can point me to of Neanderthals evolving in Africa first, then migrating to Eurasia? Maybe a fossil?
 
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rjh01 said:
Neanderthals did come from Africa. Otherwise, they would have had to evolved in Europe from another type of human.
Click to expand...
Yes; it's called Homo heidelbergensis.

As the fifth paragraph at that link points out, there was a genetic study from which the authors inferred that the heidelbergensis-neanderthalensis line and ours had already separated before the time of heidelbergensis, in which case heidelbergensis was the ancestor only of neanderthalensis and not of us (mostly), in which case we might as well call heidelbergensis an early form of neanderthalensis. But, outside of that one study, conventional thinking has been to call heidelbergensis the common ancestor of both neanderthalensis and us, and that leaves neanderthalensis out of Africa.

I don't know what Ben G Thomas could be referring to other than Homo heidelbergensis grouped in with neanderthalensis under the latter's name, as the authors of that one study suggested. But, since that is not the usual description, just blurting it out like that without establishing why was uncharacteristically uncautious.
 
I am not going to play a game of who can find the most links. You can now do your own research and come to whatever conclusion you like.

I do know the history of early humans is rather sparse as not much DNA evidence exists. Other evidence cannnot be conclusive.
 
In some sense Neanderthals necessarily came from Africa, as that's whether the homo lineage began.

But when did their lineage leave Africa? As Delvo says it must have happened after their most recent common ancestor with Homo sapiens sapiens. Otherwise that leaves the sapiens lineage outside of Africa at that time.

So the split between modern humans and Neanderthals happened in Africa. What was that population of hominids that was living in Africa which was ancestral to Neanderthals but not modern humans? I think most people would call them neanderthals, though they may be something like proto-neanderthals and were probably also ancestral to Denisovans, etc.
 
Roboramma said:
In some sense Neanderthals necessarily came from Africa, as that's whether the homo lineage began.

But when did their lineage leave Africa? As Delvo says it must have happened after their most recent common ancestor with Homo sapiens sapiens. Otherwise that leaves the sapiens lineage outside of Africa at that time.

So the split between modern humans and Neanderthals happened in Africa. What was that population of hominids that was living in Africa which was ancestral to Neanderthals but not modern humans? I think most people would call them Neanderthals, though they may be something like proto-Neanderthals and were probably also ancestral to Denisovans, etc.
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Sure, I get that. But wasn't it homo-Heidelbergensis.? or maybe even homo-Erectus? ... or some other yet to be discovered lineage, that split and migrated out of Africa and then later evolved to Neanderthals?:confused:

Ben said there were "populations" of Neanderthals in Africa. :confused::confused::confused: And as far as I ever knew, the evidence supports that the split came before and whatever population stayed behind, developed into modern humans, and the split that migrated became Neanderthals and Denisovans. (with what is now known from genetic studies, quite a fair bit of gene drift between populations).
 
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