The Migrations of H.sapiens

This chapter makes extensive use of Stephen Oppenheimer's
The Journey of Man
(Bradshaw Foundation, 2003)

A new interpretation of the genetic evidence for H. sapiens' journey across the globe.


Mitochondria, Y-Chromosomes and Haplogroups

Having set up a map of the locations of hominid archeological sites on Google-Earth it appers a simple task to connect the dots in a chronological order to view their migrations. All but the Neanderthals evolved in Africa and migrated to Europe, Asia, the Americas, and Australia.

This endeavor immediately runs into several difficulties: The archeological dates are often highly uncertain and subject to change, especially C-14 datings older than 50 000 BP. Neanderthals and Archaic H.sapiens are occasionally misidentified. And most puzzling, H. sapiens surfaces in the Levant, in Arabia, the Middle East, Indonesia, and Australia (125 000 – 60 000 BP) more than 30 000 years before he arrived in Western Europe (40 -30 000 BP).
Until the very early dates for the first modern humans in the Levant, Asia, and Australia were confirmed, the Out-of-Africa scientific camp assumed that the early northern exodus of modern humans to the Levant formed the nucleus from which Europeans and most Asians evolved.

The solution to these puzzles (at least for the migrations of H.sapiens) were supposed to lie in the distribution, migrations, and chronologies of present day genetic markers, especially the mtDNA haplogroups of the female mitochondria and the male y-chromosomes of today's populations. The value of mitochondria is that they are a particle in the human cell which is not subject to cell division. Mutations in Its DNA are inherited along mother-daughter lines and act as a genetic clock in the evolutionary context. Geneticists point out that mtDNA does not contain any geographical information; the location of the earliest mutation (haplogroup) can only be obtained from archeological recovered human fossil material. In the last 10 years various DNA sequencings of paleo-DNA (Neanderthals, Denisovans, selected other bones) have yielded new additional information.

The insight gained from the genetic evidence is startling: the characteristic mutations in our genes originate in Western Asia and the Middle East and were carried to Western Eurpe by our great-grandmothers only around 50 000 BP.

Here is a map for the mitochondria markers, which at first only serves to further confound the mind of the non-geneticist. A y-chromosome map is even more confusing.

Modern distribution of the haplogroups of the exclusively female mtDNA and simplified, their migrations
The squares give the approximate locations of the mutations characterising the haplogroups

The Seven Daughters of Eve

Besides Oppenheimer's migration map a book by Brian Sykes, The Seven Daughters of Eve (2001) is most helpful in elucidating the theory of human mitochondrial genetics to a general audience. Sykes explains the principles of genetics and human evolution, the particularities of mitochondrial DNA, and analyses ancient DNA to genetically link modern humans to their prehistoric female ancestors.

Following the developments of mitochondrial genetics, Sykes traces back human migrations and discusses the "out of Africa theory". He also describes the use of mitochondrial DNA in identifying the remains of Czar Nicholas II, and in assessing the genetic makeup of modern Europe.

The title of the book comes from one of the principal achievements of mitochondrial genetics, which is the classification of all modern Europeans into seven groups, the mitochondrial haplogroups. Each haplogroup is defined by a set of characteristic mutations on the mitochondrial genome, and can be traced along a person's maternal line to a specific prehistoric woman. Sykes refers to these women as "clan mothers", though these women did not all live concurrently. Indeed some "clan mothers" are descended from others (although not maternally). All these women in turn shared a common maternal ancestor, the Mitochondrial Eve.

The last third of the book is spent on a series of fictional narratives, written by Sykes, describing his creative guesses about the lives of each of these seven "clan mothers". This entertaining latter half of the book generally met with mixed reviews in comparison with the first part.

The seven "clan mothers" were given names by Sykes each corresponding to one (or more) human mitochondrial mutation.
All dates and origins are approximate:

Sykes' names

Haplo
group

Mutation
Date

Origin (educated guesses)

Ursula

U

55 000 BP

Western Asia (espec. U5, excl. Subgroup K)

Tara

T

50 000 BP

Mesopotamia/Fertile Crescent

Jasmine

J

45 000 BP

Near East/Caucasus

Xenia

X

30 000 BP

Western Asia

Helena

H

30 000 BP

South-West Asia, Most frequent in Europe

Velda

V

13 600 BP

Iberia

Katrine

K

12 000 BP

Levant

For a complete list of European mtDNA Haplogroups see: Van Owen/Wikipedia

Obviously our great-grandmothers come all but one from Western Asia and the Levant! - The professional geneticists scoff at this kind of interpretation of the mtDNA data, they consider this “story-telling”....


Modern Man's Journey into Asia and Europe

Since my space and expertise is limited, I have supplied links to Wikipedia articles describing the geneticists' terminology. That will not unravel the genetic conundrum. Fortunately in my searches I came across Stephen Oppenheimer's extensive and courageous interactive map, which in an admirable way does that for the reader. I recommend highly to pull up his map and explanations while reading this chapter. Oppenheimer succeeds to resolve the puzzling questions in the context of our present-day knowledge.
It turns out that the meanderings of H.sapiens were heavily influenced by the periodic cooling (ice ages) and the catastrophic climate change due to the explosion of
Mt. Toba in Sumatra 73 000 BP. The graph shows these events for Europe, North Africa, and the Near East.


The periodic climatic changes in Europe (LGM=Last Glacial Maximum, Würm Ice Age)

Finally I have constructed a Google-Map showing the Migration paths of H sapiens, the main archeological sites supporting these paths and their dates, and the potential origins of the relevant mtDNA haplogroups:
Google Map of H. sapiens' Migrations.

Synopsis of Modern Man's Wanderings

My brief “novelistic” synopsis of H. sapiens' treks out of Africa severely compresses Oppenheimer's professional account but also embellishes it with some of my own visions.

Some time, 125 000 years ago a group of hunters left the area of Herto Bouri in the Middle Awash valley in Ethiopia's Afar Mountains in East Africa. The group was lead by a powerful lady who had grown tired of the stultifying social life in this 35 000-years-old habitat of Herto Man (H.sapiens-idaltu). She and her men were more agressive and mobile than their local forebears. They were joined by a number of women and a few children, maybe 50 or 100 people. Some geneticists (A. Wilder et al 2004) believe the women were in the majority and shared the men freely among themselves..... There was little division of labor.
The climate was warm, they did not need much clothing. The African deserts were green and animals were in abundance. Their “tools” were obsidian scrapers and hand stone axes. To hunt birds and small animals they used slingshots, but did not know throwing-spears. They would, like the American Indians, hunt larger herds by driving them with torches over a cliff and then butcher the dead beasts. They walked and everbody, men and women carried a load, dried meat, baskets with their belongings and watertight baskets, in which they cooked by putting hot stones into the water or soup to boil it. They camped under overhangs or in caves, remaining often several years in a good spot in order to raise their infants. They multiplied rapidly.

Slowly, over many generations they made their way (3000 km) along the African shore of the Red Sea, through the Sinai into the Levant around 120 000 BP, where their camps were found in the caves at Qesem, Qafzeh and Shkul (Israel).

Here happened the first disaster. During the next 5 000 years Europe experienced a severe ice age, the temperature dropped precipitously. The deserts dried. The animals they had lived of went south or died out and by 90 000 BP H. sapiens had vanished from the Near East. Some may have been left behind or retreated south when this was still possible, because we find their traces at Abdur on the Buri Peninsula at the Gulf of Zula (Eritrea) by the Red Sea very close to the Horn of Africa. (A. Beyin 2011)

Oppenheimer does not mention that another troop of Herto Men had made their way (5600 km) through the Sahara to Jebel Irhoud on the Atlantic coast in today's Morocco (160 000 BP) where they were trapped by the same cold spell and perished.

The discovery of the Abdur archeological site by the Red Sea, however, produced a sensation:

An international group of graduate students led by R. C. Walter woke up one morning in January 2007 to find that they had camped on the surface of a 125,000-year-old coral reef, now six meters above sea level.
Embedded in the coral reef were fossil clams, scallops, oysters and crabs, and more significantly, two types of stone tools. They are the earliest evidence of humans living near a marine environment - perhaps the place where our ancestors first got addicted to oysters. Walter claims that whoever was using these tools was using them to harvest marine food resources, like crabs, clams, oysters....
In addition the students found two main types of stone tools: acheulean hand axes and obsidian tools, made from volcanic glass. This is intriguing, because acheulean hand axes were already archaic at the time – it was thought that the industry had died out by 300,000 to 200,000 BP. And the obsidian tools are usually associated with much later periods, and most commonly connected with early agriculture about 9,000 or 8,000 BP, rather than in a paleolithic context. It is even more surprising when the two are found together, especially when the hand axes are embedded into the backs of reefs in a marine context (text slightly modified from Oppenheimer/Bradshaw, op. cit.)

They had stumbled on a tool factory of Modern Man! That he used these tools to harvest and eat oysters is at first only ironic. Oppenheimer looked at them differently, to him they were the first “Beachcombers”.
Around 80 000 BP, sustaining themselves on seafood, restless “Modern Man” ventured Out of Africa a second time, this time along the coasts of Arabia, Middle Asia, the Indian Subcontinent and the connected South-East Asian islands. They must have travelled fast. 5000 years later, by around 75 000 BP they appeared at Kota Tampan in the Lelong Valley on the Malyasian Penisula (15 000 km). Their bones – newly dated fossils – and their tools were found buried in the volcanic ashes of nearby Mt. Toba, which dates them with precision.
Archeological evidence backed by mtDNA shows that H.sapiens forged on to Indonesia (Ngandong 70 000 BP), China (Liujiang 68 000 BP) and Australia (Mungo Lake 65 000 BP).

However, he left no traces on the Indian Subcontinent - and few genetic markers.... -

Oppenheimer got very excited:

Lake Toba in northern Sumatra is the world's largest active volcanic caldera (100x300 km) The volcanic eruption that resulted in Lake Toba 74,000 BP is known to have been by far the biggest eruption of the last 2 million years. This mega-bang caused a prolonged world-wide nuclear winter and released ash in a huge plume that spread to the north-west and covered India, Pakistan, and the Indian Gulf region in a blanket 1–5 metres (3–15 feet) deep. Toba ash is also found in the Greenland ice-record and submarine cores in the Indian Ocean, allowing a precise date marker. In our story the Toba eruption is the most accurately dated, dramatic, and unambiguous event before the last ice age.

Toba is also regarded by some as having caused a worldwide population extinctions as a result of the ‘nuclear winter’ that followed. I have taken this into account in my reconstruction. India bore the brunt of the massive ash fall, and may have suffered mass extinction, since the Toba plume spread north-west across the Indian Ocean from Sumatra. This event may explain why most Indian maternal genetic sub-groups of the two founder lines M & N are not shared elsewhere in Asia and the dates of their re-expansions are paradoxically younger (I.e. later) in India than elsewhere in East Asia and Australasia. (Oppenheimer/Bradshaw, op. cit.)

All traces of H.sapiens on the Indian Subcontinent north-west of Mt. Toba vanished in the nuclear winter after the eruption.

And then in 60 000 BP indefatigable H.sapiens reappeared as indicated by a dead Neanderthal man in Shanidar (Iraq) killed by a spear thrown by a Modern Man.... A sad reminder of Modern Man's superior weapons, agressiveness, and racial arrogance.

The groups, who survived the Toba holocaust in a sanctuary in the Indus Valley, turned West towards Europe and north-east across the lost continent of Beringia into North and South America. The westward group split off a contingent in the Levant (Ksar Akil 52 000 BP) that moved along the Mediterranean Coast into North Africa (Haua Fteah Cave, Lybia 40 000 BP)

After a short sojurn in Bulgaria (Bacho Kiro 46 000 BP), they created a series of famous sculptures along “Venus Street” in Austria, Moravia and Germany (Schelklingen 40 000 BP).
In the following 23 millenia, in an unprecedented explosion of artistic creativity they painted the Caves of Chauvet (33 000 BP), Cosquers (27 000 BP), Altamira (18 500 BP), Lascaux (17 300 BP) and numerous others in Southern France and Spain. Around 24 000 BP they had reached Gibraltar. Western Europe became the stage for the great Paleolithic happening, which is the subject of this investigation.

In the process their European predecessors, the Neanderthals were eradicated, actively by Modern Man, by epidemics, by climatic changes and by the rapid decimation of the large animal herds that had been their livelihood. Modern Man invented husbandry and argriculture and survived. By 20 000 BP only small Neanderthal settlements in Spain, Portugal and the Balkans were still alive. As a parting gift they left their souls and their burial customs to Modern Man. The beginnings of art and religion.