Rethinking Humanity's Roots; we focused on east Africa should we be looking to the south? [View all]

[Ichingcarpenter]

That disparity is about to change. The Cradle and other South African sites have ushered in a new golden age of discovery about our origins. Everything, from when our ancestors first commanded fire to the very shape of our family tree, is being challenged. The result: new species, new hypotheses and new controversies emerging from the deepest recesses of South Africa’s cave-strewn landscape.


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VERY BIG SNIP


Even more tantalizing were the results of a recent metaanalysis using 13 datasets, composed of 20 previously described hominin species and their fossils, and covering all 7 million years of human evolution. The study found Karabo most likely to be ancestral to the genus Homo — but not a descendent of A. africanus. The research, focusing on cranial and dental features, was the first of its kind to compare competing hypotheses on the relationships between various hominin species using a complex method known as Bayesian analysis. Despite the results, however, the issue of timing complicates our understanding: While Karabo was estimated to be living shortly before fossils of Homo show up in South Africa, there are Homo fossils in East Africa that precede it by hundreds of thousands of years.


http://discovermagazine.com/2016/march/13-rethinking-our-roots



In addition for a new fascinating doc on Africa and anthropology
watch this

First people series.

This one's on Africa but the series handles Europe, Asia, the Americas etc
The Africa series has an interesting story on this black woman who was tracing her family history. She had traced her family to a free black to
1720 in South Carolina but couldn't find any records before that then she did a DNA test and found that test discovered that a human ancestor went back to 375,000 years ago in west Africa.

The whole series is great but the America one is not up to date because of recent discoveries in Fla.