Shlomo Shekelberg :
Modern humans did not originate in Africa; they likely first appeared in regions like modern-day Turkey or Iraq, where fully modern Homo sapiens traits cranial structure, body proportions, and genetic markers emerged. From there, they migrated into Africa and encountered long-isolated super-archaic populations, such as Homo erectus, Homo heidelbergensis, and other unknown lineages. Over thousands of years, these populations interbred repeatedly, leaving sub-Saharan Africans with ghost DNA from multiple archaic species, preserved by geographic barriers like the Sahara and shaped further by environmental pressures such as climate, disease, and resource scarcity. This hybridization created populations with distinct genetic, physical, and adaptive traits, meaning that sub-Saharan Africans are not simply “pure” descendants of African Homo sapiens but the product of migration, repeated interbreeding, isolation, and adaptation. The presence of multiple archaic lineages in African genomes, combined with the timeline of modern human traits appearing outside Africa first, makes this the most comprehensive and evidence-consistent explanation for the genetic and phenotypic diversity observed today.
2025-08-25 06:59:18