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Comment by jmclnx | Hacker News Reader

I do not know why this keeps coming up :)

If apes did evolve outside of Africa, why did they not radiate across Asia ? Getting over to East Asia would have been far more easier than migrating into Africa and continue evolving there after disappearing from Europe. Yes I know about orangutans, but I would think after 7 million years there would be more diversity of Apes in Asia than Africa.

So I really find this hard to believe. All I can think is more fossils in the now dry environment of Türkiye probably survived than the humid areas of Africa.

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Gigantopithecus as well as many hominins besides Homo sapiens, did evolve and radiate across Asia?

Homo Erectus/Heidelburgensis/Neanderthals/Denisovans were all widely distributed outside of Africa. Neanderthals and Denisovans in particular have no records of ever having their range include Africa (Neaderthals may have lived in parts of North Africa but they’re firmly Eurasian). Homo Floresensis only ever lived in Flores.

Gigantopithecus, a giant non-hominin Ape, only has evidence of living in China. It’s thought to be related to Orangutans. You probably are dismissive of Orangutans because they are only a single ape (actually multiple species) outside of Africa in the present day but the Ponginae subfamily including Orangutans and Gigantopithecus had many other species, they are just now all extinct, but all were Asian: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponginae

That said, I do think there is no evidence that Homo Sapiens “evolved outside of Africa” and I suspect most people who do push this are doing so for either nationalistic reasons (we found early hominin fossils in our country, we must be where humans evolved and are the “original” humans!) or racism (not wanting to be descended from “Africans”). But it’s definitely possible there was gene flow from Homo Erectus outside of Africa back into Africa in a way that made it into the human genome, and many people have non-African human ancestry from Neanderthals and Denisovans

Exactly. The oldest evidence of archaic human tool use in Java, Indonesia is over 1.5 million years old with Homo erectus fossils going back 700 kYa [1], long before the earliest evidence of Homo sapiens. In Europe the oldest fossil remains date to 800 kYa at Atapuerca [2] (with cannibalism!).

It's just cultural egotism. It's especially meaningless if it goes as far back as 8 million years because even half a million is enough for hominids to spread across several continents and come back as different species.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prehistoric_Indonesia#Homo_ere...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaeological_site_of_Atapuer...

Yeah, the fact it’s an 8 million year old fossil really makes the tie to homo sapiens’ origins ludicrous. The earliest evidence for Australopithecus (where humans started to diverge from other apes like Chimps) was 4 million years old.

And there are already 12.5 million year old Ponginae (Orangutan relatives) fossils from India. Since all Ponginae are Asian but none are in human ancestry, that’d imply even earlier radiation of early African apes - which have just as much a claim to possibly being early human ancestors if they were pre-Ponginae - into Asia than this would.

> The oldest evidence of archaic human tool in use is Java

I misread that. :)

"All I can think is more fossils in the now dry environment of Türkiye probably survived than the humid areas of Africa. "

Lots of african land was humid before, but became arid or a desert as well.

Olduvai Gorge is pretty dry.

To be fair, all of it is hard to believe, or rather, unlikely when seen without further context. Climate may be a factor that influences fossil survival, but also one that influences migration. Especially if the rest (rhinos migrating from Turkey to Africa?) is also true. I guess we'll just have to wait for more information connecting the dots, if it's ever discovered.

It does however show that all these popular ideas about the origin of man are not rock solid.

There are very, very few ape species to begin with, and a large portion of them (from gibbons to Gigantopithecus) are Asian, extinct, or both.

Were there not a number of early human ancestors found in Asia?

For instance, homo erectus, the neandrathals, Homo floresiensis

There are early finds of Homo in China but these do not predate the finds in Africa.

Neanderthals and Homo floresiensis are not early ancestors and they lived at the same time as modern humans emerged. I believe that Neanderthals are a subspecies of Homo sapiens so they were able to interbreed with modern humans.

If they move south because of major climate changes in the northern hemisphere, that would be a materially different driver for moving towards Africa than moving East across Asia...

There's any number of reasons animals might migrate south rather than radiating in all directions. Lots of factors affect migration. It's certainly a question that needs answering, but far from a reason to dismiss the whole hypothesis.

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