The Origins of Modern Man

Since time immemorial, man tries to explain its origin. Initially and lack of scientific knowledge man pleaded mythical and religious aspects to describe its genesis through creationism.

Lamarck (século XIX) - evolutionary current

Darwin - theory of African origin

Recent scientific and technological advances in the areas of Molecular and evolutionary biology and the field of archeology, suggest that the phylogeny of modern man, Homo sapiens, appeared in the African savannah.

Models that explain the evolution of Homo sapiens from Homo erectus

Multiregional model - centered on a simultaneous evolution in different parts of the globe, by the action of natural selection, from a successive wave of ancestors who left from Africa more than 1.5 million years; Out of Africa model - explains the common origin of humanity, through microevolution and only a small population on the African savanna that existed about 200 million years ago and subsequently found to have spread and diversified into other continents This model Out of Africa is the most consensual in the scientific community due to mainly genetic arguments.

Model Out of AfricaThe Ark of Noah, Black Eve, the hypothesis of substitution, the single source model and recent developments in Africa, are designations that some authors use the model to define the evolution of anatomically modern Man Out of Africa.

The mitochondrial DNA is a wholly maternal transmission mode, so do not recombine or mutates. Variance analysis of the molecular composition of mitochondrial DNA mutations and their neutral individuals suffered in Africans, Asians, Europeans and ameríndeos determine a supposed source of all modern human lineage;

The Y chromosome, by their paternal inheritance, nor recombines, with exceptions in some areas. The analysis of non-recombinant part of the Y chromosome in the current population, also demonstrates a recent origin African common between 100 000 a 200 thousand years.

Major evidence of this model

Expansion of Homo Sapiens

We identified five major population groups: Negroid (African), White (European), Mongoloid (Asian), American Indians (Native Americans) and Australoids (Australians and Papuans). Paleontological and genetic data suggest that these groups are the result of a complex history of human migration and their recombination with archaic populations, in combination with genetic factors and natural selection, which came into action, since Homo sapiens increased its population and expanded from Africa.

Migration

Initially a group of humans moved to the Northwest Asia through the Middle East and settled in Southeast Asia. Another group went to India and then to Southeast Asia, recombining them again. Part of the population went to the Pacific and Australia, and the other party, recombined again eliminating the traces in many African populations. Europe received from the Paleolithic, several waves of migration from the east. Already in the Neolithic farmers from the Middle East, Northern Caucasus and the Black and Caspian Seas and later from Greece, took its genetic material to Europe, expanding to the Iberian Peninsula.

Genetic studies have had a major role on the origins of modern man and his common ancestry. Also provided, profound evidence, that human "races" were biologically insignificant and that their variation is due to differences progressive factors from its origin, through geographical isolation and the rate of differentiation.

All modern humans share a recent common ancestor and the differences between people today are the result of the last thousands of years of history. Like all life on Earth has a common ancestor, also the story of the evolution of the modern human population shows a common ancestor to all humanity today.