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Human origins in Southern African palaeo-wetlands? Strong claims from weak evidence

Schlebusch, CM; Loog, L; Groucutt, HS; King, T; Rutherford, A; Barbieri, C; Barbujani, G; ... Thomas, MG; + view all (2021) Human origins in Southern African palaeo-wetlands? Strong claims from weak evidence. Journal of Archaeological Science , 130 , Article 105374. 10.1016/j.jas.2021.105374. Green open access

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Abstract

Attempts to identify a ‘homeland’ for our species from genetic data are widespread in the academic literature. However, even when putting aside the question of whether a ‘homeland’ is a useful concept, there are a number of inferential pitfalls in attempting to identify the geographic origin of a species from contemporary patterns of genetic variation. These include making strong claims from weakly informative data, treating genetic lineages as representative of populations, assuming a high degree of regional population continuity over hundreds of thousands of years, and using circumstantial observations as corroborating evidence without considering alternative hypotheses on an equal footing, or formally evaluating any hypothesis. In this commentary we review the recent publication that claims to pinpoint the origins of ‘modern humans’ to a very specific region in Africa (Chan et al., 2019), demonstrate how it fell into these inferential pitfalls, and discuss how this can be avoided.

Type: Article
Title: Human origins in Southern African palaeo-wetlands? Strong claims from weak evidence
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1016/j.jas.2021.105374
Publisher version: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2021.105374
Language: English
Additional information: This version is the author accepted manuscript. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher’s terms and conditions.
Keywords: Human origins, Mitochondrial DNA, Gene trees, Demographic inference, Africa
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Life Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Life Sciences > Div of Biosciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Life Sciences > Div of Biosciences > Genetics, Evolution and Environment
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS > Dept of Geography
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10128494
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