Latest / UK Column Radio / Jerm Warfare - Bruce Fenton on why the “Out of Africa” theory is bunk

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Jerm Warfare - Bruce Fenton on why the “Out of Africa” theory is bunk · UK Column Radio

0:38
Yeah, we were just chatting and before I press record about the
0:43
pros and cons of Asia and you just said that it's it's an
0:47
important region now because it's in focus.
0:51
Oh, absolutely. I mean, you know, I think most
0:54
of the, you know, the listeners will have or viewers would have
0:57
seen the story just in the last few weeks that, you know, they
1:01
turned up archaeology in China. That suggests that our story,
1:07
you know, as a species may well have a significant component of
1:11
evolutionary time spent in East Asia.
1:13
You know what I mean? That what's now the modern
1:16
Chinese region, if you go back a ways, you know, of course, the
1:20
idea that human beings evolved in Asia used to be the kind of
1:24
mainstream consensus view. And then with some of the
1:28
advances in, you know, genetic research, they came up with this
1:32
kind of, you know, the genetic Eve model.
1:35
And that inferred the idea that we had evolved in in Africa,
1:40
most likely East Africa. You know, this the idea of a
1:42
kind of an African Garden of Eden and obviously an AD and a
1:46
genetic Adam and a genetic Eve, you know, which obviously
1:49
structured around kind of Christian ideas that were still
1:53
kind of percolating, you know, even through the scientists of
1:56
the day. But if we if we look again at
1:59
the evidence today, I don't think we would have come to that
2:01
model at all because, you know, we have skulls from China and
2:07
also DNA data that indicate that, yeah, a great amount of
2:11
our evolutionary experience was down in East Asia.
2:13
And I'm just going to remind a little bit, say that people
2:15
aren't familiar that the very first humans that we would all
2:18
recognize as humans would be Homo erectus, right.
2:22
That emerges 2,000,000 years ago.
2:25
Now The thing is, today we find that Homo erectus fossils are of
2:29
equal age approximately in Eurasia and in Africa.
2:34
So. What about the Cradle of
2:37
Humankind that's here in South Africa?
2:40
Well, the the cradle of what I would call ape like humans or
2:45
human like apes, yes, you know, but but if, if you really look
2:51
at the current debate, there is a there's a a genuine debate on
2:54
whether we should be including any of those other earlier forms
2:58
as it as being humans. Now, that's not to say that they
3:01
didn't have some kind of genetic, you know, ancestry to
3:05
us, like they may have contributed some level of, you
3:08
know, it mixing with the human ancestors.
3:10
We don't actually know who the ancestors of Homo erectus were.
3:15
So there's a big question mark there, Jerome.
3:17
So we don't know where those people were because we're not
3:19
even sure who they were. What we do know is that most of
3:22
the homin like or you know what they're calling hominins, but
3:26
I'd say hominin like hominins is humans.
3:27
So there's there's a question. Are these humans?
3:30
They have human like traits. But until we see Homo erectus
3:33
emerge, we don't actually have anything that I think you and I
3:36
in the audience and in great many of the anthropologists
3:39
would agree on, are actually humans.
3:41
So Homo erectus appears at 2,000,000 years ago and you get
3:44
some finds down in South Africa, but you also have the Diminisi
3:49
vices like 5, you know, skulls from Homo erectus found in the
3:54
Georgian Republic of Dominisi. You also have traces of Homo
4:00
Homo erectus down in I think in Romania or Bulgaria around
4:03
2,000,000 years ago. There's two traces and stuff,
4:06
not fossils. And then over in East Asia, the
4:10
initial traces of hominin presence there are 2.2 million
4:14
years ago with actual tools and other traces.
4:16
And then about 1.8 million years ago you have Homo erectus
4:19
fossils. So if you think about that,
4:22
essentially Homo erectus appears right across the, the continent,
4:28
across the EUR Asian continent and Africa approximately the
4:31
same time. Now that's another problem for
4:34
this model because then how do we say that Homo erectus is
4:37
emerging in Africa, right? Because that's not at all clear
4:41
anymore because who are these people in China 2.2 million
4:45
years ago? And if they are the ancestors of
4:47
the Asian Homo erectus, well, they're present in China 2.2
4:52
million years ago. Homo erectus appears 2,000,000
4:55
years ago. We have Homo erectus definitely
4:58
in China by 1.8 million years ago.
5:01
Are Homo erectus evolving in China?
5:03
You know, there's, there's a, there's a big question there
5:06
that we can no longer with any confidence say that they're
5:08
African. Yeah.
5:10
So what you're suggesting is that the the Out of Africa model
5:13
is a bank? Yes, I mean we have to say that
5:17
it is, it's on very shaky ground, very shaky ground
5:20
indeed. So what we can say is there's a
5:22
lot of human like primates that are in Africa before 2,000,000
5:27
years ago. But I, I'm not convinced that we
5:30
should be calling any of them Homo, put it that way.
5:32
Because if you look at the actual morphology of these
5:34
creatures, we, we would not consider them human.
5:39
You wouldn't walk down the street and think, you know, that
5:42
just looks like a strange guy. You would think that is a kind
5:46
of ape man, you know, a Yeti or something, you know, you or, or
5:49
a chimp like man or a man like chimp.
5:52
Most of them were chimp sized. That's the thing you'll think
5:54
about is that when we talk about these australopithecenes and,
5:57
and you know, these other early kinds of hominins, as we called
6:00
hominins, they're they're basically the size of chimps
6:03
with chimp sized brains, but they have some characteristics
6:07
that are more human than chimps. But I don't think Ivoris would
6:11
would consider a slightly human like chimp as a member of the
6:15
human family. It's just so I think that the
6:18
story that's been sold to the public, if they really look a
6:20
bit closer, I I don't think that they would agree with some of
6:23
these these kind of assertions at all.
6:25
And I, you know, I used to accept them as well.
6:26
But the more you look at these other hominins and, and indeed,
6:30
there is a debate now, should we throw out herbilis that, you
6:32
know, even herbilis, which is 2.3 million years old, that
6:35
that's not really looking very human either.
6:38
And that's, you know, the, the closest to Homo erectus they've
6:41
found. And there's a debate whether it
6:42
should be removed from Homo. So there really isn't anything
6:46
before Homo erectus that we can say, well, that's a human.
6:49
You know, they do not look like humans and we have to say they
6:52
look more like chimps than humans.
6:54
So there is a, and also their brains.
6:56
The other thing is if they have a chimp sized brain and what is
6:59
probably a chimp like structure to the brain, I, I can't see how
7:03
we can include them as humans. I mean, I know that we want to
7:06
find, you know, words, these missing links and you know, how
7:09
did we turn up? But I don't think we're anywhere
7:11
near resolving that. I think the reality is what we
7:13
can say is around 2,000,000 years ago, humans evolve
7:17
somewhere either in East Asia or Africa or across multiple
7:21
regions at once from some kind of earlier hominin who's unknown
7:26
that it may have been habilis like creature, it may not have
7:29
been. It may have been an
7:30
australopithecine, it may not have been.
7:32
Nobody knows. But then, Bruce, where does the
7:36
out of Africa theory come from? I mean, it sounds very sort of
7:40
political then. Well, I, I think if you go back
7:44
to when it shifted from the idea of out of Asia.
7:46
And again, keep in mind, because when they found the fossils down
7:49
in Indonesia, you know, we found Java man and you know, some of
7:53
these early Homo erectus fossils, right?
7:56
So that that shifted the story to Southeast Asia.
8:00
And for quite a while it was accepted that these seemed to be
8:02
the ancestors of humans. And then they came up with this
8:06
kind of genetic model where they used modern African DNA.
8:09
And again, this is something I'm not sure if the public really
8:12
understand, but fully modern African DNA was sampled.
8:17
So in other words, people living in the last, you know, few
8:19
decades, not not ancient DNA. This DNA was used to then infer
8:24
our ancestry. It was assumed that African
8:27
people, right, had always been in Africa and were the, you
8:32
know, the, the remaining, you could say, you know, descendants
8:35
of these original people. And because their DNA suggested
8:41
that there had been a, a split around 70,000 years ago and that
8:45
there was, you know, this was the period when they think that,
8:48
you know, Eurasia was first entered by modern humans.
8:52
There was inference from looking at this modern DNA that, that
8:56
that's where everyone came from this split.
8:58
And they also found evidence of a fairly narrow ancestry back to
9:05
perhaps a single woman living about he's about 2 to 300,000
9:10
years ago. And similarly for a man.
9:12
And again, this was just inferred that they were in
9:14
Africa. Now, the problem with that, if
9:16
you think about it, is human beings are not like trees.
9:20
We don't just slowly grow across a distance as the forest
9:24
expands. We can just walk.
9:27
We can walk miles and miles. We can make small boats and sail
9:30
across an ocean. So this idea that the African
9:33
ancestors were always fixed in place is a really strange
9:36
assumption when you start to think about it.
9:38
So there's no ancient DNA involved in this.
9:41
So if you had, let's say you had really ancient human fossils and
9:45
you found DNA from a 200,000 year old African, now that could
9:50
help you to build a case for the idea that we we all trace back
9:54
to that ancestor in Africa. But we we don't have that.
9:58
The oldest DNA that's ever been sampled in Africa is now is
10:00
20,000 years old. That's nowhere near the start of
10:04
this story, nowhere near, right. So you remember this is all
10:08
being inferred by the baseless assumption that the ancestors of
10:13
these people were always in that place.
10:14
So that's the first thing that people need to kind of think
10:17
through is that what I consider is almost a fraud really,
10:20
because it's been, if you talk to people about this topic, they
10:23
will almost always say to you, DNA has proven that we evolved
10:29
in Africa and that that is one of the most baseless claims that
10:33
is popularly shared in this topic.
10:35
And I think I used to sort of accept it too.
10:36
I couldn't understand that this was DNA from modern Africans.
10:39
The other thing is that we don't have truly ancient DNA.
10:42
What you do have is fossils of these very early hominins.
10:46
And again, I, I question mark over them is that the majority
10:49
of the early hominins are australopithecines.
10:52
And you know, even earlier forms are found in Africa.
10:56
So if you go to the very early part of the story, you have the
10:59
majority of human like primates a spread between Africa and the
11:04
Mediterranean. And they're finding some, you
11:06
know, there's some evidence down in the Mediterranean that
11:08
potentially they may have even, you know, started off there.
11:12
But we know that the Miocene apes were down in the
11:15
Mediterranean and southern Europe.
11:17
There was a climate shift. They seem to have moved into
11:19
Africa along with giraffes and hippos.
11:23
And these things used to live in the Mediterranean.
11:25
So they crossed into Africa during a climate event.
11:28
And it, it seems like the majority of those Miocene apes
11:32
moved into Africa. Some probably stayed in Eurasia.
11:36
And there's a kind of an evolutionary hub for these
11:40
primates is, you know, in that region between Africa and the
11:43
Mediterranean. So if you kind of follow their
11:46
journey, then, yeah, you can say that they seem to be a mostly,
11:52
you know, African kind of mix of of species, a primate species.
11:57
So there's a kind of assumption that these are our ancestors and
12:00
that because the majority are in that region, that that must be
12:04
where we evolved. But the same time, you know, we
12:08
know that apes were in South Southeast Asia.
12:11
And indeed, in fact, you know, the the earlier ancestors of
12:13
myosin apes were in Southeast Asia.
12:15
We also know that today we're finding all kinds of evidence
12:19
for hominins, you know, in Asia from 2,000,000 years ago and a
12:24
little bit before. So this is no longer so clear.
12:27
What we can say is say for example, is chimps and gorillas
12:31
and stuff. Yeah, they seem to have evolved
12:32
in Africa, but even that is not completely clear.
12:36
They're doing because we have like 2 sets of fossils from
12:40
chimp ancestors and that's kind of crazy as well if you think
12:43
about it. You think, So where?
12:44
Where's all the evidence? Even the chimps really evolved
12:48
just in Africa because we have like 2 fossils from chimps so.
12:53
In your, in your book Into Africa, you, if I, if I remember
12:58
correctly, it's been a while, but you spoke about humans being
13:03
locked in Africa due to some sort of climate catastrophe, I
13:07
think what, 70,000 years ago or something.
13:09
Is that right? Yeah.
13:10
So, yeah. So what happened is you have, so
13:13
if you can imagine, so we have these Homo erectus are global
13:18
2,000,000 years ago, right? So we've got, we've certainly
13:22
got them down in South Africa. We've got some in, in the, you
13:26
know, the Caucasus region. You've got some in China.
13:29
We don't know where they've come from.
13:31
We just know that they're, you know, they're spreading out
13:33
across the world that eventually, you know, we see a
13:37
transition from, and it's assumed to be Homo erectus
13:40
because we, we don't see another potential ancestor for Homo
13:43
sapiens, but it assumes this our ancestor.
13:45
OK. So somewhere around about a
13:48
million years ago to 800,000 years ago, there is a, a
13:51
transition towards Homo sapiens. Now, it's not entirely clear
13:57
where that's happening. It's been inferred that that's
14:00
happening in Africa. But as, as you probably know,
14:03
you know, the recent discoveries in China is it's looking like
14:06
maybe that's happening in China, OK, just because we've got to be
14:10
able to sort the, the background of this.
14:11
So you've got this transition is occurring.
14:14
We know that there is also a severe bottleneck around about
14:18
this time 1,000,000 years ago to intra 1000 years ago.
14:20
There's been two different studies giving slightly
14:22
different dates around a million years ago or around 900,000
14:25
years ago. There is a contraction down to a
14:27
couple of 1000 people or less, right?
14:30
Again, they're not quite sure where this is happening, but
14:32
this precedes the transition to the first Homo SAP, first Homo
14:36
sapiens. I'm going to look clarification
14:38
as well because when we talk Homo sapiens, Jim, you know,
14:40
there's, there's a, there's two different understandings.
14:43
Yeah. And I want to clarify this is
14:44
quite important because you'll see that this confusion has come
14:46
up in a, in a lot of the discussions recently.
14:49
Like what do we talk about when we say Homo sapiens?
14:51
Because most people will immediately think of modern
14:54
humans, right? And, and they will say, well,
14:57
modern humans go back perhaps 120,000 years.
15:01
Some people say 200,000, others will say 300,000 will include
15:05
some fines in North Africa, right?
15:07
And Morocco that we've got. But but really, Homo sapiens, if
15:12
we're going to talk about it in a meaningful sense, not a vague
15:15
way, because this is something anthropologists are having a lot
15:18
of heated debates over. What do we mean by things like
15:20
modern human? What do we mean by Homo sapiens?
15:23
Because if Homo sapiens is just the wise man, well,
15:27
Neanderthals, Denisovans and us were basically seemingly almost
15:32
equally capable for most of our evolutionary history.
15:35
So from around 800,000 years ago, they all were developing
15:39
the large complex brains we can see.
15:42
They all developed significant, you know, really, you know, same
15:46
kind of tool technologies, you know, they were developing wood
15:49
glues and areas. And you know, that we've all
15:52
developed in a similar kind of way.
15:55
So Homo sapiens, from my perspective and not certainly
15:58
not just my perspective alone, is all of these large brained
16:01
humans from around 800,000 years ago, right?
16:05
Because they're all sapiens, they're all highly intelligent,
16:08
They can all make these tools. They're probably all sailing
16:10
from what we can tell. They're all capable of crossing
16:12
bodies of water. They're, they're also, the other
16:14
thing is they're interbreeding with each other.
16:17
So like, are there separate species?
16:20
You know, because if they recognize each other as
16:22
potential sexual partners, they have children.
16:25
The children are viable, can have other children that they
16:29
are able to mix, communicate in some way, share technologies,
16:33
which is shown. Then you know, Jim got asked,
16:36
are we talking about really separate species?
16:38
So that isn't really the behaviour of separate species.
16:41
So at the genetic level, we see also that these these
16:45
populations as well as rehearsals, you can call them
16:48
racist populations, subspecies, but essentially at the genetic
16:52
level which matters more, we see that they all share the
16:55
chromosome 2 fusion which happens around 800,000 years
16:58
ago. They share these what's called
17:01
anomalous accelerated region. So I'll just explain this very
17:04
quickly. There are areas of the non
17:06
coding DNA, which is what used to call junk DNA, these highly
17:12
conserved areas of code which is stable in all mammals except for
17:15
humans, which seem to have accelerated in their evolution
17:18
around about 800,000 years ago. Now these gave us our complex
17:22
brain. These give us the, you know,
17:24
recursive thinking, all sorts of stuff.
17:25
They're unique to sapiens, right?
17:28
But those are, those are found across Neanderthals denosomes
17:30
and us. So all the things that I think
17:32
you and I and most people would consider fundamental to sapiens
17:36
are found in Neanderthals, denosomes.
17:38
So this is 1 lineage, and I would put them all as Homo
17:41
sapiens. And then one of the conventions
17:43
is to say you can call them Homo sapiens, Neander Valentis, Homo
17:46
sapiens sapiens, Homo sapiens Denisova, right?
17:49
And that these are all just subtypes of Homo sapiens, modern
17:52
humans is a bit, again, a bit vague because then you have to
17:56
say, well, we're looking at the anatomy, right, and saying, OK,
17:59
well, around about 200,000 years ago, our skull becomes more
18:04
rounded. And so we think there's some
18:06
structural changes in the brain that make us different to the
18:10
remaining populations of nanophils and Denisovans.
18:13
And that we can say, OK, seems like there are some changes.
18:17
We know there are some genetic changes as well that we can now
18:20
say, OK, looks like we are changing in a significant way.
18:24
And these are called early modern humans.
18:27
And then over the period between 120,000 to 50,000 years ago, we
18:33
seem to get to the point where we are as we are today in terms
18:37
of both anatomy and behaviour. And also we have the behavioural
18:41
revolution. So a cognitive revolution where
18:44
you get the emergence of the 1st art that is fully representative
18:47
of, you know, real animals and people.
18:49
And you know, we start drawing that kind of art, not just
18:52
symbolic art, but actually representative art, you know,
18:55
people doing things. So there's some kind of
18:57
cognitive change also become ocean Mariners in Southeast Asia
19:02
around 40,050 thousand years ago.
19:04
So there's, so we can look at those points and say, OK, we
19:06
have sapiens from 800,000 years ago, early kind of modern humans
19:11
from around 200,000 years ago. And then what we might think is
19:15
fully modern humans from 100 to 50,000 years ago.
19:19
But I will say that those last three are all a bit abstract,
19:22
right? I, I think if we, we look at the
19:24
genetics, which tells us that's more about a real change, then
19:28
that happens 800,000 years ago. And that the, yes, there are
19:31
some significant changes around 200 to 50,000 years ago.
19:34
So I wanted to clarify that because I don't want these
19:36
terms. I don't think we all really are
19:39
sharing a meaning on what is a Homo sapiens, what is a modern
19:42
human, right? And if you look today at modern
19:45
humans, there's obviously variants in modern humans,
19:48
right? So again, what is the the
19:50
meaning other than all living extant humans are modern because
19:54
they all live in the modern age. But even then, you know, we've
19:58
touched on outside this conversation, you know, there's,
19:59
there are obviously some differences between populations
20:01
as well. So, you know, we may not get to
20:04
where we can say there's other species, but there's definitely
20:07
different, let's say strains of humans, you know, and again,
20:11
that gets. To why?
20:14
Why does any of this matter? Right.
20:17
Why does it matter? I think there's a couple of
20:18
different ways it matters, OK. One area is that in terms of
20:22
genetics that we're moving into an era where let's go on this
20:26
DNA data genetics, these, these are going to be, well, they
20:30
already are multi $1,000,000 industries based around
20:34
understanding your genetics, understanding your lineages for
20:38
medical treatments, for elongating the the span of your
20:42
life that there's going to be we are in a revolution.
20:46
We're looking to see. For example, if you have a rare
20:50
genetic profile, you may have something from say a Denisovan
20:55
ancestor that makes you have a skill that other people don't
20:59
have. You know, it could be a
21:00
cognitive skill, it could be a physical ability like, you know,
21:03
living and like we've seen in the Himalayan peoples that they
21:07
can live at high altitudes. But those genes essentially.
21:11
So you're the Asians. They, the Asians, they kind of
21:13
lead the world in technological progress.
21:16
Yeah. I mean, what what does this this
21:19
interest as to whether or not there's the genetic basis for
21:21
higher intelligence. And I think these are obviously
21:23
these are these are things that are being looked at very
21:26
carefully. Now we're starting to say, OK,
21:28
looks like, you know, if you come from population X, there's
21:32
a good chance that you have this particular gene or this
21:35
particular change in your non current DNA and that gives you
21:38
these particular differences that may be useful for gene
21:42
therapies, that may be, you know, useful for the
21:45
therapeutics and other areas. So there is a dollar value on
21:50
this topic. That's one of the things that
21:52
the second thing is I think understanding yourself and other
21:55
people has a value for most. Recognize that in fact, you
21:59
know, if you are to have a knowledge that helps you to, I
22:05
suppose, act and compete in the world with an advantage,
22:08
understanding what we mean even by humans.
22:11
And you know, what are we, how do we think?
22:12
What is the evolution psychology?
22:14
What is the evolution of our behaviours?
22:17
You know, what are the life hacks that we can employ by
22:19
understanding ourselves? I think that that's another area
22:22
that's important. And the third one is simply the
22:24
human interest that we are driven to understand our
22:27
history. That it's it's an area, if we
22:29
look around, look at all of the huge YouTube channels that are
22:31
based just on the mysteries of the past, that there is
22:34
something about us that we feel driven to first understand
22:39
information, which not all of it has any intrinsic value.
22:42
I mean, let's to to know exactly who made, say the Olmec heads or
22:45
even, you know, exactly how were the blocks lifted in the
22:48
pyramid? They probably don't have great
22:51
value for any of us. You know, once they were
22:54
answered, I don't think they would be life changing.
22:56
Yet we do have this sense of a driven want to know, you know,
23:03
what did our ancestors do? They're part of our story.
23:05
You know, we want to understand our story.
23:08
But you know that a large percentage of my audience is
23:14
going to switch off purely based on the fact that you're talking
23:17
about evolution. Are we discussing Darwinian
23:22
evolutionary theory? Yeah.
23:26
But part parts of it, I mean, like my view is I guess more
23:29
nuanced. Look, you know, I think the
23:31
really interesting thing about, OK, I look at the work just like
23:34
different everyone else. Again, my focus and what I think
23:38
is important about that story is in the genomic level, really.
23:42
So again, so most of the anthropological story and the
23:46
evolutionary biology story has been about form.
23:51
And like, you know, looking at the difference between, you
23:52
know, Neanderals had a big brow Ridge and, you know, they were
23:56
short and squatty like trolls. And, you know, so they're like
23:59
focusing on that and saying, you know, these are the species of
24:01
Neanderthals. These are species.
24:02
Like what I found is that that there are anomalies that precede
24:08
the appearance of our form and that it ran into 1000 years ago.
24:13
There are anomalous changes in the genome that lead to the
24:18
appearance of humans. And the I say he's anonymous.
24:20
So unlike in any other mammal that's being scientifically
24:24
examined, it seems that something has happened that's
24:27
different for us. And that's, so there's two
24:31
points of interest. One is the fact that, OK,
24:33
there's a glaring red flag. Why are we different?
24:36
What has happened here? Considering we're the only
24:38
species that goes on to be able to fly in spaceships and stuff,
24:41
right? So obviously we're very
24:43
different to the other animals. So when you find that there's
24:46
also anomalies associated with that difference that, you know,
24:50
aren't seen in the other mammals, then that also becomes
24:54
very intriguing, right? Because we have a lot of stories
24:56
from, you know, religious stories and and also ancient
24:59
cultural stories that suggest that humans were different, that
25:02
there was some kind of, let's say, an intelligent
25:05
intervention, whether or not from something happened,
25:10
something's different here. It looks to me that there is
25:14
being a deliberate intelligent modification of the genome in
25:19
some of these Homo erectus and that we are not talking about
25:23
just a natural flow of events that there is.
25:27
I'll give you a very quick overview of this.
25:28
There are several types of anomalies.
25:30
I mean, if you're happening, I can give you a quick overview of
25:33
why I say this, right. So when we get to so when we get
25:37
to around 100,000 years ago, so we've just come out of a very
25:41
suspicious bottleneck. And again, so people have kind
25:44
of looked that, looked that up, they can see that, you know,
25:45
there's around 900,000 years ago, humans almost went extinct.
25:49
It was covered quite widely in the press.
25:51
So they found that something happens where we are narrowed
25:54
down to about 1000, I think it's 1400 people, you know, breeding
26:01
people. So obviously there's other
26:02
people who are not breeding. We don't know how many old
26:04
people, but the people that were capable of breeding, you know, a
26:07
very small number. And that was a drop of 99% of
26:12
the population previous to that point, right?
26:15
That's that sounds like a cataclysm.
26:18
OK, on the one hand. And that's the way it's kind of
26:21
being framed at the moment. So there must be some kind of
26:23
lost cataclysm that we don't know about, you know, that, you
26:26
know, probably an environmental disaster that wiped out these
26:30
other people, and yet they can't find any evidence for that.
26:33
Now, my view on that is quite different.
26:36
I think that what happened is that around that time, the human
26:40
ancestors are down in Southeast Asia.
26:43
And again, recent stories, I'm sure people have seen this idea
26:45
that there was sailing to Sulawesi and to Flores over a
26:49
million years ago. OK.
26:50
There's very recently that's been, again, major news.
26:53
Now, if you think about it, if our ancestors were SE Asians,
26:58
not Africans, right, we're SE Asians when these groups crossed
27:02
the Wallace Line, which is like a chair, you know, geological
27:05
barrier that separated most of the mammal life from the
27:08
Oceanian unique flora and fauna, right?
27:11
It's mostly marsupials and, you know, their own indigenous plant
27:14
species that we somehow managed to cross.
27:18
So in other words, someone is building watercraft, probably
27:21
just simple bamboo rafts, but they managed to get across to
27:23
these islands. Well, funnily enough, it's not
27:26
long after that crossing that we see this 99% drop in the human
27:31
population. Well, there's one other way you
27:34
can get that kind of drop without a cataclysm, and that is
27:36
isolation. Like if a small splinter group
27:39
of humans broke away from the the major, you know, global
27:43
population, and if those people are our ancestors, that will
27:47
look like a cataclysm. What you'll see is a is a sudden
27:50
bottleneck. And that's exactly what they
27:52
found here, is that there's a 99% drop not long after humans
27:56
cross into these islands. So if you think about it, to me,
28:00
it looks like our ancestors are these first sailors that they
28:04
have sailed across to Flores, they've sailed to Sulawesi.
28:08
And then if you look on the map, everyone looks on a map, what's
28:11
what's really close to these islands?
28:12
Well, the enormous continent of Australia, if you can sail
28:16
across Wallace's Line and you can sail between these islands,
28:18
which have got powerful currents to take you out into the Indian
28:21
Ocean today, professional sailors say they struggle
28:24
getting across some of these channels because you'll be
28:27
pulled southwards. But somehow these people did it
28:30
right. Then you only need to go South
28:33
from these islands to hit Australia.
28:35
And so there's a big question mark.
28:36
When did humans reach Australia? But I think that we probably
28:39
reached it not long after this. So this, this region of the
28:42
islands of Southeast Asia, northern Australia I would say
28:45
is where our ancestors are when this change happens and this
28:50
change is quite profound. We see that around 8 and 3000
28:53
years ago we get the fusion of chromosome 2 that we touched on
28:56
earlier. So we can see that in the
28:57
genome, 2 ancestral chromosomes that are seen in our closest
29:01
relatives and, you know, the primates and assumed to be in
29:04
Homo erectus and other hominids to fuse together in an end to
29:07
end telomere to telomere fusion. Now these these are very rare
29:12
kinds of fusions. I mean, from what I can see,
29:15
they're known in a couple of other species.
29:18
They are not common because the telomeres protect the ends of
29:23
your chromosomes in such a way that this really, yeah,
29:25
shouldn't happen. That's kind of the point of the
29:27
telomeres. So there's a direct fusion.
29:30
The dating on this suggests it happens around 800,000 years
29:33
ago. There's also changes to the
29:35
information on this chromosome. So it looks like there's
29:37
additions and deletions on the chromosome, right?
29:40
And this, these changes also have an effect on the brain, the
29:43
immune system, reproductive system.
29:46
But that in itself is strange. We know that's at the, the base
29:49
of the beginnings of Denisovans, Neanderthals and us, right?
29:52
That that's right at the base. When this split happens, we
29:55
start seeing all these large brain humans.
29:57
So alongside that you also get some really, really strange
30:01
changes in the non coding DNA. Again, we touched on earlier the
30:04
idea of what you used to call junk DNA now is known as non
30:07
coding DNA. So this is the vast majority of
30:11
DNA. But most of your genome is not
30:13
their coding genes. It's it's regulating the genome.
30:18
So these regulation areas would decide where they'll switch on
30:22
genes, switch off genes, they change the amount of expression
30:25
of a gene. So, you know, if you have an arm
30:27
gene, if the expression changes, you know, you can have longer
30:29
arms, shorter arms, you know, if the arm gene turns off, you've
30:33
got no arms, you know. So they're doing really
30:35
important functions. Now suddenly, at this same
30:38
period in time, a number of extremely stable genetic
30:44
regulators are suddenly massively changed.
30:47
And I say so I'll give you one example, Har one, which was the
30:51
first one of these human accelerated regions that was
30:54
detected is a a short 118 DNA letter long piece of code.
31:01
It was contrasted between humans, chimps and chickens.
31:07
And the chicken and the chimp have been set in terms of
31:09
conventional evolutionary theory.
31:11
They've been separate for 300 million years, obviously very
31:15
different species, you know, barely related.
31:18
And they found that 2 letters had changed in that time.
31:22
So we've got a kind of a mutation rate there of 1
31:25
mutation per 150 million years. I mean, I think we all agree
31:29
that sounds pretty damn stable, right?
31:33
And then you have a contrast between the chimps and humans.
31:36
And again, in the conventional models, they've been separate
31:39
for about 7,000,000 years. So you'd expect no change.
31:44
A rate of 1 per 150 million years.
31:46
They should be identical, OK. And instead what they found was
31:49
18 letters had changed. So this was totally unexpected.
31:53
And in their own models, they said that basically when they
31:56
they put it through the biostatistical, you know, models
31:59
and it comes up with essentially a 0 percent chance of this
32:03
happening by any understood evolutionary mechanisms.
32:07
They've now found there are several 100 several, there's a
32:10
couple of 1000 or so of these that they've got to now.
32:13
And these are mostly to do with the brain, particularly the
32:16
development of our brain during the fetal stages.
32:20
So over half of these anomalies that have been detected are to
32:24
do with the fetal brain development.
32:26
That makes us different to all the other primates and hominins
32:30
right now, if we talk about random evolution, which is again
32:33
at the base of Darwinian evolution, is the idea of random
32:38
mutations and natural selection. OK, well, this isn't random
32:44
because if half of the first of all, if these changes are going
32:47
against the evolutionary theory that they shouldn't be
32:50
happening, first of all, that's not fitting the model.
32:53
The second thing is that they are suddenly giving us
32:57
advantages. Doesn't look very random.
33:01
And that 50% of them are to do with the brain.
33:03
Well, that implicitly isn't random.
33:05
Random is all parts of your body changing, right?
33:07
That's random. 50% or more changing your brain is not
33:11
random. So what do you think is going
33:14
on, Bruce? To me it looks like deliberate
33:18
technological modification of the genome of the hominins
33:23
living at that time. Obviously that's a super
33:25
controversial take, but the only thing that we know.
33:28
Wait, wait, wait, wait. Hang on, hang on, hang on.
33:31
Be more specific, right? It has to be a non human
33:35
intelligence. It has to be something that is
33:37
not a human being. God.
33:40
God or an alien? Right, you're left with God or
33:43
aliens. Now the most of the intelligent
33:46
design community today leans in towards it being God, although
33:50
that's not implicitly stated. But I think you'd probably
33:53
agree, and I think most people agree.
33:54
If you look at intelligent design in general, the majority
33:57
of scientists in ID today are coming at it from a religious
34:01
perspective. And that they usually will infer
34:04
that what they're talking about is a grand creator of the
34:06
universe. And they look for signs of
34:08
creation throughout the universe and in life, and particularly in
34:11
humans. And that they will infer that
34:13
this is the handiwork of a divine creator.
34:17
Now, I take issue with that because while we can never
34:20
dismiss that, you know, because of course a being that can do
34:23
absolutely anything can do absolutely anything, right?
34:25
So of course you can always invoke it.
34:27
But if we look at humans in particular, what we find is that
34:30
there are many errors amongst these anomalies and that we have
34:34
a lot of problems as a species, particularly genetic problems,
34:38
reproductive problems, problems in the development of the
34:41
fetuses we have. Also things the other primates
34:43
have, don't have. And that many of these issues
34:45
are linked to the same areas that we're seeing that changed
34:48
to give us the brain and to give us this unique anatomy.
34:51
Now, if we tomorrow a perfect engineer, the perfect creator,
34:55
right, Not the universe, how would that happen exactly?
34:58
Why is he making so many errors with us?
35:01
So I don't see that this is the handiwork in the universe around
35:05
me. Jerome.
35:06
I see, yes, the handiwork of some supreme intelligence that's
35:10
given us stars and black holes and a cosmos and, you know, the
35:14
whole background to the existence that we have.
35:17
But downstream of that, there is the action of intelligent beings
35:21
like us. You know, we've modified our
35:22
environments. We can do genetic engineering.
35:25
We do all sorts of stuff, right? Which we can't then say that if
35:28
we modify a spider to spin, you know, metals, which we're doing
35:34
stuff like this, right? We're doing that is not the
35:37
handiwork of God directly. We can infer that we are doing
35:40
it because God once created life, but that's not the handy
35:43
direct. That's the same thing I think
35:45
we're seeing here is we're seeing what looks to me like the
35:48
fingerprints of an intelligence, but not a divine intelligence,
35:52
not something that can just, you know, click its metaphorical
35:55
fingers and make a perfect species.
35:58
No, because there's too many errors.
36:01
Simon But it almost sounded like you're going to say The
36:03
Fingerprints of the Gods, which is a famous title.
36:07
Well, you know, I do. I do have an article called The
36:10
Fingerprints of the Genetic or Alien Genetic Engineers, because
36:13
it is of that vein. You know that when we look at
36:15
this, to me, the errors are almost as important as the
36:21
upgrades. You know, and we hear a lot of
36:23
upgrades when people sort of say that they think humans were
36:26
modified. You know, obviously whether an
36:28
ID or in, you know, some of these other more fringe ideas
36:31
like the Sumerian text suggesting that humans were
36:34
modified, You know, they try the Anunnaki and some of these ideas
36:37
and people try upgrades. That's quite I.
36:40
Yeah, yeah, David Icke talks about that.
36:42
Right. Well, The thing is, I I'm as
36:44
interested in the errors as I am these upgrades for this reason.
36:47
Because if you're going to differentiate between God and as
36:51
you know, a supreme creator and the actions of other non, you
36:56
know, non divine or small gods, you know, G small G God beings
37:00
that have amazing abilities and probably technologies that we
37:03
can't fathom what would differentiate their work from a
37:07
divine creator? Well, I think it's the errors.
37:10
So right. So, and The funny thing is that
37:13
if you look at our species, particularly the reproductive
37:17
problems that women have, right, we are quite unique in that a
37:21
huge number of pregnancies end in spontaneous abortion.
37:26
And that is mostly to do with a, a self fixing system where
37:29
genetic errors in the fetus are detected by the woman's body and
37:34
it spontaneously aborts them, right?
37:36
So there's a huge percent of these fetuses that have genetic
37:40
problems. And, and even with that function
37:43
there, we know a lot of pregnancies end up with children
37:46
that have genetic problems still even with that and that we have
37:51
all kinds of. That shouldn't.
37:52
That shouldn't happen if it were God.
37:54
Right. If God's doing this, and by the
37:57
way, Jim, aren't we told God's against abortion, so why is God
38:01
aborting something like 20% to pregnancies?
38:04
Yeah, yeah. Right.
38:05
So there's to me that again, these are questions that people
38:08
don't seem to like to tackle because it would make God the
38:10
ultimate abortionist. What?
38:13
That's not supposed to be part of the story.
38:15
So something else is happening here.
38:17
And we can see that there's this isn't seen across our closest
38:20
relatives. And in fact, we also have some
38:22
most difficult birthing right problems.
38:26
Well, women dying in Shabbat, It's not it's not new for for
38:31
ever since we've been in a species, you know, we've had
38:33
these problems where either the pregnancies are a problem, the
38:36
birth is a problem. We have some of the painful
38:38
birthing process of any of the primates, right.
38:42
We have more genetic anomalies and problems than any of the
38:45
other close relatives. And the reason why you haven't
38:49
like and again, I just pause that and say now the whole one
38:52
of the main processes in evolution is supposed to be kind
38:56
of the the reading us of problems through natural
38:59
selection. So good things are preserved,
39:02
bad things are got rid of. So you got to say, OK, well,
39:06
considering that the most important process for any
39:10
Organism surely is reproduction, right?
39:14
Like if we just take it from a background view of evolution and
39:17
life, that the most important process for the survival of any
39:21
Organism is it reproduces and has offspring which is
39:24
successful and they can reproduce.
39:26
So evolution should be working in the background to rid us of
39:31
all of these problems. And it's had plenty of time.
39:34
It's had at least 800,000 years, right?
39:36
It's had plenty of time. So they're still there.
39:38
Well, why is that? Well, it turns out that many of
39:42
the gene changes and sort of and the non coding changes as well
39:46
that give us these, let's call them, we can call them brain
39:49
upgrades if you like. But they give us the the
39:51
abilities that we have that make us unique and allow us to have
39:54
all the technologies and also the anatomy like firms and
39:57
everything, you know, these things that we have unique to
39:59
us. It turns out there are a lot of
40:01
the same areas of. The code that gave us that are
40:04
causing these problems, these genetic problems.
40:07
So evolution can't help us because if it was to rid us of
40:12
those areas by saying, OK, you know, those we cleared away
40:16
because they're affecting evolution, Well, it can't
40:18
because our brain that's giving us the advantage is part of
40:22
those same areas of code. So it's not, they're not going
40:26
anywhere. The only way to address that
40:28
would be ironically through genetic engineering, which is
40:32
how they got there in the 1st place.
40:34
That's exactly it, kind of. It speaks to the fact that these
40:36
are problems, are not problems that nature has baked in.
40:39
These are very strange changes and the only way they can be
40:43
fixed is through genetic engineering.
40:44
So it's kind of pointing to how they got there in the 1st place
40:48
that evolution is incapable of dealing with this because he
40:51
would have to get rid of our large brains to get rid of these
40:53
genetic problems. But what's interesting, Bruce,
40:56
is then you're implying that something a long time ago was
41:02
playing around with with humanity.
41:06
And does that at all play into the simulation theory that we've
41:12
often heard about, or or not? Well, I'm pretty unique in terms
41:17
of people that, you know, in this kind of field that spend a
41:20
lot of time in the anthropological world is to say
41:21
that we have to consider, you know, whether or not we are in
41:25
some kind of simulation. And I've always kind of ironic
41:27
stuff. So debates with other, you know,
41:29
I guess thinkers in this area, and I don't know of any
41:32
anthropologist of myself that even consider that, well, how
41:36
would what we observe in the evolutionary story be impacted
41:40
if we might live in a simulation?
41:43
You know, and I think the real questions we have to ask, we
41:45
say, well, you know, could someone program in some of this
41:48
stuff? You know, what kind of
41:49
simulation are we in? Is it, are we in a technological
41:52
simulation like a really something generated in some, you
41:55
know, quantum supercomputer by some civilization, in which
41:59
case, you know, some anomalies you can simply look at as could
42:03
someone just change the settings on the simulation and therefore
42:08
change us? And also if you involve aliens,
42:13
again, I mean, obviously just, I'm not sure which is more
42:16
controversial to them, aliens or the simulation, to be honest.
42:18
Obviously they're both radical interventions into our story,
42:22
right? They, they should radically
42:24
change how we view our world, ourselves and our evolution, how
42:28
we got here, right? They have to.
42:31
But I mean, when you look at say, for example, now there's
42:33
this mystery of how certain hominins got to distant islands,
42:37
you know, so they, they're still arguing of did they have boats
42:40
or not? OK, which, OK, fine.
42:42
But if we are invoking aliens and I, I don't use this as an
42:45
argument generally, but Victoria just picked up some hominins and
42:50
put them there. So I mean, these are things that
42:52
they're not, they sound wacky to people.
42:54
But if there are other intelligences operating, they
42:57
can do whatever they want. I mean, they don't have to work
43:00
with what seems reasonable to us.
43:01
So we'll spend a long time arguing over, did someone once
43:04
build a bamboo canoe, you know, to get somewhere.
43:07
But if there is another player in our solar system with crafts
43:11
and technologies and that they've been involved in
43:13
experimenting with us, well, they can come down, pick up some
43:17
humans and take them to Socotra, which is where they, you know,
43:20
they found evidence of, it seems that humans reached Socotra
43:23
maybe 2,000,000 years ago. And as you probably know, it's
43:25
off quite, quite a trip off the coast of South Africa to the
43:28
island of Socotra. And if we're saying that humans
43:31
got there about 2,000,000 years ago, which is supposed to be
43:34
long before hominins had figured out watercraft, well, there's
43:40
other ways that could happen. Like, you know, yeah, if we're
43:42
in a simulation, it could just be you modify the simulation and
43:46
that they're there. Or it could be if there's aliens
43:49
involved, they fly down in a craft and they take beings
43:52
there. But I mean, no other real kind
43:54
of anthropological thinker would invoke those.
43:57
And I understand why. You know, they don't want to be
43:58
ridiculed. They don't want all the
44:00
controversy that comes with saying that.
44:02
But these are not unscientific ideas.
44:04
They are scientific ideas, but they're just on the fringes that
44:07
there's nothing in them that evokes, you know, magic.
44:11
We're not talking about like magic.
44:12
We're talking about things we understand.
44:13
Yes, you can simulate worlds. We're getting towards that.
44:17
And yes, you can have technologies that move around.
44:20
We have helicopters. But I mean, obviously, you know,
44:21
if an advanced race had craft that can get here, then they
44:25
certainly have craft that can move hominins around.
44:27
And so while I don't tend to make those arguments, I keep
44:30
them in the back of my mind. I think, well, are there
44:32
problems that we see sometimes that are so strange that the
44:36
only way that you could really answer them right now is by
44:40
saying some other technology, you know, hugely further along?
44:46
Is it work and is? Bruce does this also mean that
44:52
if the out of Africa theory should be, do I say rejected or
45:01
do I say shelved? But that theory, that theory
45:07
argues that we all have a common ancestor.
45:10
Basically it's black people, right?
45:12
The whole world, we all, we all basically come from black
45:14
people, and I think that's generally laughable for a number
45:20
of reasons. Alternatively, then, is what
45:24
you're talking about perhaps suggesting that there are
45:28
multiple origin stories? Well, yes, I mean, I think the
45:33
multi regional theory makes more sense, particularly if we, you
45:37
know, consider what I said earlier that if Homo erectus is
45:39
really our ancestor, which it looks like again, that's not
45:43
contras to say, that's pretty much the mainstream view, right.
45:47
And if Homo erectus is in the caucuses, is in Southeast Asia,
45:52
is in China and in Africa, then you no longer have really a leg
45:57
to stand on to say, but it must be the ones in Africa that were
46:01
our direct ancestor. That is that is not a scientific
46:04
position you can hold anymore. I don't see how anyone can now
46:07
at this point with all the evidence we have that if you
46:10
were to start fresh, right, which is, which is, I understand
46:14
that's a difficult problem for anthropology because you, you're
46:15
building on decades of, you know, teaching learning dogma,
46:22
right? So you're, you're not coming in
46:24
with fresh eyes if you've gone through the, the process of
46:28
becoming a mainstream anthropologist.
46:29
And I don't want to disparage everyone because there are of
46:31
course, free thinkers in that. But if you were to come in fresh
46:34
today, Jim, and just look at the data available, you know, look
46:37
directly at the genetics, look directly at the fossils, at the,
46:41
you know, the archaeological evidence, you would have to say
46:44
that, well, Homo, Homo erectus appears to be the first true
46:46
human, the first real Homo. All the other ones should be
46:49
booted out. Anything before 2,000,000 years
46:52
ago does not look like a member of the Homo genus.
46:55
They just don't. So boot them out.
46:57
So that puts Homo erectus as a global population already and
47:02
then it can be evolving, interbreeding with each other
47:05
across all these regions. And at some point Homo sapiens,
47:09
but not just possibly other variants, but Homo sapiens
47:13
emerge from this regionally into breeding population because
47:17
these Homo erectors are almost certainly they're mixing with
47:20
each other across the, your gene flow will be going across
47:24
Eurasia and Africa because they're all essentially the same
47:26
species, right? There's no particular reason
47:28
other than times where they're cut off geologically, you know,
47:31
and there'll be times when populations are isolated because
47:34
of climate or migration to somewhere new, But that if we're
47:38
talking the long term, there is sharing of genes across the
47:41
region. So this is a multi regional
47:43
view. And then at some point, and I'm
47:46
saying 800,000 years ago in Southeast Asia particularly, we
47:49
have a change that leads to a new lineage of Homo sapiens,
47:54
which I'm putting down in Southeast Asia and Australasia
47:57
in that region. Because again, the evidence
48:00
points to a migration into that region at exactly the right time
48:04
to explain that population drop that they found now, which was a
48:07
prediction of my model is we should have seen a bottleneck
48:11
around about 800,000 years ago, which is when they found it now.
48:16
And I also they should be down in Southeast Asia.
48:18
Well, we've now found that they were sailing around down there
48:21
about a million years ago. So they're there in the right
48:23
time. So we, if we view this again,
48:26
we'd have to say the origins of Homo sapiens are Southeast Asian
48:30
and Oceanian, right? And that then this population
48:35
after it has changed, it back migrates back up into Asia.
48:40
So, and we can see this again, you can see this on the
48:42
bottleneck chart. And again, if people go and look
48:44
at that story of the population collapse, there is a sudden
48:48
increase in the population around about 800,000 years ago.
48:52
So the collapse is about 900 to 1,000,000 years ago.
48:55
And then around 800,000 years ago, there is a sudden increase,
48:58
not a gradually increase during a sudden increase.
49:01
And that is not right back to the original.
49:03
It's about, I think it's about halfway back to the original
49:06
size of the population before the bottleneck.
49:09
But that means that they have met another group.
49:12
So who are these? If everyone was wiped out, who
49:14
are they meeting? So in other words, they've gone
49:15
back to Asia. There's still people in Asia.
49:18
They start mixing with them again.
49:20
And there's a certain end to the bottleneck.
49:22
And so this is the beginning of a migration of our real lineage
49:26
back into Asia, into East Asia, where they're finding these
49:29
skulls now of the, well, they consider the ancestral
49:32
population to Denisovans, right? So they're finding those in
49:36
China, you know, in East Asian region.
49:38
The population then migrates through Eurasia.
49:41
We get Neanderthals essentially take most of.
49:44
So I think they take this India, most of the Middle East and into
49:49
Europe, right? And then our more direct lineage
49:53
is also present. So what we consider is I guess
49:56
very early modern human lineage. So they seem to migrate across
50:02
Eurasia with some of them entering into North Africa,
50:04
right. And so we do find some of these,
50:06
what they're considering now, early fossils of modern humans,
50:11
but they're not modern, modern, but you know, they're on their
50:14
way to becoming modern humans. So you've got these free sub
50:17
populations of Homo sapiens who are spreading around Eurasia,
50:21
are entering Africa and are entering Europe.
50:23
And that's where it gets a little bit controversial and
50:26
problematic is where when we get Africa, we've got to take into
50:29
account that Africa is populated by the descendants of Homo
50:34
erectus, African Homo erectus. Now, if you think about it, so
50:38
if if Asian Homo erectus led to Homo sapiens, and that is
50:43
uniquely happening down in Southeast Asia and then East
50:46
Asia and then there's a movement into Africa.
50:49
Well, there is a more evolved from our view, a more more
50:52
modern form of erectus or a more modern form that has become
50:56
sapiens is now encountering the descendants of African erectus
51:01
that hasn't had this event happen, that hasn't had these
51:04
gene changes, hasn't had the chromosome 2 fusion.
51:07
So from our view, these are more archaic.
51:10
And so there is a mixing and that's been detected.
51:12
So there's a detection that the, the, the lineage of modern
51:15
humans who enters Africa mixes with the descendants of Homo
51:21
erectus in Africa. And these are much more archaic.
51:25
And we'd have to call them a more, I don't know, you could
51:27
call it primitive or less of, you know, whatever you want to
51:30
call it. But this is an issue because
51:31
actually the DNA that they're getting from these other groups
51:35
is not an advantage. You know it, it's an issue.
51:39
And I say this as a person who has African ancestry that, you
51:41
know, I look and I think, ah, because that is going to point
51:44
in some certain problems. The other thing it does as well,
51:46
Jim, think about this. You know, one of the claims in
51:47
this story is that but Africans have the greatest genetic
51:50
diversity, therefore they must be the ancestral population.
51:54
Well, there's another way you can get this diversity mixed
51:57
with another completely different lineage because it
52:01
will have then that will add an enormous amount of genetic
52:03
diversity. It's not necessarily a good
52:05
thing, but it will, it will add a huge amount of diversity.
52:08
And this is now being detected. So this is, this is an Achilles
52:11
heel in this story. Because if you think about it,
52:13
if there's another lineage that was separate for around 1.5
52:18
million years, is what they're saying, they feel that this
52:20
lineage that is mixed, they've mixed with has been separate for
52:23
1.5 million years. Well, the diversity you'll gain
52:26
from mixing with a group that's separate is enormous.
52:29
And that is exactly what we're seeing.
52:30
And that is skewed this story towards Africa.
52:34
And this is, I think only now people are starting, you know,
52:37
anthropologists are starting to have to rethink this and say,
52:40
well, hang on, we can explain that diversity in another way.
52:43
So I'd say to people, have a look again.
52:45
And if I'm saying check it, it's from, you know, these are from
52:47
mainstream studies. It's not something I'm seeing
52:49
and, you know, working on some other data that they don't have.
52:53
It's just how you interpret the data.
52:54
That's the only difference is each person looking at it and
52:59
each scientist obviously will have a slight different
53:00
interpretation, but they're having to recognize that.
53:02
Yeah, we're seeing now that that the remnants of Homo erectus
53:07
were in Africa. And again, look at Homo niledy
53:09
germ. Look at Homo niledy.
53:10
Right, Right. Well, that's not a human that
53:13
that is some kind of remnant of these African Homo erectus.
53:17
And look at it. Does it look like anything like
53:20
a modern human? Does it help?
53:22
No, it looks much closer to again to these chimp like
53:27
earlier hominins that were in Africa.
53:31
So it's probably some blend of African Homo erectus and one of
53:34
these, you know, australopithecines or something.
53:36
So you've got you've got creatures like that in Africa.
53:39
Now if the lineage of more evolved humans from Asia is
53:45
mixing with some of these things in Africa, you're going to end
53:49
up with their genetics entering into that population.
53:54
And that's what we do see. And so a lot of areas of this
53:57
story change. Now look again, look, another
53:59
simple thing for people, I don't make it too concrete.
54:01
One of the one of the key signs of evolving towards modern
54:04
humans is neoteny. And I think that's pretty widely
54:08
accepted. So neoteny is the retention of
54:11
juvenile traits into adulthood. And so if you look at a a baby
54:15
chimp and you look at a a young human being, they're actually
54:18
quite similar in their morphology.
54:20
They look quite similar. It's the adult chimp that has
54:24
the, the, the brow ridges, you know, the prognosticated jaw and
54:28
has all of the, you know, the strength and it starts to look
54:31
completely differently. Super hairy, right?
54:32
So it's the adulthood of the primate that makes it look super
54:37
archaic, right? So what's happened with modern
54:40
humans is we've retained juvenile features into
54:43
adulthood. Now, if you look across all the
54:45
populations of the world, it's very obvious which one has the
54:48
greatest degree of notony. It's East Asians, hands down.
54:53
They have very flat faces, very rounded heads, very little body
54:58
hair, more encephalation, slightly larger brains on
55:01
average. They have all of the the key
55:04
characteristics of being the, the most evolved modern human
55:10
population. Now that is a kind of, you might
55:12
see that controversial take, but that is again, that's based
55:15
purely on the fact that we say what differentiates modern
55:17
humans and humans in general from the other primates is
55:20
neotenous processes more than anything else that we, we have
55:24
become much more like a fetal or infant stage primate over time.
55:30
So then if you're going to say like, what is the key marker of
55:32
us becoming more modern? It's becoming more neotenous.
55:35
So how can we say that the root population of modern humans is
55:39
those that look the least not on us doesn't make sense.
55:44
So if we're going to look at people in Africa or else it
55:48
doesn't really make sense. It's pretty obvious that even
55:50
Europeans not not quite there more so.
55:53
But you have to look. I mean, you've been to China.
55:55
You've seen if you think in your head who looks the most infant
55:59
like in adulthood, who has these flat faces, who has these, you
56:03
know, more rapid skull shapes and who has the less body hair,
56:06
It's East Asian people. And that's where the evidence is
56:09
pointing to where the first modern humans were living.
56:12
And in fact the first progression into fully
56:15
behavioural modern humans is happening in places like
56:17
Sulawesi, where if you look on Sulawesi island, it's got the
56:20
1st art that you know, art, figurative art of animals and
56:25
stuff in the world is on Sulawesi, not in Europe, not in
56:28
Africa. You know, this behavioural
56:30
revolution. They're the first people doing
56:32
ocean fishing 40 odd thousand years ago.
56:34
So really the blooming of fully modern humans, it's happening in
56:39
Southeast Asia and East Asia, like the rest of us, just kind
56:41
of suck it up. It looks like that's where it
56:43
happened. Whether we have a preference to
56:45
our own population or not, it seems that that's where it's
56:47
happening. And that the physical evidence,
56:49
look at the traits and the emergence of behaviour, the
56:53
breakthroughs and stuff, these initially are happening in that
56:56
region and then they are filtering out to the rest of the
56:59
world. And that some populations are
57:01
encountering other archaics and are mixing with them, and that
57:04
they have strains from these other archaic groups.
57:07
About the most modern people are really East Asians.
57:11
But then why is the African model being pushed so much?
57:16
I think there's twofold. I think that, you know, as I
57:18
say, if you were to go back at the beginning of the kind of
57:20
genetic revolution, I don't think that everyone was, well,
57:23
there's two things. There was a religious part.
57:25
It's again, you know, think of the terminology that they were
57:28
looking for this Eden, you know, and So what they felt they found
57:31
was this kind of this this primitive Eden where there was
57:33
this African, you know, look in the jet African Eve, an African
57:37
Adam. And in East Africa, it was this
57:39
kind of seen as this perfect place for this to happen because
57:44
it's not too far from a migration up into Europe.
57:46
And, you know, and if they crossed, crossed into the Middle
57:48
East and founded out again with the Middle East being seen as a
57:51
kind of a central in the religious story, you know, that
57:55
this is linked to some religious ideas, but also the initial
57:59
genetic studies, which again, I think what I call this poorly
58:01
done because they're being done from entirely modern DNA with
58:05
assumptions. Assumptions that these people
58:07
were always in Africa, the assumption that modern human
58:10
populations were there for hundreds of thousands of years
58:13
and that they hadn't come from somewhere else or they hadn't
58:15
migrated out of the, you know, out and back in that these were
58:19
all assumptions. And these are false assumptions.
58:21
You can't say just because you find some modern human fossils
58:25
in East Africa 200,000 years ago, but first of all, you can't
58:29
even say that's your ancestor because you don't have any DNA
58:31
from it, right? We don't even know that we're
58:34
related to Omo and Herto and these, these skulls, we don't
58:37
know that they're ancestors, right?
58:39
This was, it was assumed because there's no DNA.
58:41
Now, you also don't know if those individuals didn't just
58:44
walk in from the Middle East, right?
58:48
There's no basis to saying that their population was resident in
58:51
Africa and that all of its ancestors were in Africa.
58:54
These are huge assumptions that have gone unchallenged for
58:58
absolute, you know, for years and years and years have gone
59:00
unchallenged. And if we look again at that, we
59:02
can say actually, these people could be part of a population
59:05
that migrated from Asia. They walked across the continent
59:09
and they come in and I'm going to quickly just, you know, the
59:11
recent out of Africa because again, most people are familiar
59:14
with recent out of Africa, right?
59:15
The idea that 70,000 years ago, some of these modern humans
59:18
who've evolved exclusively in Africa again have walked out
59:22
into the Middle East and then have walked across down to
59:25
Australia, basically all the way across the continent to
59:28
Australia and then to America. And that funnily enough,
59:30
actually have reached Australia before they reach Europe.
59:33
Take a quick look at our map and say that doesn't look strange to
59:35
you because Europe is just round the corner, but somehow these
59:38
people walk out Africa, they get all the way to Australia before
59:41
any of them reach Europe. That's weird.
59:44
So there's a red flag there and even just glancing at it.
59:47
But the second thing is we now know that there was a climate
59:50
disaster happening 74,000 years ago, exactly the time they tell
59:54
you that this migration was happening.
59:55
The late Tober super volcano had exploded, that there was a
59:59
cataclysm unfolding across the northern hemisphere.
1:00:02
That the worst time to leave South Africa was 74,000 years
1:00:06
ago. Again, this is not my words.
1:00:07
You know, there's experts saying that it's the worst time you'd
1:00:09
have to walk into a drought, an apocalyptic drought across North
1:00:13
Africa, the Levant and the Middle East.
1:00:16
So you're going to leave idyllic lands in South Africa and walk
1:00:20
into an apocalypse? No, you're not.
1:00:22
So what's really happening here is that as this event unfolds,
1:00:28
humans who are in Eurasia and again, they don't like to, they
1:00:32
like to call these, these population Eurasia is not
1:00:35
relevant. So they know they were there
1:00:37
that modern humans were accepted to have been across Eurasia and
1:00:40
into East Asia at least 200,000 years ago because we find the
1:00:43
fossils in East Asia, Mediterranean and Eurasia,
1:00:47
right? So they know, but they, they
1:00:48
consider these as not relevant to the story that they didn't
1:00:50
play any evolutionary role. OK, they just died out.
1:00:53
But if if you rethink that and say, OK, so there's modern
1:00:55
humans living across the continent now there's an
1:00:57
apocalypse, right? There's this volcano's gone off.
1:00:59
Are you going to stand there and die or you think you're going to
1:01:02
start to move away from what's happening?
1:01:05
So one of the there's two places you can go.
1:01:08
You can either go down into Southeast Asia, cross into the,
1:01:12
you know, the southern hemisphere there into the
1:01:14
Indonesian islands and Australia where you'll be fine.
1:01:17
You can live fine. Or if you're further W, well,
1:01:21
you're going to get pushed West and southwest towards Africa,
1:01:24
right? And one of the places you can
1:01:26
cross is the Babel mandab, which is a very short, as you probably
1:01:29
know, it's a short crossing. The Babel mandab is a short
1:01:32
crossing. You can swim it, but I mean with
1:01:35
a log paddling or if you have simple watercraft, it's an easy
1:01:39
crossing. And where do we see modern
1:01:42
humans seem to suddenly there's a change in the modern humans in
1:01:46
East Africa near Babel Mandab around 72,000 years ago with the
1:01:50
appearance of new art, the appearance of bows and arrows, a
1:01:53
change in the culture. And you know what the DNA that's
1:01:57
been associated with the the recent out of Africa spreads
1:02:00
West and South into Africa. They said this new DNA linge is
1:02:05
spreading into the continent. Even in their own models,
1:02:08
Germany said it's showing, it's going inwards.
1:02:10
And if you, if you think about that, these are EUR Asian hunter
1:02:14
gatherers who have been pushed West by the apocalypse.
1:02:17
They are going one way and they have an advantage.
1:02:21
They have bows and arrows. And what I can say that is that,
1:02:24
you know, I predicted that in my book years ago.
1:02:26
And I know if you saw in the last few months, they have found
1:02:29
the first arrowheads in the world in Kazakhstan, Eurasia,
1:02:34
long before they appear in Africa.
1:02:36
So these people turn up and they have the ultimate ranged
1:02:39
weapons. The African populations may have
1:02:42
welcomed them, we don't know, but they wouldn't have now
1:02:44
stopped them because they had bows and arrows and the Africans
1:02:47
didn't. And we can see that how that
1:02:49
plays out because their DNA spreads through into Africa,
1:02:53
West and South. This is an into Africa
1:02:55
migration. It's clearly one from genetics,
1:02:59
from archaeological evidence, from the climate evidence.
1:03:02
All of the evidence is on my side.
1:03:04
Great for that. And you're seeing now there's a
1:03:06
slide towards that model because it's untenable to say that this
1:03:11
evidence isn't pointing that way.
1:03:12
The same arrowheads are appearing in Africa 72,000 years
1:03:15
ago that we see in Kazakhstan 80,000 years ago.
1:03:18
So these people have them first and they are pushed into Africa.
1:03:22
They cross the Babble mandab and they move into Africa.
1:03:25
So these are fundamental dogmas that are collapsing in real
1:03:28
time. Bruce, I'm looking at the time
1:03:33
and this is fascinating, but I think we should come in for a
1:03:37
landing. Your book, well, your work.
1:03:42
How can I follow it? Yeah, so I mean, yeah, the two
1:03:46
books obviously available wherever online by people of
1:03:49
books, Amazon, you know, I guess is the main 1.
1:03:51
So if they look for my name, they'll find they've forgotten
1:03:54
Exodus, the into Africa theory of human evolution.
1:03:57
We've got a nice forward by Graham Hancock on that one as
1:04:00
well, who helped promote that, which is really cool.
1:04:03
And also the then my second book, which is the more alien
1:04:07
related book. That first book has no mention
1:04:09
of aliens in it. It's just a rewrite of the
1:04:11
conventional story. And then Exogenesis, hybrid
1:04:14
humans, which tackles the the idea of an intelligent
1:04:19
intervention. And that was got forward from
1:04:21
Eric von Daniken, which is quite cool.
1:04:22
I thought it's the two people, the two different topics that
1:04:25
you could get to do forwards. They were the best I could hope
1:04:27
for. So people look for those also on
1:04:29
Twitter. I'm on there a lot.
1:04:31
I'm on there too much, aren't I? Actually, I spend too much time
1:04:33
on their comments and interviews and stuff and arguing.
1:04:35
But people can definitely find me on there.
1:04:39
I guess we all probably do. And yeah, I have a sub stack and
1:04:43
I have, you know, YouTube interviews.
1:04:45
You go looks at my name on YouTube.
1:04:47
You can look for it under these topic names.
1:04:49
You're you're under evolution under into Africa or Exogenesis
1:04:52
to find a lot of interviews that are about the books.
1:04:54
So if they want to just listen to me talking on these topics,
1:04:58
I'm sure across various channels and YouTube, those are probably
1:05:01
the best places. Twitter in terms of wanting to
1:05:03
talk to me or ask me a question, yeah, Twitter is the best place
1:05:05
if they want to ask me any follow-ups.
1:05:09
Bruce Venton, thank you for joining me in the trenches.
1:05:13
Thank you very much.