Where do we come from?
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Where do we come from? The question is important. For years the response preferred by paleoanthropologists has been: From Africa. Our species, the Homo sapiens, was born in Africa and spread all over the world. However, the world was not empty; other hominids colonized the continents before, and over the years we replaced the species Homo sapiens --we, ilegia--.
Today the experts continue to accept this hypothesis of the origin of Homo sapiens, the Out of Africa (outside Africa). However, the genetic study of fossils has been possible with precision and, in its light, the theory must be adapted. The species Homo sapiens was initially crossed with the Neanderthals and later with the man Denisova. In 2010 fossils of the latter were found in the caves of Denisova in Siberia, and genetic remains of the crossing have been found in the DNA of Southeast Asia.
The remains of these two crosses have remained in the genes of the Homo sapiens, so the British anthropologist Christopher Stringer states: "We have no pure African origin." He believes that Out of Africa's own hypothesis should be reviewed and reformulated at some points. He was one of the founders of the hypothesis and he talks about it in his latest book, The Origin of our Species.
The title of the book refers to the famous book On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin. This book, published about 150 years ago, is the starting point to tell how the panorama of theories about human creation is found.
In the book he presents the subject in a very broad way; among other things, he speaks of the research techniques of paleoanthropology, and thus answers another question: how has man come to know his origin.
Two reasons explain the interest of the book: on the one hand, the fact that it is a book written by one of the protagonists of the research and, on the other, the fact of summarizing what we know today about the origin of Homo sapiens. It is a good starting point to reflect on the roots of our species.
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