I postulated a few years ago that Neanderthals lived on fish, based on:
1. A few skulls having “diver’s ear” – a bony projection, resulting from diving into icy water repeatedly
2. The C14/C16 composition of some skeletons, which indicated either they ate mostly mammoth or fish
3. The long arms, large lung capacity, short legs and large flat feet – an ideal build for swimming

If I’m correct, they dove in the water and caught fish by hand, no fish hooks needed.

Iwo Eleru, Nigeria wouldn’t have been my first guess for a location of such a relict population, however. It isn’t hidden away deep in a mountain valley or so deep into a tropical rainforest that it might have been ill suited to modern humans. Today, it is prime African real estate for low tech modern humans – generally warm, not too dry, not too wet and reasonably flat.

The timing of 13,000 years ago would predate the probable date of the expansion of Y-DNA E1b1a and mtDNA L2 into West Africa that defines that region genetically today, possibly leaving less population pressure from modern humans than there is today (quite possibly also spreading Niger-Congo languages and Sahel agricultural methods), and we don’t know so much about the paleoclimate of the area, so it could have been less friendly to modern human hunter-gatherer populations than it is today. But, IIRC, there is evidence of bone harpoon fishing in West Africa from 75,000 years ago (a tell tale tool of modern humans relative to archaic human tools, Neanderthals and Homo Erectus apparently lacked bone tools and didn’t fish).

Genetic evidence of Pygmy DNA from commuities to the South of Iwo Eleuru would suggest 13,000 years ago is about the time of the split of Eastern and Western Pygmies into separate populations, possibly due to the decline of the tropical forests from a previous more lush level, and Pygmies do show more archaic admixture than the West Africans of today.

Still, while not to be dismissed out of hand, since this does call for a rather big rethink of the regions prehistory and evolutionary track, it probably does deserve greater than usual scrutiny of dating and authenticity.

there was some in the yoruba. small. only the mandenka lacked it at all.

If you have me in mind, not so.

no, i didn’t have you in mind.

That and the fact that we have a clear trail in Y-DNA and mtDNA back to DNA Adam and DNA Eve in Africa. Haplogroup A is at the root of the Y-DNA tree and it is mainly found in Africa. Haplogroup L is at the root of the mtDNA tree and it is mainly found in Africa. From there we can follow the trail of people leaving Africa in the new mutations that cropped up along the way across the globe.

“Out of Africa” is not in a state of crash and burn, folks.

On the African finds, Hawks seems about to express an alternative slant to the authors’.

joke friends, it was too tempting and I am weak for stupid.

Areas such as Southeast Asia are historically humid and wet – perfect for conditions of rapid disintegration where the fossil record isn’t preserved.

So just because one can find the oldest hominid remains in desert-like conditions, doesn’t necessarily mean that this is the region human ancestry comes from. It’s an assumption which keeps on being perpetuated, perhaps incorrectly.

If you have me in mind, not so. There is evidence that a Homo sapiens lineage with archaic traits in North Africa moved out of Africa early by the northern route. The general feeling was that they just died out – a dead end. On the basis of Y-DNA and mtDNA we all seemed to be descended from the wave taking the southern route, though inter-breeding between the two lineages seems at least as likely as interbreeding with even more archaic hominids, and more likely to produce viable offspring.

However, the revising of the Y-DNA tree to show a deep split in A, with just a handful of men carrying a rare A branch, suggests that the rare branch could have emerged in North Africa among the Aterians.

There are other alternatives of course, it would be incrediably niave of us if we were to disregard the fact that the most “basel” of Africans are the same groups listed above to possess arachaic “admixture” from a group that split some 700,000 years ago (around 300,000 before the Neanderthal-AMH split) and was only assimilated some 35,000 years ago.

This study does contridict Dienekes theories though… not only is the admixture not enough to explain why Eurasians possess a slightly higher affinity to Neanderthals, most Africans lack any indications of such “arachic” intrussion. It’s much more likely that African hunter-gathers being basel simply have a more closer affinity to the root of the humanoid “familia”, in comparison to other humans, than the ancestors of Eurasians having a closer to affinity to Neanderthals than their African brethren do with the latter.