His description of Abos reminds me much more of Native Americans than blacks. Especially the problems with alcohol.
It's basically conventional wisdom among Natives that Afro-Eurasians had 10k years to develop cultural and/or genetic resistance, meanwhile the Indians got sudden easy access to hard liquor at the same time they had to deal with all the other traumas of rapid modernization. Indian leaders basically begged the USA to ban whites selling them liquor, and we obliged: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_American_temperance_activists
I think the consensus is that aborigines are primarily descended from the same out of Africa wave as other non-subsaharans. https://www.science.org/content/article/almost-all-living-people-outside-africa-trace-back-single-migration-more-50000-years. Not sure if that link is out of date, but aborigines definitely not homo erectus. But, to the extent they seem hyper-black, they could have evolved in a more primitive direction due to their isolation and low population and low density. 50k is a long time.
Also, indigenous Tasmanian were apparently even worse. People generally attribute their backwardness to presumable nongenetic cultural regression due to their isolated small population, but who knows?
def wasn't saying they were homo erectus lol, just that they could give us a fascinating glimpse into the nature of early man given their more isolated lineage
The Abos are an odd case. The Khoisan are probably a better 'early human' proxy.
What I find interesting is that stone tools (knapped flint/chert) associated with some of the 'other' hominids (Neanderthals, Denisovans, the 'hobbit peoples' ect) show more skilled craftsmanship than anything I've seen from the Abos. Though, having messed around for an hour or two with flint knapping, I can tell you - it's not easy.
Given recent advances in DNA sequencing technology, ancient DNA sequencing, growing reference genome datasets....etc the single migration theory is probably garbage. More likely is that many small migration events occurred with periodic mixing with local Hominid species and introgressions back 'into africa'......in other words the the arrows go many different directions and many 'epicycles' exist in the model. It's far from the conclusive. The estimated dates of various events have large error bars associated with them. The last major out of Africa event is pegged at 100,000-60,000 years ago. The Australid Abos likely were completely isolated for 60,000+/- 20,000 yrs - and have a large (relative) amount of Denisovan (Hominid) admixture. (As do Papua New Guineans - you can see the family resemblance) Genetic Drift probably accounts for the.....uniqueness of the Abo. As you said, strange things happen (genetically speaking) in small, isolated populations.
Good companion info here for anyone curious on the Tasmanian affair.
https://open.substack.com/pub/kvetch/p/tasmanian-aborigines?r=6kh7x&utm_medium=ios
His description of Abos reminds me much more of Native Americans than blacks. Especially the problems with alcohol.
It's basically conventional wisdom among Natives that Afro-Eurasians had 10k years to develop cultural and/or genetic resistance, meanwhile the Indians got sudden easy access to hard liquor at the same time they had to deal with all the other traumas of rapid modernization. Indian leaders basically begged the USA to ban whites selling them liquor, and we obliged: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_American_temperance_activists
Though it looks like Abos suffer more from petrol sniffing than alcohol: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_health_in_Australia#Substance_abuse
I think the consensus is that aborigines are primarily descended from the same out of Africa wave as other non-subsaharans. https://www.science.org/content/article/almost-all-living-people-outside-africa-trace-back-single-migration-more-50000-years. Not sure if that link is out of date, but aborigines definitely not homo erectus. But, to the extent they seem hyper-black, they could have evolved in a more primitive direction due to their isolation and low population and low density. 50k is a long time.
Also, indigenous Tasmanian were apparently even worse. People generally attribute their backwardness to presumable nongenetic cultural regression due to their isolated small population, but who knows?
def wasn't saying they were homo erectus lol, just that they could give us a fascinating glimpse into the nature of early man given their more isolated lineage
The Abos are an odd case. The Khoisan are probably a better 'early human' proxy.
What I find interesting is that stone tools (knapped flint/chert) associated with some of the 'other' hominids (Neanderthals, Denisovans, the 'hobbit peoples' ect) show more skilled craftsmanship than anything I've seen from the Abos. Though, having messed around for an hour or two with flint knapping, I can tell you - it's not easy.
Given recent advances in DNA sequencing technology, ancient DNA sequencing, growing reference genome datasets....etc the single migration theory is probably garbage. More likely is that many small migration events occurred with periodic mixing with local Hominid species and introgressions back 'into africa'......in other words the the arrows go many different directions and many 'epicycles' exist in the model. It's far from the conclusive. The estimated dates of various events have large error bars associated with them. The last major out of Africa event is pegged at 100,000-60,000 years ago. The Australid Abos likely were completely isolated for 60,000+/- 20,000 yrs - and have a large (relative) amount of Denisovan (Hominid) admixture. (As do Papua New Guineans - you can see the family resemblance) Genetic Drift probably accounts for the.....uniqueness of the Abo. As you said, strange things happen (genetically speaking) in small, isolated populations.