Talk:Multiregional origin of modern humans

caption misstatement
The first image illustrating the multiregional model is mislabeled as polygenism. Milford Wolpoff, probably the most prominent proponent of multiregionalism, makes it very clear that he is not a polygenist. The dashed lines in this diagram show the constant genetic exchanges which make multiregional evolution possible and distinguish it from polygenism. This caption should be changed. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Historic Metal (talk • contribs).
 * I believe this has been fixed? Warren Dew (talk) 21:05, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

New vs. Classic Multiregionalism?
I just took a look at Templeton's paper, Out of Africa again and again, which is the bases for a good deal of the genetic evidence for the multiregional hypothesis in this article. It seems to me that the evidence points not to the acceptance of Wolpoff's multiregionalism, but instead to a more nuanced hypothesis than either the complete replacement of OOA or the simultaneous origin with gene flow that most multiregionalist propose.

I always thought that the gist of the MR hypothesis was that the regional erectus-grade hominids contributed more to the AMHs in their geographical areas than hominids in other regions. However Templeton's evidence indicates that the African populations contributed a disproportionate amount of genetic diversity to archaic H. sapiens, due to large migrations out of Africa. In essence limiting the effect regional differences contributed to AMH populations.

It seems to me that this article simplifies this hypothesis down to the claim that gene flow existed between the populations, and misses most of the assertions Wolpoff and co. made which are not borne out by this new evidence.

Does anyone think it might be a good idea to have a section on 'classic' MR hypothesis, and then a section which includes the new genetic evidence and the modification of the theories? Bdrydyk 16:42, November 29, 2006 (UTC)

The Multiregional Hypothesis did not originate with Milford H. Wolpoff it goes back to work of Franz Weidenreich in the 1930s. At that time, Weidenreich originated the "Weidenreich Theory of Human Evolution" based on his examination of Peking Man. Being an anatomist, Weidenreich observed numerous anatomical characteristics that Peking Man had in common with modern Asians. The Weidenreich Theory states that human races have evolved independently in the Old World from Homo erectus to Homo sapiens sapiens, while at the same time there was gene flow between the various populations. According to the Weidenreich Theory, genes that were generally adaptive (such as those for intelligence and communication) would flow relatively rapidly from one part of the world to the other, while those that were locally adaptive, would not. This is contrary to popular theories of human evolution that have one superior race displacing other races. A vocal proponent of the Weidenreich theory was Carleton Coon. Ironically, Coon was labeled a racist while the theory in fact proposed that no one race was superior and displacing others. --Matses 17:19, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

I've read Wolpoff and Caspari's "Race and Human Evolution", and he does not make any such quantitative statement that some percentage of alleles were conserved in each region without spreading to others. Only the obvious morphological similarities that show regional continuity are mentioned as possible candidates for genetic continuity. Yes, Wolpoff's multiregional hypothesis is pretty much just that there was gene flow between the populations. Also, a large chunk of the book is about Weidenreich's work and how his ideas were misinterpreted or unjustifiably forgotten. --JWB 02:37, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

Good points, Matses and JWB. I'm preparing to edit this talk page, but I want to leave this in as an ongoing discussion. Warren Dew (talk) 03:50, 3 January 2011 (UTC)


 * i'd just like to back this guy up a little. the initial multi-regional hypothesis believed that the different subtypes of humans evolved independently of one another and absolutely enforced polygeny. since the decline of eugenics in mainstream science, that's been labelled "racist" and the multi-regionalists have modified their argument to something that is more societally acceptable. the article completely ignores the history, and it shouldn't. i'm not an expert, i'm just somebody that's read up on the topic, and would like to put out a request for an expert in the field to provide an accurate, historical description of the multi-regional idea rather than try to cover it up by ignoring it. the fact is that polygeny is not inherently racist, but it's not hard to understand that fears that were attached to it in the years after the second world war and leading into the civil rights era. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.246.66.89 (talk) 04:17, 19 July 2011 (UTC)
 * This article and related articles do need improvement, but I just want to mention that in the regard of racist motivations, it's probably quite contentious. In some aspects, the multiregional model and the candelabra are exact opposites, even more than candelabra and replacement, which is "mini candelabra" just at the top. The original MR model was the "extreme opposite" in the sense that it posited worldwide gene flow in all directions, during millions of years. So instead of "pure races/species" of humans arising independently, you barely have "races", humanity is essentially made from miscegenation Some (at least two of their main proponents, Templeton and Smith) have even argued that Neanderthal and other human "species" would have been actually the only real human races, and now we're all mostly racially Africans, with only a tiny drop of non-African races. Further developments/weaker versions (alternatively or more properly called "assimilation model" and "replacement with hybridization model") posit that modern humans first evolved in Africa and essentially replaced hominids from other continents at an genetic level, with substantial admixture/"fusion". It's arguably harder to make interpretations that would favor typical racist views than it would be for stricter OOA replacement with little or no archaic admixture. The fact that racists often like MR is mostly because they don't quite understand with it entails, IMO.

Unrelated to that, but with the "new vs classic multiregionlism", or model terminology in general, here's a quote from a paper by Bräuer, Collard and Stringer, "On the reliability of recent tests of the Out of Africa hypothesis for modern human origins":
 * ''The tests of the Out of Africa hypothesis conducted by Hawks et al. (2000) and Wolpoff et al. (2001) focused on what these authors evidently considered to be the main prediction of the hypothesis, namely, that there should be no genetic ontinuity or interbreeding between early modern humans and archaic hominids in Europe, East Asia, and Southeast Asia [see also Thorne and Wolpoff (2003: p. 48)]. However, this prediction is misleading. As we have pointed out elsewhere Stringer and Brauer, 1994; Brauer and Stringer, 1997; Stringer, 2002), the idea of complete replacement without any interbreeding is one variant of the Out of Africa hypothesis, often identified with a particular interpretation of the mitochondrial DNA data, dubbed the Eve theory (Frayer et al., 1993). Complete replacement does not feature in all versions of the Out of Africa hypothesis, and therefore we contend that it would not be falsified by demonstration of some modern-archaic human gene flow outside of Africa. Both before and after the pioneering study by Cann et al. (1987), proponents of the Out of Africa hypothesis accepted the possibility of a certain amount of gene flow between the migrating early anatomically modern humans and the non-African archaic groups (Brauer, 1984: p. 395, 1992: p. 95, 2001; Cann, 1992: p. 71; Stringer, 1992: p. 20, 2001; Stringer and Brauer, 1994: p. 416). Thus, even if the results of Hawks et al.’s (2000) and Wolpoff et al.’s (2001) analyses were reliable, they would only shed light on the accuracy of the extreme Eve theory. They would not disprove the Out of Africa hypothesis.

There's also some relevant info on archived comments I've previously made regarding the problem of a whole series of intermediate models making a gradation between "zero admixture" OOA replacement and the modern multiregional model (at least four basic models, according to Stringer, "Modern human origins: progress and prospects", 2001).Extremophile (talk) 06:36, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

Empty introduction
The introduction doesn't describe the theory at all. Can someone create a synthetic sentence and put it there? -- NaBUru38 00:17, 29 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Agree. "The multiregional hypothesis holds that the evolution of humanity throughout the Pleistocene has been within a single widespread human species, Homo sapiens,..." - - this is just a lame attempt to make multiregionalism sound sexy. doesn't work. I am not going to attempt to do it, but please let's give the younger and layman readers a chance with a coherent definition. Grazie Spettro9 (talk) 20:07, 29 October 2008 (UTC)


 * I've expanded the lead a bit to try to provide more detail. Warren Dew (talk) 11:01, 1 January 2011 (UTC)


 * How can "the primary hypothesis is recent African origin of modern humans, which contends that modern humans arose in Africa around 100-200,000 years ago, moving out of Africa around 50-60,000 years ago to replace archaic human forms', when the chart clearly shows differentiation before archais populations types evolved?

Clean-up
I've made a start at clean-up. Still remaining: Fences and windows (talk) 21:13, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
 * 1) Sources! Too much of this has no inline citations.
 * 2) Clarification and expansion of the genetic and fossil evidence is essential.
 * 3) Clean-up of external links, most of which should be incorporated as references.
 * 4) Balance needs to be according to the weight of the evidence in reliable sources, rather than giving equal credence to the two competing theories or cherry-picking sources.

You removed a whole following section, as acording to your opinion (is it your opinion?) adds nothing.

Classification of hominid species
- 	Evaluation of the multiregional theory revolves around the assumption or non-assumption of >>species barriers<< between early hominids. Because of the scarcity of fossils and the discovery of important new finds every few years, researchers disagree about the details and sometimes even basic elements of human evolutionary history.

While they have revised this history several times over the last decades, researchers currently agree that the oldest named species of the genus Homo, Homo habilis, evolved in Africa around two million years ago, and that members of the genus migrated out of Africa somewhat later, at least 1.5 million years ago. The descendants of these ancient migrants, which probably included Homo erectus, have become known through fossils uncovered far from Africa, such as those of "Peking man" and "Java man". Homo neanderthalensis is also considered a descendant of early migrants.


 * The species barrier arising in process of speciation is key element differentiating MHO from RAO. If there will be possible gene flow then it will happen the early human as all other species did do a sex if they get children and the children get children this will be the multiregional. On the other hand if they wont be able to fertilly reproduce the only scientific reason "prohibiting" gene flow is the species barrier. If the species barrier arouse in speciation and prohibited the gene flow it will be replacement - per see without the gene flow. The replacement without any gene flow is the main thesis of recent replacement RAO. The word "replacement" is used to point out the important RAO opposition to the fertile reproduction proposed in MHO. (Do you think or know that somebody try devise or prove that there was no 'single occasion' for a "romantic date" between the singles of approaching and preexisting human populations during the last 200 thousand years). If and only if there was only one paleo-date pregnant with fertile children it is the gene flow the key thesis of MHO and MHO theory holds up. If it did not happen pregnant with fertile children there was no gene flow - RAO holds up.


 * Could you please eloborate on why do you think the section adds nothing as you revile here.


 * Another important consideration is the likelihood of the speciation in African population at given time frame. The new mutation or recombination may happen any time. The complexity of devising how and why the species barrier should arose is overwhelming and speculative that's why you may not find numerous citation in RAO framework elaborating on the obvious and crucial for ROA thesis evolutionary process. 76.16.176.166 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 23:09, 29 May 2009 (UTC).

It was a fairly incoherent fragment. Some discussion of these issues would be fine, but frankly the whole article needs completely rewriting, so restoring that section would be no improvement. Please stick to the discussion and use of reliable sources. To answer your points, related species may fail to interbreed for behavioural as well as biological reasons, any fertile interbreeding that left no modern genetic descendants wouldn't be support for the multiregional hypothesis, and I think you're building a false dichotomy - an African replacement model with a small extant genetic contribution from the replaced Neanderthal or H. erectus populations wouldn't prove the multiregional hypothesis over Out of Africa. But what we think is pretty irrelevant, it's what the sources say that matters. Fences and windows (talk) 02:27, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

I think you're building a false dichotomy -  an African replacement model with a small extant genetic contribution from the replaced Neanderthal or H. erectus 76.16.176.166 (talk) 22:21, 2 June 2009 (UTC)
 * you may think but
 * is multiregional conception.


 * small extant - point to F.A.W misunderstanding of sexual reproduction and to the way how the polit-push group try to back out from evident fallacy.

Please, use reliable sources to back up these opinions. Your opinions on what constitutes multiregional evolution are original research; what matters is what the sources say. As for me "misunderstanding sexual reproduction", I fail to see how my statement above would at all lead to that contribution, and I find the suggestion quite uncivil. Please don't try to interpret what I understand about matters of biology. The last part of your comment is unclear, but accusing other editors of "evident fallacies" is not constructive. Fences and windows (talk) 22:27, 5 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Wolpoff and Caspari's "Race and Human Evolution" indexes "Multiregional evolution: definition of" to page 32, where a description in italics preceded by "In a nutshell, the theory is that" occupies about 60% of the page. It does not specify any lower limit for genetic contribution from archaic Eurasian Homo in order for the theory to be valid. --JWB (talk) 23:41, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

I don't know what happened to this cleanup attempt, but I'm in the process of doing a cleanup now. Warren Dew (talk) 03:54, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Tag removal
IP user 76.16.1xx.xxx is now registered as Xook1kai Choa6aur. XC has removed all tags about neutrality etc. My opinion is that this article is still a total trainwreck, and is probably worse than us having no article at all on this topic, helped into that state in no small part by XC's constant POV pushing and difficulties in communicating in clear English. It needs totally rewriting, so the tags were entirely appropriate. Fences &amp;  Windows  20:12, 25 August 2009 (UTC)
 * You're right, and I've replaced the tags. Dougweller (talk) 20:18, 25 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Yeah, but what is now disputable? Only the one who put the can take it down ?Xook1kai Choa6aur (talk) 07:25, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

The only remaining tag when I came to this article recently was the "in need of an expert" tag. I think that's ironic because, given the number of peer reviewed references now in the article, expertise doesn't seem to be in short supply at all.

What the article does need is rewriting to make it more readable and more easily understandable by the lay reader. I've tried to do that with about half the article so far, and plan to continue with the rest of the article. I'm leaving the "expert tag" on for now because the article does need some kind of warning tag in its present condition, but once I'm done with the rewrite, I plan to remove it. Warren Dew (talk) 02:44, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

I've completed a rewrite of the existing article, and removed the "expert" tag. There is still a tag on the external links section, so I plan to fix that next. There are also a few minor things I want to put in the article, but I don't think they're necessary to remove the tag. Warren Dew (talk) 05:57, 7 January 2011 (UTC)


 * I removed the external links tag after removing most of the links in the section. The remaining two links provide information related to the topic that aren't covered in the article; the Templeton lattice because it's a copyrighted graphic for I can't presently find a free source, and the source with equations regarding migration and mutation because I think the actual equations are beyond what's appropriately covered in the article.  Warren Dew (talk) 04:52, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

AfD of John D. Hawks
This article was attacked as nonnotable and proposed for deletion. You can comment at Articles_for_deletion/John_D._Hawks. --JWB (talk) 22:37, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Looks like the good professor's article lives, that'll be a kick in the pants for those academic rivals of his that schemed to get him removed from WP. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2.25.237.12 (talk) 03:19, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

Recent Neanderthal results
The May 2010 results that show that approximately 1-4% of human DNA comes from Neanderthals, while not supporting the idea that humans, in the main, evolved from the early migration of homo erectus, does in fact support the idea that at least some of the genomes of modern-day non-African humans are comprised of DNA from the early migration.

Stated another way, this theory is 1-4% right. It's mostly wrong, but not completely. If a European in Spain made his family tree and "knew everything," there's a good chance that he'll hit upon a Neanderthal ancestor some 24,000-30,000 years back. And that neanderthal ancestry would trace back to the older migration of homo erectus some 1+ million years earlier. Ryoung 122 08:04, 24 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Of course, this theory could be "more right" if humans also share ancestry with other early migrant groups, such as homo antecessor and homo heidelbergensis...questions that remain unanswered. Ryoung 122 08:05, 24 August 2010 (UTC)


 * negroids not arw humans; are simian proto-humans/pre-humans.. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 187.114.192.173 (talk) 02:47, 19 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Ryoung, I think the neanderthal finding supports the multiregional theory in all ways, not just 1-4%. Keep in mind that the multiregional theory posits both regional continuity and lateral gene flow between regions, without specifying the split between the two - indeed, the split can't be specified, since over time, the local gene percentage can only go down, as more lateral gene flow occurs over time.


 * The fact that local contributions from neanderthals and lateral contributions from Africa both exist provides evidence for both aspects of the multiregional theory. The fact that, with respect to say Europe, there has been more lateral gene transfer than local gene retention is irrelevant.  Actually, it's not completely irrelevant, since it probably shows that lateral gene transfer includes drift and not just the adaptive lateral transfer emphasized by Weidenreich, but that's a detail that's beyond the level of this article, and would probably constitute original research anyway.


 * I would also note that the 1-4% number is not for the total neanderthal contribution, but just for the excess contribution to nonafricans over Africans. There could be some additional contribution from neanderthals to all modern humans including Africans; we just don't currently have the data needed to identify it.


 * At any rate, figuring out how to add this data, along with the denisova data, to the genetics section, is on my to-do list. Warren Dew (talk) 03:12, 3 January 2011 (UTC)


 * I've added a section discussing the neanderthal and denisovan data. Warren Dew (talk) 00:31, 6 January 2011 (UTC)


 * It is important to note that the inference of 1-4% Neanderthal ancestry is just that - an inference. While the press coverage stressed the Neanderthal ancestry, and essentially accepted it as fact, the paper itself quite correctly points out that there are other explanations for the data - such as that modern humans and Neanderthals share common ancestry in Africa (just go and read the discussion section of the paper). This scenario, while not as fun as the Neanderthal-modern human mixing, is just as plausible an interpretation of the data. The discussion should reflect this.Davidiank (talk) 19:14, 11 April 2011 (UTC)


 * While incomplete lineage sorting is a possible explanation for the diffential Neanderthal relatedness, it is not at all "as plausible". In particular, no one seems to be arguing that it's actually true, because it's very hard to support.  Neanderthal ancestry is far more plausible, even if it isn't 100% proven yet.  Warren Dew (talk) 20:36, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

The "near consensus" bit
According to the sources given:

first source: there is a near-consensus that DNA and archaeology support "Out of Africa" second source: that sub-Saharan Africa played an important role.

Neither of these sources support what the article intro said about the consensus for "Out of Africa" —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.228.247.41 (talk) 10:31, 2 December 2010 (UTC)
 * That information is obsolete anyway due to this year's publications on the sequencing of the neanderthal and denisovan DNA and their contributions to the human DNA pool. Clearly there was mixing with nonafrican archaic humans, not just replacement.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Warren Dew (talk • contribs) 10:36, 1 January 2011 (UTC)


 * No, it is not clear that there was mixing - that is merely an interpretation, and not the only one discussed by the scientists who published the work. Common ancestry within Africa is also possible. Davidiank (talk) 19:20, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

Even if there was some admixture out of Africa, that sounds to me like a "soft" version of the original OoA hypotesis than like a corroboration of the multiregional one. I have the impression the wording of this article is a bit confusing. The last paragraph, "Recent African Replacement" actually defends that the multiregional origin hypotesis is nothing the Out of Africa but accepting some local admixture. I do not think that is accurate (Althogh I think the final consensus will probably tend to that) 212.163.172.180 (talk) 21:23, 18 May 2011 (UTC)Leirus


 * Confirmed neanderthal admixture in Eurasians and Oceanians, along the lines of the early reports, actually pretty much rules out classic multiregional evolution/continuity (with a neanderthal phase/grade that actually includes the "classic neanderthals"), as the gene flow back to Africa since the neanderthal admixture would have been quite limited, discarding the possibility of a very strong selective pressure against neanderthal genes within Africa. I think that the only ways to save the multirregional hypothesis would be to posit that sapiens evolved multirregionally, followed by de facto OOA2 migrations, after that pan-continental gene flow virtually ceased, and only then some archaic admixture happened, but this is not even part of the picture anymore, but an independent phenomenon. Either that or just cheat the definition of multiregional continuity into a synonym of post-sapiens admixture, or, even worse, go into crackpot ideas that SS-Africans haven't reached the Homo sapiens grade yet, so their near absence of neanderthal admixture is not a problem; "it just happens that only Europeans are fully sapiens, the remaining Eurasians are almost there with whatever reservations regarding few peoples one might want to consider less evolved, and SS Africans still have a longer way to go until they have the present-day European gene pool. North Europeans don't have as much neanderthal admixture but that's not a problem for their sapien-ess gradation, just because. In fact, the neanderthal genes they lack perhaps just add to their sapien-ness". --Extremophile (talk) 18:29, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

Paragraph on general medium scale genetic diversity
I removed the following paragraph because I couldn't figure out how it fitted in with the article:


 * Genome polymorphism: Inversion polymorphism: known 5-million-base pair (Mbp) 8p23.1, 1-Mbp on 17q21.3 and novel 1.2-Mbp on 15q24, 2.1-Mbp 15q13, 1.7-Mbp 17q12 . In the sample of 8 gnomes from worldwide sample including Yuruba Kidd&al group found 4 million SNPs and 796,273 small indels (1−100 bp in size); 15 large regions of excess nucleotide variation 500 kbp to 3 Mbp. Two of variable sites are described detailed above.

The only thing I could find that might be relevant is the statement that overall African SNP diversity was 13% greater than nonafrican diversity, compared to 40% on the X chromosome. However, it seems to me that relating that to the multiregional hypothesis would be original research.

If someone thinks that material is relevant, please discuss it here and we'll see if we can figure out how to work it in. Warren Dew (talk) 00:28, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

Mitochrondial DNA
The end of the Mitochondrial DNA section says that nuclear genome studies showed results that were "very different" from mtDNA studies. What were those results? Is the article referring to the Neanderthal study that was recently published?

SilentWings (talk) 15:16, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

Evidence for multiregional
This is the information i have collected which clearly supports the multiregional. Can some of the information from these links go on the article? Liveintheforests (talk) 22:49, 13 June 2011 (UTC)


 * Found homo erectus 2.04mya in China — Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.106.62.45 (talk) 06:09, 7 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Genetics & Genealogy Is Out-of-Africa Going Out The Door ?
 * Did early humans evolve in Europe, not Africa?
 * Out-of-Africa Theory of ancient human migration being challenged by discovery of 1.8 million-year-old hand axe in Malaysia
 * New research shows early humans were living in Britain around 700,000 years ago, substantially earlier than had previously been thought
 * Bones show humans in Europe 1.2 mln years ago: study
 * A skull that rewrites the history of man
 * Were our earliest hominid ancestors European
 * Chinese challenge to 'out of Africa' theory
 * China's earliest human puts 'out of Africa' theory to test
 * Georgian skeletons challenge 'out of Africa' theory
 * Multiregional bones discovered
 * 110,000-year-old Chinese Fossil Poses Challenge to 'Out of Africa' Theory
 * Australian Fossil challenge to Africa theory
 * DNA Shows Modern Humans Not Just From Africa, Say Scientists
 * Mungo man disproves out of Africa
 * Dmanisi Man and the Out of Africa fairytale
 * Not out of Africa says scientist


 * Anthropologists Dispute Latest ‘Out of Africa’ Claims
 * Did first humans come out of Middle East and not Africa?
 * Out of Middle East
 * The History of Man is being rewritten in Georgia, Dmanisi
 * Out of America theory
 * Did Early Man Take His First Steps In Asia?
 * Chinese skull discovery may cause human origins rethink
 * Blacks, Whites and Asians have different ancestors – and did not come from Africa, claims scientist
 * A critique of the African-origin theory
 * Humans Not As Genetically Identical As We Thought
 * New Race/Species of Human Discovered
 * Studies contradict view that race doesn’t exist
 * Ancient teeth find may 'change picture of evolution'
 * Ancient skeletons discovered in Georgia threaten to overturn the theory of human evolution
 * Asia origin proposed
 * "Out of Africa" View of Early Human Origins Disputed


 * Study stirs up debate over human origins
 * John Crawfurd — 'two separate races'
 * Race differences in average IQ are largely genetic
 * RACIAL & ETHNIC DISTRIBUTION of ABO BLOOD TYPES DIFFERENCE IN RACES
 * European Neanderthals were fair skinned, freckled and had ginger hair
 * Genetic reality of race
 * Why So Many Errors in Our DNA
 * Ore. Discovery Challenges Beliefs About First Humans
 * Europeans in America
 * Scientist: Man in Americas earlier than thought
 * Oldest Human Remains in North America Found
 * New Evidence From Earliest Known Human Settlement In The Americas
 * The first humans went to America earlier than was thought
 * Were Humans in America Over 50,000 Years Ago?
 * Human DNA dated to 14,300 years ago in America
 * Humans Entered the Americas in More Than One Wave
 * Undersea Cave Yields One of Oldest Skeletons in Americas
 * Humans may have reached Europe far earlier


 * Georgian fossils 'indicate humans lived in Europe thousands of years earlier'
 * Over million year old jawbone found in spain
 * Evidence for modern humans in Europe
 * Earliest Humans Not So Different From Us, Research Suggests
 * Modern humans found in Europe
 * Israel Ancient Human Remains Discovered, Report Scientists
 * 14,700 years old humans living in the Britain
 * Ancient human remains found in Israel
 * First humans from Middle East?
 * Fossil finger points to new human species
 * Neanderthals Were Fully Human!
 * N. America 14,000 years ago
 * Early humans from Asia?
 * Skull Fossil Challenges Out-of-Africa Theory
 * Study suggests early primates out of Asia
 * 3.2 Million-Year-Old Fossil Foot Bone Supports Humanlike Bipedalism
 * Discovery Pushes Human Tool Use Back 800,000 Years
 * 3.4 million year old tools found
 * Bones Found Near Tbilisi Rewrite Human Evolution
 * Out of Africa theory challenged
 * 1.8 Million Year Old Tool Found
 * Nitoryu (talk) 02:02, 3 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Think it's best to read over WP:SOURCES As the popular press is generally not a reliable source for scientific articles.  A book search would be better and/or  a scholar search. Moxy (talk) 23:08, 13 June 2011 (UTC)


 * Moxy you are acting like a charlatan there are scientific journals mentioned there. look at the list. other opinions. please needed. 212.219.116.229 (talk) 09:03, 8 July 2011 (UTC)
 * Pls take the time to read the following  - msnbc.msn.com,  viewzone, guardian.co, azcentral.com, huffingtonpost.com, heritage-key.com/blogs, abc.net  are not good sources.Moxy (talk) 15:57, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

Clarification and citation request
The following sentence: The combination of regional continuity inside and outside of Africa and lateral gene transfer between various regions around the world supports the multiregional hypothesis neeeds at least some references and clarifications. What does it means "regional continuity inside and outside of Africa"? The genetic analysis up today di not shows indication of lateral gene transfer for  the genus Homo,  at least as this term is used today in genetic.--Bramfab (talk) 20:35, 25 September 2011 (UTC)


 * What is meant here is Introgression, while lateral gene transfer is a redirect to Horizontal gene transfer which (at least according to that article) refers to transfer outside of normal sexual reproduction. --JWB (talk) 21:52, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

was found to share 4-6% of its genome with living Melanesian humans and with no other living group
This seems like potentially misleading phrasing - it could be read as saying the Denisovan shared no genome with other living groups. The actual statement from the original paper is "the fivefold coverage Papuan individual shares 4.0 +- 0.7% more alleles with the Denisova individual than does the French individual, and we observed a similar skew in all 10 comparisons of Melanesian and other non-African populations (Table 1)" which is a comparison and not a statement about absolute percentage of genome. --JWB (talk) 21:46, 5 November 2011 (UTC)


 * I fixed the statement to better reflect the source. Warren Dew (talk) 21:30, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

rewrote paragraph
An intro paragraph was basically half-right, but the definition of mitochondrial eve was off, etc. My rewrote was a big change, so I'll post the new paragraph here for comment.

Genetic evidence from the late 1980s on the mitochondrial genome indicated that all living women can trace their maternal line of descent to a single female living in Africa about 200,000 years ago, the so-called Mitochondrial Eve. This led to a hypothesis that Homo sapiens evolved in Africa, with a small founder population of humans leaving Africa and eventually replacing all archaic humans then living elsewhere without interbreeding.[citation needed] Recent analyses of DNA taken directly from Neanderthal specimens, however, indicates that they contributed to the genome of all humans outside of Africa. The Homo sapiens who populated the world outside Africa all have Neanderthals among their descendents. Denisova hominins also contributed to the DNA of Milanesians and Australians.

Leadwind (talk) 02:35, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

* inline
See Neanderthal where the quote is not [more] contextualized. 99.90.197.87 (talk) 13:32, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

Should sections describing "out of date" developments be removed?
I don't think there's much sense in edits such as this. It was simply a removal of an entire section with the justification that it was "based on a reference more than half a century out of date". Well, one could well say that the entire article deals with an outdated theory (as it precedes the aforementioned reference), and then should be deleted from wikipedia. I think that while outdated explanations obviously can't be mentioned in a way that misleads one to think that they're still accepted, merely being outdated does not justify deletion unless the article is focused very specifically on current, "newsy", developments of its subject (which is not quite the case here), rather than a broader view. When that's no the case, then it's always interesting to have more information, even if only of historical value. That's the sort of thing encyclopedias commonly have. I can't see any reason why that wouldn't be preferable over deleting such sections. Even for the sake of disk space on the wikipedia servers, as far as I know, deleting something wastes more space than not deleting, as the previous versions remain stored and there's the new file for the new version. For page loading speed, whenever there's a article becomes just too lengthy (again, not the case with this one), some of its sections can be subdivided into independent articles, as it often happens. --Extremophile (talk) 20:05, 13 March 2012 (UTC)


 * While the multiregional theory was originally proposed some time ago, it is in fact a current theory, since the only real competing theory of recent african origin is now largely viewed as disproven by analyses of nuclear DNA from humans, neandertals, and denisovans within the last few years. The Dobzhansky theory whose mention was removed, in contrast, is far from a current theory and is thus inappropriate for the "competing theories" section.  In fact, I can find no evidence that the Dobzhansky theory ever received wide currency even when it was new.
 * Even if the Dobzhansky theory were important, the appropriate approach would be to create a separate article for that theory, for consistency with the structure of this article and the recent african origin article, which separates the information as much as possible to avoid duplication. If you have the Dobzhansky book and want to start a new article on that theory, please do so - I'll look forward to reading it.  Warren Dew (talk) 03:31, 27 August 2012 (UTC)
 * That is wrong. Recent admixture claims have no impact on the prevalence of ROOA - that admixture occurred within the past 200,000 years and does not change the recent african origins of humans or in anyway support the multiregional model which posits human origins 2 million years back and regional continuity almost a million years back in Eurasia and Africa.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 14:32, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

@ WarrenDew -- the main problem with that section is that it seems that it was actually attributing to Dobzhansky something he was more likely refuting, a multiregional evolution leaning to the candelabra side of the spectrum: "When Dobzhansky was asked to review The Origin of Races for the literary journal Saturday Review in September 1962, though, his reaction was more qualified. He praised the descriptions of hominid fossils which Coon provided, but objected to the idea that subspecies of Homo erectus had evolved into sapiens independently. For Dobzhansky and Coon, the debate about race concepts was also about evolutionary mechanisms. In The Origin of Races, Coon suggested a mechanism for the parallel evolution of isolated subspecies through the simultaneous elimination of unfit genes from multiple populations. In his review, Dobzhansky rejected this mechanism, writing that such parallel evolution would require a “mystical inner drive that propels evolution.”". I still think that articles about a scientific theory should have as much as possible about its historical developments rather than just stripping it off the wikipedia. Better a fuller single article than an article split off a section turned into an stub article. If the section grows enough to deserve more than a stub, then so be it, but while it does not happen, an additional section or a paragraph won't hurt. --Extremophile (talk) 20:54, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

better Trellis image


This current diagram is poor and incorrect (to give just one example, it includes Australian H.erectus which were non-existant) even by its own admission.

There is a much better image here. The original publication to cite is:.

This image is actually an extract from a critically relevant scientific paper. It sounds as though the image is not wholly "original" but is instead based on the earlier Weidenreich graphic (but nonetheless would be more appropriate to us here than the Weidenreich graphic would, because this source is updated to represent the most current scientific knowledge).

It's only a short extract from a long paper (less than 5% or than one page, and its derived nature minimises the extent to which it could be argued to encapsulate the entire paper). It has already been taken and used in a number of other places (some more are: & ). I think there is a strong case here for "fair use" of the image. It is clearly needed in order to convey the topic correctly. Also, since the author identifies to a US university, and the work was paid for by a particular NIH grant, it seems the US public at least have a moral (and possibly legal) entitlement to it. Is anyone here familiar with the upload proceedures? Cesiumfrog (talk) 02:56, 1 August 2012 (UTC)


 * I agree that would be a much better image if you can justify including in wikimedia commons. This will guide you through the process:  http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Upload Warren Dew (talk) 03:14, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

Does this link present the original graphic in question: http://phylonetworks.blogspot.com/2012_09_01_archive.html 209.242.149.240 (talk) 20:55, 25 October 2015 (UTC)

haplogroup A00 is stong support and needs to be added
Nottruelosa (talk) 01:48, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

article has multiple issues? discuss these issues
In order to remove tophat on article. --J. D. Redding 21:43, 1 August 2013 (UTC)

factual accuracy :out-of-date information
please bullet list.--J. D. Redding 21:43, 1 August 2013 (UTC)
 * No mention of new developments caused by the Neanderthal/Denisovan admixture discoveries. Basically this means that the MR and OOA models are not the focus of debate anymore, but a combined scenario that makes both genetic continuity and a recent out of Africa migration compatible (although not in Wolpoff's original formulation). User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 00:51, 2 February 2014 (UTC)
 * A combined scenario is a form of MR. 180.10.135.53 (talk) 12:56, 2 February 2014 (UTC)
 * It is also a form of ROOA (and a lot closer to Stringers theory than to Wolpoffs). And in anycase the article doesnt make any mention of this scenario which is now pretty well established and have outcompeted both the traditional MR and ROOA scenarios.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 20:17, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

examples and perspective : significant viewpoints
please bullet list.--J. D. Redding 21:43, 1 August 2013 (UTC)
 * The lead does not describe the fact that this theory is a very small minority viewpoint in the field, and the mainstream theory is not described until the last section. This is basically a POV/Fringe issue.
 * The fossil evidence section presents the interpretations of proponents of the MR model as alone and does not mention the majority interpretations of those same facts. I.e. for most scholars none of the fossils presented as evidence are in fact evidence of MRO. Mainstream opinions lack for all of the fossil evidence presented.
 * Same is the case for the genetic evidence section, except for the Ancient DNA section that does include the mainstream viewpoint.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 00:48, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

History section
This needs to be edited, so I thought I would discuss here first some errors. Note that I have now added Xinzhi Wu.

Anyway, the Multiregional hypothesis was founded in 1984 by Wolpoff, Wu and Thorne. They put their first paper out that year, although Thorne had published a paper touching upon the model as early as 1981. In their 1984 paper, they credit the anti-racist Franz Weidenreich and his "polycentric" model as their main influence, not racist Carleton Coon. Wolpoff emphasizes this in most his works to distance himself from racialized interpretations. The content on the page about Ruggles R. Gates, Klaatch etc is all false. Multiregionalism has nothing to do with these. Gates was a racist polygenist who thought races were not only seperate lines of descent, but also species. Again, Wolpoff writes a lot about how Multiregionalism should not be confused with polygenism. All these people should be removed, and only Wu, Thorne and Wolpoff mentioned, possibly with how they were influenced by Weidenreich.FossilMad (talk) 02:38, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

Page updated
I've updated the page with new sources, and added new sections especially on fossils. There's not much more I can add, perhaps other than a section on archaeology that is absent. It was mainly Geoffrey Pope leading this area in Multiregionalism during the early 90s in China. FossilMad (talk) 23:06, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

Multiregional origin evolution of modern humans.
The probability that a single species evolved multiple times around the world is zero. That's not how evolution works. When groups of a species are separated from a common ancestor they do not evolve into the same species. The hypothesis goes against evolution it's self. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2605:E000:9FC0:60:6169:5F6B:5F3B:EFA3 (talk) 06:53, 11 October 2015 (UTC)
 * That's rather the point 2A02:8084:4EE0:6900:E0D8:B61F:AC5D:7323 (talk) 00:17, 25 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Who's saying it was a single species? Could be multiple species of primates gaining advanced intelligence while preserving the ability to cross-mate. Here are two examples from parallel evolution article:
 * The patagium is a fleshy membrane that is found in gliding mammals such as flying lemurs, flying squirrels, sugar gliders and the extinct Volaticotherium. These mammals all acquired the patagium independently.
 * The eye of the octopus has the same complicated structure as the human eye. As a result, it is often substituted in studies of the eye when using a human eye would be inappropriate. As the two species diverged at the time animals evolved into vertebrates and invertebrates this is extraordinary.
 * --46.242.12.137 (talk) 12:58, 23 May 2019 (UTC)

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Hello, a new asian study 2018
Modern human origins: multiregional evolution of autosomes and East Asia origin of Y and mtDNA Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory

I think this should be included and mentioned. I will maybe myself edit, but I have not much time at the moment. I am new in wikipedia and already created my first article. Maybe i have time tomorrow, but for now I have to quit. Thank you Kang Sung-Tae (talk) 14:50, 4 September 2018 (UTC)


 * Thanks, but this should not be included as it is a preprint which has not been peer reviewed. Also, what it the connection with Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory? The authors are all at Chinese universities and appear to be supporting the old Chinese special origin claim. Dudley Miles (talk) 15:56, 4 September 2018 (UTC)

About the "modern asians" and "modern europeans" in the chart
Not that I believe in the "Western" narrative, but according to this article are Semites, Iranians, Caucasians and Russians considered "Asian" or "European"? What about Australoids and Austronesians? Barbar03 (talk) 01:39, 11 May 2019 (UTC)

article's title
The title of this article seems to be misleading, if I understand it's about the theory proposed by Wolpoff et al. that is cited in the lead. The reference to Wolpoff 2000 is titled "Multiregional, Not Multiple Origins" and the abstract clarifies what it isn't "'… Multiregional' does not mean independent multiple origins, ancient divergence of modern populations, simultaneous appearance of adaptive characters in different regions, or parallel evolution."

I say 'seems' because I found this article linked from Gigantopithecus, where the classification section discusses an earlier taxonomic theory. ~ cygnis insignis 07:44, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

In fact, the 1948 theory discussed in this file and caption thumb|upright=1.25|A graph detailing the evolution to modern humans using the multiregional hypothesis of [[human evolution. The horizontal lines represent 'multiregional evolution' gene flow between regional lineages. In Weidenreich's original graphic, there were also diagonal lines between the populations, e.g. between African H. erectus and Archaic Asians and between Asian H. erectus and Archaic Africans. This created a "trellis" (as Wolpoff called it ) or a "network" that emphasized gene flow between geographic regions and within time. It is important to remember that the populations on the chart are not discrete – i.e., they do not represent different species, but are samples within a long lineage experiencing extensive gene flow.]]

Which I have removed due to its reference to the 1948 theory. ~ cygnis insignis 08:02, 15 November 2021 (UTC)