Guided Response: Review several of your peers' posts that support a model different from your own, and compare findings. Respond to at least two of your peers and provide recommendations to extend their thinking. Challenge your peers by asking a question that may cause them to reevaluate their choice of model. Each response should be at least 50 words in length.

Justin McKinney

When it comes to considering the evidence from each model, the origin of modern humans most convincing is the Replacement Model. From my understanding and reading of a lot of other books, those who were first discovered on this Earth were those who came from Africa. This has always been my personal understanding and personal preference when it comes to understanding where our humanity started at.

When it comes to what is so convincing there are many different factors that were mentioned in the reading."The oldest anatomically modern human skeletal remains yet found are those mentioned earlier in this chapter, found at the Omo site in Ethiopia." (Feder, Page 151.) "At an age of 195,000 years, the OMo remains are older,by far, than any anatomically modern or near-modern remains found anywhere in Asia or Europe."

This is more convincing because it is factual evidence that the fossils are older than the ones found in Asia and Europe where the Multiregional Model states that humans were "Homo erectus and premodern Homo sapiens in east Asia evolved into the modern people of Asia. In the view, the Neandertals of Europe and west Asia evolved into modern Europeans and west Asians and the pre modern humans of Africa evolved into the modern people of Africa". If this was the case, we would have fossils being discovered of humans in all of those areas of the world and not just one part, in this case Africa.

Payton Smith

There are two models to how modern humans became the species that we are today, the Replacement Model and the Multiregional Model. The Replacement model claims that the anatomically modern homo sapiens started in one location, in Africa, and spread out where they encountered their close relatives before replacing them (Feder, 2014). The Multiregional model claims that modern humans rose from the previous Homo Erectus and all developed into the modern human of today with slight regional differences (Feder, 2014).

After reading over the two provided theories, I was first torn between which one sounded more convincing, however, now that I have put some thought into it, I believe that the Replacement Model makes the convincing argument. At first, I thought the Multiregional model made the most sense, but then I feel like with some much time the homo erectus spent around the world we would see more biological differences between anatomically modern homo sapiens. It seems strange that homo sapiens would spread so fast, but perhaps their slightly superior intelligence was just enough to give them an advantage to be able to take over their forerunners territory.

Thank you for ready, I can't wait to read everyone's thoughts on this, I found this week's information to be really interesting.

Payton Smith

References:

Feder, Kenneth. (2014). The Past in Perspective: An Introduction to Human Prehistory. Oxford University Press.

Evolutionary Model (my work, but don't respond to it)

Between Replacement Model and the Multiregional Model, which evolutionary model for the origin of modern humans is most convincing?

There are various evolutionary models that try to explain the evolution stages of the modern man. The Replacement Model and the Multiregional Model are two argumentative models that explain how the first humans left Africa about 2 million years ago in different contexts. In the Replacement Model, the modern man evolved in Africa and migrated to replace all populations that descended from Homo erectus without interbreeding.

Multiregional Model on the other hand explains that, in their migration, Homo erectus gradually evolved into the modern man by exchanginggenes with each other in their respective regions resulting to the present regional variant sometimes termed as races (Begun, 2013). Considering the various explanations of these two models the most convincing evolutionary model is the Replacement model.

Most of the fossil records show evidences of existence of early humans in the East and South Africa. These fossils progressively show the transitional developments that occurred in the physical form of the early man between 115,000 and 160,000 years ago. Other evidences of the modern man was later found between 40,000 and 60,000 years ago in Europe and Asia. This was after the archaic man migrated to the rest of the world driving the Neanderthals into extinction.

Archielogical and anthropological evidences show that the early man evolved to Homo sapiens and moved out of Africa to explore (Tadj, Ouali, Yacout, & Kadi, 2011). Strong evidences by Rogers and Harpending of mitochondrial DNA analysis show possible existence of Homo sapiens in Africa approximately 100,000 years ago. This is supported by molecular genetic research by Cann, Wilson and Sanrich that explain a direct ancestral linage that starts from Africa.

References

Begun, D. (2013). A companion to paleoanthropology. Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley Blackwell.

Tadj, L., Ouali., Yacout, S. & Kadi, D. (2011). Replacement models with minimal repair. London New York: Springer.