Distance From Africa, Not Climate, Explains Within-population Phenotypic Diversity In Humans

Main Category: Biology / Biochemistry
Also Included In: Bones / Orthopaedics;  Genetics
Article Date: 03 Dec 2008 - 7:00 PST

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The relative role of ancient demography and climate in shaping the human skull is still debated. Here we show that skull variability within individual populations declines with increasing distance from Africa.

This pattern is consistent with the "recent out of Africa" hypothesis, which states that all modern humans originated in Sub-Saharan Africa and started colonising the world ~50K - 80K years ago.

The rapid range expansion over such a large area would have led to a series of sequential population bottlenecks, with a resulting progressive loss of diversity with distance from the origin.

This pattern was not affected by climate.

Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences

Proceedings B is the Royal Society's flagship biological research journal, dedicated to the rapid publication and broad dissemination of high-quality research papers, reviews and comment and reply papers. The scope of journal is diverse and is especially strong in organismal biology.

Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences