Rereading a research paper published in January 2025 (Mazières S, Condemi S, El Nemer W, Chiaroni J. Rapid change in red cell blood group systems after the main Out of Africa of Homo sapiens. Sci Rep. 2025 Jan 23;15(1):1597. doi: 10.1038/s41598-024-83023-0. PMID: 39848961; PMCID: PMC11757997), I noticed that the authors attempted to adapt the facts to the Out of Africa theory even though they point in an opposite direction.
The abstract states that "we noted that the blood group allele diversity in the Neandertals remained unchanged since 120,000 yBP, while H. sapiens conquered Eurasia with blood group alleles presently exclusive to non-African populations, suggesting they may have differentiated right after the Out of Africa, between 70,000 and 45,000 yBP. Notably, Ust’Ishim possessed unknown alleles that may illustrate the lost genetic heritage of the early Eurasians. Lastly, Neandertals shared a unique Rh haplotype from which we updated the current RHD phylogeny."
The paper notes that the oldest modern humans in Eurasia carry red blood cell variants that are absent in Africans: "the oldest genomes available (Ust’Ishim, Bacho Kiro, Zlaty Kun, Tianyan, Oase1, Kostenki14, 36-45 ka) show that H. sapiens entered in Eurasia with a set of functional alleles absent in Neandertals and Denisova, and already derived from their ancestral state... Presently, some of these blood group alleles are only found in non-African populations."
How could this be possible? If humans originated in Africa, the original pool should be found there, and the Eurasians, after a bottleneck due to the Out of Africa migration, should have fewer original variants. But instead, they find none of these variants in Africa.
The paper invents a standstill in Iran, the "Persian Standstill" where the new Eurasian humans evolved their own, distinct variants! Below is the paper's text:
"Given the wide distribution of the derived alleles amongst the earliest H.sapiens of Eurasia coupled with their total absence in Africa, a first scenario could assume that these alleles have emerged in African H. sapiens before the Out of Africa, spread in Eurasia, then disappeared in Africa only. It would be tempting to point to natural selection, but the joint disappearance of independent alleles coding for phenotypes of a wide variety of susceptibility to natural selection is unlikely. Moreover, given that the highest gene diversity is found in Africa and that the expansion of H.sapiens is characterized by an initial founder effect, these alleles should be found in African populations. An alternative could be an outbreak of red cell blood group alleles outside Africa right before the conquest of Eurasia. Genetic, lithic and paleoecological evidence from the Initial Upper Paleolithic indicated that the late phase of H. sapiens expansion outside Africa circa 70 − 60,000 years ago was followed by a standstill of at least 15,000 yBP in the Persian Plateau. Analogously to the Beringian occupation ca. 20,000 yBP during which the Beringian populations paused several millennia and differentiated before entering the Americas with genetic polymorphisms shared by Native Americans only, H. sapiens could have resided long enough in the Persian Plateau to differentiate. This view makes Western Asia a good candidate for the place of incubation of the functional ABO*O.01.02, FY*01, RHCE*03, KEL*02.07, FUT1*01.02 c.35 C > T, and GYPB*04 before expansion towards East (Tianyaun), North (Zlatý kůň, Ust’Ishim) and Western Eurasia (Oase1, Bacho Kiro) more than 45ky ago."
Why propose a standstill in Persia? An unexplored alternative is that humans originated in Eurasia, and lost part of their diversity as they migrated out of Asia and into Africa. There they settled in Eastern Africa and gradually spread into the continent, losing diversity as they advanced, and taking up archaic versions as they admixed with older homo lineages in Africa.
Neanderthals, Denisovans, and Humans
Surprisingly, the paper stated that "H. sapiens entered in Eurasia with a set of functional alleles absent in Neandertals and Denisova, and already derived from their ancestral state" so, they were present in modern humans in Asia and absent in our Neanderthal and Denisovan ancestors but, and this is relevant, "Neandertal and Denisova, two archaic hominid populations inhabiting Eurasia, expressed blood groups currently found in sub-Saharans... For two blood group systems, RH and KEL, the Neandertal alleles are almost exclusively found in modern populations from Sub-Saharan Africa" This suggests that the ancestral populations of Neanderthals and Denisovans, that originated in Asia, migrated into Africa, surviving through admixture with hominins inside AFrica. Their variants are now only found in the red blood cells of populations South of the Sahara. Outside of Africa, the larger population that evolved into modern humans mutated into a derived form, absent in both Denisovans and Neanderthals.
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