Black Quetzalcoatl

Even though Quetzalcoatl has been depicted as a bearded white man who came from Europe to civilize the Mesoamericans, I came across an interesting article that says he was dark skinned.

The article, published online titled Quetzalcoatl Negro (Black Quetzalcoatl) by Rosario Nava Román "Although this Quetzalcoatl was a man, he was revered as a god... The adornments with which he was worshipped were as follows: a miter on his head, with a plume of feathers known as 'quetzalli'... his face was dyed black, as was his entire body."

Two depictions of Quetzalcoatl with black skin. From Quetzalcoatl Negro

Bernardino de Sahagún (c. 1499-1590) was a missionary in what is now Mexico, starting in 1529. He wrote a History of New Spain (Mexico) and the famous Florentine Codex is a manuscript version of this history. The illustrations it includes, done by native artists depict Quetzalcoatl in the traditional way, with dark, black, skin.

Other manuscripts, like the Borgia, Vindobonensis and Nutall codex depict him with a black body.

Nava Román points out that other gods such as Tezcatlipoca, Tláloc, Ixtlilton, etc. are also portrayed with black body paint in those codex. The high priests, sacrifice, penitents and man-gods are all black skinned.

The practice was noted by Jerónimo de Mendieta (1525-1604) who in his Historia Eclesiástica Indiana written in 1595-96, described (see p.108 in Chapter 37) how the Kings were enthroned in Mexico, in Tezcuco and Tlacuba: "The first thing the high priest did was to dye the lord's entire body black with very black ink; he had prepared a swab made of cedar and willow branches and reed leaves, and—with the lord kneeling—he would sprinkle him four times with water from a vessel of holy (or cursed) water, greeting him with brief words; then he would dress him in a mantle painted with the heads and bones of the dead, and upon his head..." The dark skin tone caused by the dye gave them a god-like appearance and strenghtened the link between mortal king and gods.

Nava Román mentions how this practice continued during the colonial period, and cites plate number 15 in the codex known as Tira de Tepechpan which depicts the conqueror of Mexico, Hernán Cortés in black (it can be seen below, with the Spaniard, with black skin, on the left).

The author argues that the white, bearded man from across the Atlantic was an invention of the Spaniards to justify their conquest, erasing the real black-skinned gods of the natives and replacing them with the superior white caucasians.

As I have posted in the past, (see here and here for some examples), I do not believe that there is evidence of African black people in America in pre-Columbian times, so the dark-skinned Mexican gods are not African people or Olmecs.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

Duration of the Out Of Africa Migration, it was much slower than believed

Reading a paper about the peopling of Sundaland by Homo erectus (Husson et al., 2022, Javanese Homo erectus on the move in SE Asia circa 1.8 Ma, I learned something about the time it took these ancient hominins to people this southeastern part of Asia, and it was much longer than I expected.

The authors report that " H. erectus reached Java and dwelled at Sangiran, Java, ca. 1.8 Ma.... The dispersal of H. erectus across Sundaland occurred over at least tens to hundreds kyr."

Migration pathways of H. erectus across Sundaland during Early Pleistocene. (a) Reconstructed landscape ca. 1.8 Ma (model goSPL32). The underlying physiography, with overprinted modeled rivers, converts into a map of resistance to displacement that serves to compute the migration pathways, either using a least-cost path algorithm shown for the Myanmar entry point (purple), or a mechanistic movement model (SiMRiv30) exemplified for the Vietnam entry point (orange). Blue star locates the Thailand entry point.. Husson et al., 2022

The map above shows how different the landscape was around 1.8 million years ago, with an emerged area spanning not only the Indonesian islands but also a land bridge from Vietnam into Sundaland, separating the seas of China and Thailand. It also depicts in orange and purple, possible entry routes from the mainland Asian area to Sanigran in Indonesia.

The time spent walking

The point they studied is how long did the trek of these erectus people take. After all, there are remains in China and also in Georgia, at the Dmanisi site, around 1.9 to 2 million years old, and the Indonesian remains are just 100,000 years younger. Let's see what the authors say (my comments are underlined) and I highlight some relevant parts:

" How long did the journey take? While least-cost paths are 6,000 km long on average from mainland Asia to Java (Fig. 4a), the mean travelled distances are 50 times longer for Markovian walks (327 x 10³km), regardless of the north entry point, and almost always in excess of 100 x 10³ km. The corresponding time span depends on the migration speed. Estimates are available for more recent palaeolithic hominins, ranging from 1 to 10 km/yr [I will comment on this point further down]. At similar speeds, the least-cost paths convert into an optimal travel time of 0.6 to 6 kyr, which is thus the minimal time to cross Sundaland. Markovian walks imply much longer durations before hominins reached Java, between 25-40 kyr at fast moving rates, and 250-400 kyr at slow moving rates (Fig. 4b). These relatively long delays at average or slow moving rates are difficult to reconcile with the early arrival to Java ca. 1.8 Ma, following departure from Georgia or China only a few 100 kyr before. We suggest that because these characteristic travel times scale with the characteristic time scale of changes of the physical environment, external forcings impelled hominins to migrate and boosted their displacement.... We find that H. erectus migrated across Sundaland at remarkably fast rates (>10 km/yr) with respect to their prior journey across Eurasia, and to the displacement rates of other lineages of the genus Homo"

In other words, they estimate that the joureny could take between 25,000 and 400,000 years, to move from northern Thailand or Vietnam to Sanigran in Indonesia. And say that the erectus people walked faster than that because there were external forces pushing them forward (?).

They adopt a quicker pace to fit the timeline of not more than 100,000 years between the oldest Asian specimens in China and Georgia, and those found in Indonesia. So, the authors suggest a slow pace across Asia from Georgia to East Asia, and then a very quick entry into Indonesia.

The paper assumes a speed of 10 km per year for Homo erectus which is the speed at which the fastest "recent palaeolithic hominins" move at (see further up, where it places that speed at 1 to 10 km/y). In my opion, this is quick.

So, just taking straight lines as a course (this would assume the travelers knew in advance where they were going, which they didn't), the distance however from northern Thailand to Java is roughly 3,000 km (2,000 miles). Which they. Taking figure 4b in the paper, at 10 km per year this journey would have required between 7 and 62 ky, on average 32 ky. If these people would have moved at the slower limit found in more recent palaeolithic hominins, they would have required 320 ky to do so (70 to 620 ky).

Interestingly, the modern humans of the Out Of Africa wave are said to have trekked from the Sinai (starting 60 kya) to Beringia in only 40,000 years. That is a much longer distance (10,700 km - 6,700 mi) than the one into Sunda from northern Thailand. So, moving at the pace of the erectus that peopled Sunda, to cover this distance that is 3 times longer, it would have taken almost 100 ky on average. So if they set out 60 kya, they still haven't arrived in America! And walking at the lowere speed limit, it would have taken 1 million years.

Something is wrong in the dispersal speeds.

The paper seems to understand this implication, because it ends with an interesting conclusion: "At a more general scale, our TCN ages obtained for the first appearance datum of H. erectus in Sangiran advocate for an early peopling of Sundaland by H. erectus, contemporary with their Chinese and Georgian counterparts, whose endocranial capacity was much smaller than specimens from Sangiran. These results reignite the long-standing controversy over the origin and dispersal pathways of archaic humans and invites a reexamination of the out-of-Africa paradigm, which provides a global roadmap for the dispersal of the genus Homo, but which one-way direction may be questioned."

Directionality suggests Asia-To-Africa migrations, and the smaller-brain sizes of contemporary erectus in China and Georgia vs. Indonesia requires some explanation. Why would the more advanced erectus be those most distant from Africa, in Sangiran?

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

The Apostle St. Thomas in America: A native myth with European origins?

In my previous post about Quetzalcoatl, the civilizing god that visited Mexico, and then departed eastwards across the Atlantic Ocean, returning to his homeland, I mentioned the myth about the Apostle Saint Thomas visited America.

Thomas Didymus (from the Greek word for twins, Thomas means precisely that in Aramaic), was also known as Doubting Thomas, after the description given in the Bible (see John 20:24-29) describes as "Thomas, called Didymus, one of the Twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples said to him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and put my finger into the nailmarks and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.” Now a week later his disciples were again inside and Thomas was with them. Jesus came, although the doors were locked, and stood in their midst and said, “Peace be with you.” Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands, and bring your hand and put it into my side, and do not be unbelieving, but believe.” Thomas answered and said to him, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus said to him, “Have you come to believe because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed.”"

Tradition says he visited India (and possibly China and Indonesia) spreading the gospel, and died, as a martir in India at St. Thomas Mount in Chennai (December 21st 72 AD),

St. Thomas in America

There is a very interesting article by Carlos Page, in Spanish, with the revealing title: El Apóstol Santo Tomás en América según los relatos de los antiguos jesuitas del Brasil y Paraguay (The Apostle Saint Thomas in America according to the accounts of the ancient Jesuits of Brazil and Paraguay). It's abstract in English summarizes the paper: "The history of Saint Thomas the Apostle preaching in America was debated from the time it became a widely discussed topic of conversation during the sixteenth century. Although there is reliable evidence that the story began with the arrival of Columbus to the supposed “Indies”, where the apostle did preach, the Jesuits are attributed for its invention. Undoubtedly, religious leaders arriving in 1549 embraced the story to justify and validate their evangelizing project, taking storytelling to the extreme. Even though Christian hagiographies had ruled it out, by the end of the eighteenth century the story was still being written about..."

Page also mentions Peru where Calancha likened the Inca god Tunupa in that region, where another apostle, St. Bartholomew was said to have preached according to Guaman Poma de Ayala (1615). In Colección de libros y documentos referentes a la historia del Peru. (1918), (see p. 153) the myth of the civilizing god Viracocha is discussed, and it mentions the theory put forward by Joan de Santacruz Pachacuti Yamqui, in his Relación de Antigüedades deste Reyno del Pirú suggesting that Viracocha was Saint Thomas.

Pachacuti wrote: "A bearded man of medium build arrived in these provinces and kingdoms of Tahuantinsuyo. He had long hair and wore somewhat long tunics; he was described as a man past his youth, showing signs of graying hair, and thin of frame. He traveled with a staff and taught the natives with great love, calling them all his sons and daughters. Although the natives paid him little heed, he performed many visible miracles as he journeyed through the provinces, healing the sick simply by touching them. He sought no material gain and carried no possessions; it is said he spoke all the local languages better than the natives themselves. He was known by names such as Tonapa, Tarapaca, Viracochanpachayachicachan, Pacchacan, Bicchhaycaniayoc, and Cunacuycamayoc. Since this man was called Tonapa Viracochampacachan, could he not be the glorious Apostle Saint Thomas?"

Brazil and Patagonia

But going back to Brazil, the first mention of St. Thomas there dates back to 1515 where a German text called Copia de Newen Zeytung Auss Peszilg Landt, stated that the local natives "also cherish a memory of Saint Thomas on the rocky coast or within the land; they also tell the Portuguese that he is said to have gone inland. And when they speak of Saint Thomas, they say he is a lesser deity, yet there is another god who is greater. It is quite credible that they hold a memory of Saint Thomas, for it is well known that Saint Thomas lies buried at Meliapur on the Coromandel Coast, in the Gulf of Ceylon. In the land, they even name their children Thomas."

Strangely the author comments about Brazilian natives and associates the memory with the Coast of Coromandel in Southwesterb India! The idea of a journey from there to Eastern South America didn't seem to bother him.

At that time, in 1507, German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller (1470-1520), published his map of the New World, naming it America, and included in Patagonia a Serra de S Thome, Serra = "sierra" or range of hills or mountains named for St. Thomas. See it in this Source (zoomable) from which I made the following image:

1507 map "Universalis cosmographia secundum Ptholomaei traditionem et Americi Vespucii alioru[m]que lustrationes". Waldseemüller, Martin, 1470-1519

The Guaraní people's myth

Del Barco Centenera (1535-c.1605), a Spanish friar who lived in Paraguay, recorded the myth in his ode Argentina, published in 1602. In it, he mentions an encounter that an old native chief had with a holy Christian man who gave him a cross before the Spanish arrived in America (p. 340): "A man stepped before me, Of handsome bearing and countenance... [God] will remember you in the final hour. Saying this, he extended his right hand, and gave me this cross, which I believe, is the gift of my rest and my desire. " the footnote that del Barco Centenera included for this comment reads (p, 386): "A very common story among the Guaraní concerns a holy man who once went among them preaching; known today as Pa'i Sumé, or Saint Thomas. I have seen with my own eyes a stone, measuring some nine feet in length and four in widthm bearing the marks and traces of human footprints. These are not Indian footprints, for the marks left by their feet are easily recognized and quite distinct from those of a Christian, even when both are barefoot: Indians have splayed toes, whereas Christians have theirs close together, a trait also observed in Black Africans."

The missionaries who visited the region in the early 1500s recorded the belief in a Pay Zumé (pai in Portuguese means Father or Priest, and Zumé is a deformation of Tomé = Thomas). De Angelis in his history of Argentina, published in 1836, cites fathers Lozano and Cataldino who tell about the route taken by St. Thomas among the Indians, as he trekked inland from the coast of Brazil, also mentioning the footprints in the rock, and a trail he used, that still exists; he names it Peabirú. See my post on this ancient native trail.

Finally, there is as cholarly paper published in 2016, written by Marcela Pezzuto, Desde el Titicaca hasta el Guayrá: el gran viaje de Santo Tomás según dos cronistas (From Titicaca to Guayra: Saint Thomas's great journey according two chroniclers), that looks into the texts written by Ruíz de Montoya and Guaman Poma de Ayala and suggests that Montoya did so to promote the power of Christianity in the New World, while de Ayala's goal was to paint the Native American Inca realm as an utopian place in contrast to the ruthless Spanish conquest.

Those interested in an English language reference can read Daniel Garrison Brinton who mentions Pai Zumé and the other demigods (like Quetzalcoatl and Viracocha) in his book "American Hero-myths A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent" published in 1892.

Comments

Of course, St Thomas didn't visit America. The Jesuits believed that an angel had transported him to the New World, it is most likely that the idea was implanted in the natives by now-unknown priests who visited the region during the first period that followed the discovery of America.

The myth probably reflects the visit of mariners from Europe in pre-Columbian times, not necessarily Christians, possibly Carthaginians or Phoenicians.

As part of the myths describing civilizing gods, Pai Zumé / St. Thomas is on par with Quetzalcoatl, Amalivaca, and Viracocha. An intreresting common legend among the natives of South America.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

Quetzalcoatl: civilizing demigod that crossed the Atlantic to Mexico

One often comes across the myth of Quetzalcoatl, the feathered snake god / bearded white man, of the Aztecs, that was said to have crossed the Atlantic Ocean, and civilized the natives in Mesoamerica, and once is task was done, he sailed back, eastwards, promising to return. The story continues; it says that when the Spaniards reached the shores of Mexico in April, 1519, on the Caribbean Sea, the locals assumed that they were the returning Quetzalcoatl.

It is always a good idea to read the original sources to separate truth from fiction.

Quetzalcoatl

Mesoamericans revered a god named Quetzalcoatl, whose name combines the Nahuatl words for feather and snake. (I have posted extensively about snake myths in America, and civilizing god-men like Amalivaca, or Viracocha). The god is said to have been represented by Venus, and also by a white, bearded man. Furthermore, there was a historic record of supreme priests of the Totlec region, who wre named after him. One of them, Ce Ácatl Topiltzin Quetzalcóatl (999-1051 AD) was the king of Tula and we have written records about his reign (see this Source, in Spanish).

Cortés' Letter to the King of Spain

Spanish Conquistador Hernán Cortés (1485-1547) recorded his conquest of the Aztec empire in Mexico in a series of letters (Cartas del famoso conquistador Hernán Cortés al emperador Carlos quinto, in Spanish) that he sent to the King of Spain, Charles I, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire as Charlex V, to justify his conquest of Mexico. He had no permission to do so, so he wrote these letters to soothe the king, and justify his actions.

The text of the second letter written by Cortés also records his encounters with the Aztec leader, Emperor Moctezuma II (Cortés calls him Muteczuma), who told him the story of their origin. I cite him below (my translation), Moctezuma told Cortés that:

""For a long time, we have known from the records of our ancestors that neither I nor any of those who inhabit this land are natives of it; rather, we are foreigners who came here from very distant lands (1). We also know that our people were brought here by a lord —whose vassals they all were— who returned to his own country. He came back again after a very long time —so long, in fact, that those who had remained behind had already married native women of the land, had large families, and had established settlements where they lived. When he wished to take them with him, they refused to go or to accept him as their lord, so he returned home. We have always held the belief that his descendants would come to subjugate this land and us, treating us as their vassals. Given the direction from which you say you come —where the sun rises (2)— and the things you tell us about the great lord or king who sent you here, we believe and are certain that he is our rightful lord; especially since you tell us that he has known of us for a long time. Therefore, rest assured that we shall obey you and acknowledge you as our lord, in the place of that great lord of whom you speak."

The two footnotes to this text, were added by the editor of the 1870 edition, and read as follows: " (1) By tradition, the Mexicans came from the north, by way of the province of Quivira, and their stopping points are known with certainty; as evident proof of this, the conquest of the Mexican empire was carried out by the Toltecs—or people of Tula—which was the seat of the court. (2) This was a mistaken belief held by the Indians, for their ancestors came from the north; and even when coming from the Yucatán Peninsula, they truthfully spoke of it as lying to the east of Mexico."

The Mexican commentary is reasonable, why suppose a transatlantic voyage?

Did Cortés write about Quetzalcoatl to establish that the natives were not the lords of the land, but vassals of a white lord (Christian? European?)? This would help show that their right to owning the land was weak, and justified the Spanish conquest.

Cortés has Moctezuma say that it is likely that the king of Spain is their "rightful lord."

The Bearded White Man

We have another source about Quetzalcoatl, written by a Catholic friar, Bartolomé de las Casas (c.1474-1566). He defended the natives against the exploitation of the Spanish conquerors, and, in his work Apologética, Historia Sumaria... (see p.644-45) he describes Quetzalcoatl, as a god-man:

"But the most celebrated, greatest, and most revered of all the gods —according to universal repute— was the great god of the city of Cholula (located two leagues from the present-day city of Puebla de los Ángeles), known as Quetzalcoatl.
According to their histories, he came to Cholula from the region of Yucatán; he was a white man of tall stature, with a broad forehead, large eyes, long black hair, and a rounded beard. They exalted him as their supreme god and held him in the deepest love, reverence, and devotion...
They claim he stayed with them for twenty years, after which he returned along the path he had come, taking with him four virtuous young noblemen from Cholula. From Coatzacoalcos, a province over a hundred leagues away toward the sea, he sent them back with instructions; among other teachings, he told them to assure the people of Cholula that, in times to come, white men with white beards, like himself, would arrive by sea from the direction of the sunrise, guided by the stars. He said these men would become lords of those lands and were his brothers.
The Indians always expected this prophecy to be fulfilled; when they saw the Christians, they immediately called them gods—sons and brothers of Quetzalcoatl, though once they witnessed and experienced their deeds, they no longer regarded them as celestial beings...
Others say the people of Cholula always believed he would return to rule and comfort them; when they saw the Spaniards' ships sailing in, they said their god Quetzalcoatl was returning and bringing the temples where he would dwell across the sea. Yet, when the men disembarked, they said: "These are many gods ('tequeteteuh' in their language); this is not our god Quetzalcoatl." "

In a future post I will explore the possibility that Quetzalcoatl's depiction as being white was a manipulation by the Spanish conquerors: the "black" Quetzalcoatl hypothesis. Pictured below. New July 19: see the post here.

Quetzalcoatl was Saint Thomas, the apostle

Another account written by Friar Diego Duran (1537-1588) in his Historia de las Indias de Nueva Españ, which assimilates Quetzalcoatl, named Topitlzin (an alternate name for the god), with Saint Thomas, one of Jesus' apostles (see p. 73 and following): "There is a fine likeness of him which I saw painted on very old paper preserved in Mexico City; it depicts a man of advanced years with a venerable bearing: a long beard, streaked with gray and red; a somewhat long nose, marked by bumps or perhaps eroded; a tall stature; and long, very straight hair. He sits with great composure..." in the following pages, he is described as the exploits, civilizing efforts. Duran mentions that the natives told him that the saint had left a book, written in strange symbols, that they later burned out of superstition. Duran wonders if it was written in Hebrew (p. 76), he also reported that a native told him that "He had gone toward the sea and nothing more was ever heard of him, nor is it known where to which port he went; it is only known that he went to alert his bretheren, the Spaniards, about this land, and that he brought them back to exact vengeance; and thus, because these Indians held a long-standing prophecy regarding the arrival of strangers, they remained constantly on the alert." Vengance because the natives had insulted his chastity by placing a whore in his room, a woman named Xodviquetzal. He was so offended that he decided to return to his homeland.

The mythical history of Saint Thomas the Apostle in America appeared in the 16th century. It was probably made up by the Catholic church to justify the priority of Christianity over the natives. Nevertheless, there are stories about Saint Thomas in Kerala, India, and a short note written by Eusebius of Caesarea (see 3.1.1.) c.320 AD, telling about his presence there shortly after the death of Jesus (c.50 AD). Did St. Thomas follow the route of the Phoenicians from the Levant, to India and eastwards to America? See my post on Crawford's theory.

My next post will look into the myth about Saint Thomas in South America, in Paraguay, Brazil, and Patagonia. (See this post here).

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

Out of Africa vs. Multiregional evolution - an 1988 perspective

Thirty eight years ago, back in 1988, BBC Radio 3 transmitted a program called "And Then There Was Us" it was hosted by Colin Tudge, who interviewed different scientists who discussed the then new theory of an Out of Africa origin of mankind, in contrast with the multiregional theory that proposed an interconnected evolution of humans from an ancient, archaic, group of hominins. Shahin Rouhani and Mark Stoneking supported the former, and Milford Wolpoff, the latter. You can read the full transcription of the program online: And Then There Was Us Et puis nous sommes apparus by Emma E. Bird, Julia Galway-Witham, Chris Stringer, First published: 15 January 2026 https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9655.70025.

I will share a few snippets with my comments.

Diversity and antiquity

This is the explanation of why diversity meant an "older" population, which in fact is wrong. All humans share an equally ancient genome, from teh Amazonian hunter-gatherer to the Pygmy in Congo. We all have the same age in our genes. Yet Mark Stoneking said the following: "We calculated the actual average number of mutational differences within each population-within the individuals belonging to Africa, within individuals belonging to Asia, and so forth-and then also between populations. What we found was that Africans, on the whole, were by far the most variable of the human populations that we surveyed. They were about twice as variable as the other populations. So, if these mutations are neutral (if they are just accumulating in a more-or-less steady rate over time), then the more variability, the more mutational differences a population possesses and the older it is. The inference is that the African population is the oldest."

But mutations are not neutral, and they accumulate at variable rates, others are lost, others revert, but we are all at an equal distance from our common ancestor. (I have written several posts on the variability of mutation rates). Diversity, as observed by Stoneking can also come from admixture with archaics, within Africa, adding diversity to a population that was initially less diverse.

Admixture with other hominins

At that time, admixture with other lines of hominins was unthinkable, mixing of Neanderthals and Humans was not an option, they were considered different species. But Wolpoff thought differently:

Colin Tudge: In short, the Noah's Ark, or Garden of Eden hypothesis seems to have the issues sewn up. Modern human beings arose in Africa about 200,000 years ago; they spread from there, displacing all pre-existing humans in all the rest of the world, until, by about 35,000 years ago, they were the only humans left on Earth. As they took over the world, they grew apart, at least in outward appearance, to form the present-day races. All very neat.
By contrast, on the face of it, Milford Wolpoff's idea has an unlikely feel. It explains, well enough, why the modern races look so different; after all, he believes they descended from populations of human beings who began to diverge a million years ago. But it apparently fails to explain how the races have remained so similar once you get beneath the surface, and why they are all so obviously capable of interbreeding. All the different groups indeed would have had to evolve along strictly parallel lines, from the time that they were all heavy-boned and small-brained, to the time of universal gracility and braininess. But, such criticism, he feels, is based on misunderstanding.
Milford Wolpoff: The idea of races, or sub-divisions of humanity becoming isolated and separate early in their evolution, isn't really where I'm focused. My contention is that they have become separated, but not isolated. In fact, I believe, that if human populations ever were truly isolated for long periods of time – time in the thousands of years – they would become different species, so there would be a different species in Africa, in Asia, in Europe. They could no longer interbreed with each other, they would evolve in their own directions, and we would never be telling this story because it wouldn't be relevant.
The fact that humanity never speciated, in my mind, shows definitively that there always was a fairly high level of gene flow between populations. Now, gene flow doesn't necessarily mean population movement, although often it does mean exactly that. Gene flow can mean the exchange of wives, mating networks with villages next door to each other, or tribes next door, who regularly exchange mates, so that the genes in one area can spread to another.
However, there is more to it than that. Gene flow alone really would not account for this. The changes that have occurred across human evolution are ones that largely are the consequence of human behaviour. For instance, the decrease in robustness comes as a consequence of the more efficient use of tools, tools for preparing foods, tools for hunting, tools for making your life easier; tyre-jacks to lift the car so you don't have to do it yourself. These tools would spread much more rapidly than genes, we know they did, and human populations then responded to these by changing in similar ways in different places. Brain size is the most important of these because brains almost certainly evolve and respond to the increasing complexity of behaviour. Increasing complexity of behaviour can pass from one society to another as quickly as they talk to each other, and believe me, talk to each other they did.
Colin Tudge: You would have a kind of parallel evolution, wouldn't you? Although it would not be as stark as people would suggest.
Milford Wolpoff: You know the thing about parallel evolution is that parallel evolution really only clearly works between species where there is no gene interchange. The definition of parallelism is when a feature in two descendant species evolves from a single different feature in a common ancestor. It would be as though the canines of a common ancestor were large and two descendant species both independently develop small canines. That is parallelism. It works as a definition because there is no possibility that there is gene exchange between these two species. Once there is gene exchange, then it is not clear that the two features of the two descendants work independent of each other. Consequently, I don't think that parallelism really applies.
Colin Tudge: No one can doubt Milford Wolpoff's suggestion that ancient human beings might have exchanged genes, which in practice may mean exchanging wives. The question that bothers Shahin Rouhani is whether there could have been enough exchange to have kept all the different groups on the same evolutionary course.
Shahin Rouhani: If you work out how much gene flow you would require for such a thing to take place-that is you have a constant amount of gene flow throughout a grade of tribes extending from South Africa to southeast Asia-then you come up with some problems. One of the things you come up against is that, supposing an advantageous mutant appears in South Africa, how long will it take before this mutant spreads all the way to southeast Asia? Well, if you put in a reasonable set of parameters, you get numbers like 100,000 years, or 400,000 years, for such a spread to take place. This means that if one has something like a million years only to wait for archaic Man to change into modern Man, then you can only accumulate two, three, or at most ten, advantageous mutants. The morphological differences, which we do observe in the fossil record, are so immense. Much larger brain capacity and lack of brow-ridges would require quite a few genes, and they cannot simply be changed by a handful of genes.
Colin Tudge: But Milford Wolpoff isn't one to stay on the defensive. The Noah's Ark model demands that the emerging group of modern humans, Homo sapiens sapiens, simply replaced all the peoples who were inhabiting the various niches of Europe and Asia. In particular – I say ‘in particular’ only because it's the most famous example – the sapiens sapiens people known as ‘Cro-Magnons’ are supposed to have simply swept aside the Neanderthals, who were so well entrenched in western Europe. That, says Professor Wolpoff, really is implausible.
Milford Wolpoff: It seems to me that the idea that an invading population would not incorporate females as they overcame an indigenous population is behaviour that is not even un-human, it's un-animal. No vertebrate really acts like that. I like to use Tasmania – the poor Tasmanians – as an example of replacement because I think it's a good example. When Europeans came to Tasmania and replaced the Tasmanians, who were said to be extinct, in fact they mixed with them. So, the Tasmanians are said to be extinct only because there are no pure-bred Tasmanians left, but many inhabitants of that island can trace their ancestry one, two, or even three grandparents to Tasmanian natives, and not to Europeans. The real replacement here was one with a massive amount of admixture, and people living on Tasmania will always show the influence of genes from the people who were presumably replaced by the Europeans. If Tasmania is a model, it means that the Neanderthals had a significant genetic input to modern populations – if there were invading populations to begin with. If Tasmania isn't a model, then I don't see what possibly could be.
Colin Tudge: If it's the case that the Cro-Magnons interbred with the Neanderthals, then of course the Neanderthal genes are still around and there ought to be people around with Neanderthal features. Who are they and where are they?
Milford Wolpoff: Well there are some right here in this room, I am afraid to say...
...
Colin Tudge: However, the notion that Neanderthals and modern humans interbred assumes that [these] the two, though different, belong to the same species; that they were both merely versions of Homo sapiens. This indeed is the common assumption, that all Homo sapiens who have lived in the past 300,000 or so years, in all their variety, have been of just one species. Indeed, that Homo erectus, who prevailed for a million years before, was also just one species. It's a nice thought, but actually it's an idea whose roots are religious rather than scientific, fitting in as it does with the human conceit that the line of evolution that led to us was without major diversion, that our unfolding was somehow inevitable. But, in modern science there is no room for such conceit. Chris Stringer sees evidence of deep divisions and indeed diversions among the humans of the past."

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Ninth of July Trivia

Today is Argentina's Independence Day, we became an independent nation on July 9th, 1816, while still fighting against our Colonial Metropolis, Spain, and the Royalists in other parts of South America. Brazil, the US, UK, Portugal, and the then independent Kingdom of Hawaii all recognized our independence by 1823, but Spain would take until 1857 to acknowledge it.

You will find a street or avenue named 9 de julio (9th of July) in every town, city, and village in Argentina. The one in Buenos Aires, with its obelisk celebrating the city's 400th anniversary is shown below (it is one city block wide, a strip 3.8 km (2.4 mi) long by 100 m (330 ft) wide was razed to make way for it, between 1936 and 1986.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

Homo antecessor the base of the human tree (in Spain)

Today's post will continue exploring the subject of yesterday's post, about the Eurasian origin of Homo sapiens, from a basal population that lived 900 to 700 thousand years ago in Atapuerca, Spain, the Homo antecessor, that originated Neanderthals, Denisovans, and our species, in Europe.

Martinón-Torres et al., 2019 analyzed the teet of the Atapuerca fossils, and concluded that Homo antecessor is the common ancestor of Neanderthals, Denisovans, and modern humans: (highlight is mine) "Overall, the data presented here support the taxonomic validity of Homo antecessor, since this species presents a unique mosaic of traits. Homo antecessor displays several primitive features for the genus Homo as well as some traits exclusively shared with Early and Middle Pleistocene Eurasian hominins. Some of these Eurasian traits were retained by the Middle Pleistocene hominins of Europe, and subsequently became the typical condition of the Neanderthal lineage. Although other skeletal parts present resemblances with Homo sapiens, TD6.2 teeth do not show any synapomorphy with modern humans. In addition, TD6.2 teeth can be well differentiated from those of Asian Homo erectus. The dental evidence is compatible with previous hypothesis about H. antecessor belonging to the basal population from which H. sapiens, Homo neanderthalensis, and Denisovans emerged."

This conclusion was ratified by Welker et al., 2020, who analyzed the proteins found in the teeth of the Atapuerca fossils, and compared them to the ones extracted from the Dmanisi, Georgia hominins (believed to be Homo erectus). See the full article for free here.

Weker's team says its findings "provide evidence that H. antecessor is a close sister lineage to subsequent Middle and Late Pleistocene hominins, including modern humans, Neanderthals and Denisovans. This placement implies that the modern-like face of H. antecessor —that is, similar to that of modern humans— may have a considerably deep ancestry in the genus Homo, and that the cranial morphology of Neanderthals represents a derived form."

Interestingly, Huguet, et al., 2025 published a paper in Nature about The earliest human face of Western Europe and assigned it to an Homo erectus. It was found in Spain in the Sierra de Atapuerca, at the Sima del Elefante site (TE7 level). This is 1.1 to 1.4 million years old, and predates the later Homo antecessor found in the same region.

The midface bones uncovered at Sima del Elefante "... are primitive for the Homo clade and they do not display the modern-like aspect exhibited by Homo antecessor found at the neighbouring Gran Dolina site... Furthermore, ATE7-1 is more derived in the nasoalveolar region than the Dmanisi and other roughly contemporaneous hominins" These differences between erectus in Spain and Georgia, with the former being less primitive (more derived), shows that erectus were evolving in Western Eurasia but had not yet acquired the modern appearance of the antecessor people.

A surprising fact is that the people living at Atapuerca one million years ago were cannibals according to Carbonell et al., 2010; it wasn't symbolic cannibalism, it had a nutritional purpose: " In conclusion, about 1 million years ago, the hominids of level TD6 added cannibalism to their set of survival strategies as a way of competing with other human groups for available resources. This practice, accepted and included in their social system, is the oldest example of cultural cannibalism known to date."

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

The common ancestor of Denisovans, Neanderthals and Humans

A paper published in February of this year, in Nature, by Hublin et al., analyzed the shape of jaws and teeth of several fossils collected in Morocco and compared them to those of Neanderthals, the older Homo antecessor, modern humans, and Homo erectus to try to unravel how our Homo sapiens species evolved in North Africa, the site where the oldest human remains have been found (300,000 years old).

The paper mentions that the common ancestor of modern humans, Neanderthals, and Asian Denisovans lived between 765 and 550 thousand years ago (ka), but where it lived is still a mystery. Some studies have proposed that the Homo antecessor, whose remains were uncovered in the Gran Dolina site, Atapuerca, Spain (950-770 ka) is the candidate for this last common ancestor of the later homo genus.

The Homo antecessor fossils are named in the paper as TD6, after the layer where they were found. If antecessor is the ancestor, it means we had a European origin. However, all of the oldest Homo sapiens remains older than 90,000 years, have been found either in North Africa or in the Levant, taken by the proponents of the Out of Africa (OOA) theory as an indication of an African origin for modern humans, and Africa as the site of the last common ancestor of Denisovans, Neanderthals, and us.

This paper compares remains found in a site close to Casablanca, Morocco, in northwest Africa, known as the Grotte à Hominidés (which we name here as ThI-GH). These remains are in the right time period to be ancestral to all groups (773 ka).

The conclusions of Hublin et al., are quoted below, I have highlighted some relevant parts:

"In North Africa, the ThI-GH hominins are the only specimens unearthed within an indisputable stratigraphic context and securely dated to the MBT at a nominal age of 773 ±4 ka. These hominins cannot be directly compared with later specimens, such as the Kabwe or Bodo skulls, which have been tentatively assigned to H. heidelbergensis. Not only do these specimens differ substantially in age, but they also lack preservation of comparable anatomical parts. Our analysis suggests that the ThI-GH hominins probably belong to an evolved form of H. erectus sensu lato in North Africa, much as H. antecessor does in Europe. However, the ThI-GH hominins offer an interesting contrast to both the Spanish fossils and the considerably older fossils from Tighennif (Algeria), which are likely to date to at least 1,000 ka. The fossil mandibles from Tighennif appear more primitive, larger and more robust than both the European H. antecessor and the northwest African ThI-GH fossils. The Spanish and Moroccan fossils share several features in their teeth and mandibles. Both groups display a combination of archaic and derived features reminiscent of later hominins (Supplementary Table 25). These similarities revive the question of possible exchanges across the Strait of Gibraltar during the EP. Nevertheless, the ThI-GH hominins are different from the TD6 hominins. The pattern of these differences suggests that regional differentiation between Europe and North Africa was already present by the late EP. Apparent Neanderthal-like features on the larger ThI-GH-1 mandible could reflect primitive retentions, allometric effects or convergent evolution but, when more phylogenetically informative dental characters are considered, the Spanish specimens appear more derived towards the Neanderthal morphology that later emerged in western Eurasia.
The origin of H. sapiens, and the precise timing of the divergence of its ancestral populations from the Neanderthal–Denisovan clade, remain subjects of debate. Anatomical evidence has at times been used to argue for a split predating 800 ka and even for an alternative Asian ancestry of our species. In this context, the Maghreb fossils are key to understanding the diversification of MP hominins. The morphology of the ThI-GH hominins places them close to the split between the African and Eurasian lineages. Our findings not only align with the phylogenetic structure inferred from palaeogenetic data but also highlight the Maghreb as a pivotal region for understanding the emergence of our species, reinforcing the case for an African rather than a Eurasian ancestry of H. sapiens."

Comments

The closing phrase about an African origin of modern humans is expected as the authors don't want to go against the established dogma. However, the point about intercontinental exchange via Gibraltar during the Early Pleistocene is extremely interesting. It is very likely that our common ancestor, even H. erectus had the ability to cross such a narrow body of water in boats. The similarity of Atapuerca specimens with Neanderthals is also relevant, as Neanderthals are Eurasian, not African. The differences between H. heidelbergensis specimens within Africa and the Moroccan fossils hints at a separate stem of hominins in North Africa vs. central and southern Africa. Furthermore, the authors suggest that it was Homo erectuswho evolved into the Moroccan specimens, and that the erectus present in Africa were more primitive and robust than the European lineage.

Taken together, this suggests, in my opinion, That the erectus line, after evolving in Eurasia, moved into Northern Africa via Gibraltar, and had already settled in Western Europe, and evolved in this region (Spain-Morocco) into the common ancestor of Neanderthals-Denisovans and Humans, in Europe.

How can we account for the absence of Denisovans and Neanderthals in Africa? But, assume that modern humans originated there? This is a serious flaw in the African origin theory.

An answer to those questions is that the "common ancestor" migrated east into Eurasia and the Levant, diverging there into Neanderthals and Denisovans who, respectively, colonized Western and Eastern Eurasia. From this common root, modern humans split, entering Africa via Sinai or maybe Bab el Mandeb, while spreading eastwards across Eurasia.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

Into Africa, a new hint from Homo Naledi

There is a hominin named Homo naledi whose remains have been found in a cave in South Africa, dated to around 300,000 years ago (300 ky). It is very primitive and its small skull size and archaic shape is not shared by modern humans or our ancestors like Homo erectus, Neanderthals, Denisovans, and us, humans. Yet, their age places them in Africa at the time our species is said to have appeared there, 300 ky ago! We are supposed to have co-existed with naledi in South Africa before bursting out on our Out of Africa migration.

Those who have studied naledi argue that it has contributed genes to our species and is much more advanced than its primitive appearance may lead us to think. These scholars argue that naledi created rock art, and that it buried its dead (a recent paper published in Cell on June 24th, 2026, reports that all twenty specimens from the cave are female, so they suggest selective gender burial there, it also mentions a protein found in teeth, which I will discuss further down).

Other scientists are not so conviced, like Chris Stringer, who argues that they are not members of the homo group: "I use human as equivalent to genus Homo, while acknowledging that future phylogenetic or proteomics research may show that things like rudolfensis, habilis, floresiensis, luzonensis and naledi don’t really belong in the genus…"

A post on X, formerly Twitter, by @HighlyCitedX (June 28, 2026) raised the question of how could both modern humans and archaic naledi share the same territory, and provides a thought provoking answer: "John Hawks raised this problem before: How could Naledi co-exist with large brained hominins for a million years? Most likely they were not co-existing because there were no large brained hominins in East Africa until late. https://bbc.com/news/science-environment-39842975."

The BBC link is a 2017 article which includes comments by John Hawks, one of the leading researchers of the Naledi site in Africa, I will quote it at length below:

"The fact that Homo naledi was alive at the same time and in the same region of Africa as early representatives of Homo sapiens gives us an insight into the huge diversity of different human forms in existence during the Pleistocene.
"Here in southern Africa, in this time range, you have the Florisbad skull, which may be an ancestor or close relative of modern humans; you've got the Kabwe skull, which is some kind of archaic human and possibly quite divergent; you've got evidence from modern people's genomes that archaic lineages have been contributing to modern populations and may have existed until quite recently," said Prof Hawks.
"You have this very primitive form of Homo [naledi] that has survived alongside these other species for a million years or more. It is amazing the diversity that we are now seeing that we had missed before."
As to how H. naledi held on to its distinctive characteristics while living cheek-by-jowl with other human species, Prof Hawks said: "It's hard to say it was geographic isolation because there's no boundary - no barrier. It's the same landscape from here to Tanzania; we're in one continuous savannah, woodland-type habitat.
He added that the human-sized teeth probably reflected a diet like that of modern humans. In addition, H. naledi had limb proportions just like ours and there is no apparent reason why it could not have used stone tools.
"It doesn't look like they're in a different ecological niche. That's weird; it's a problem. This is not a situation where we can point to them and say: 'They co-existed because they're using resources differently'," Prof Hawks told BBC News."

Hawks tries to explain the pacific overlap and co-existence as a consequence of exploiting different ecological niches. He also notes that there was a vast savannah from South Africa into Tanzania, all the way to the south of Ethiopia. No geographic barriers, only different niches. I tend to agree with @HighlyCitedX, there was no overlap because there were no humans (or close ancestors) in Africa at that time.

The odd non-homo amino acid in the Naledi teeth

Interestingly, John Hawks reports that an ancient hominin known as Paranthropus robustus, that lived in South Africa 2.3 to 0.9 Million years ago, a member of the australopithecine group, and therefore not a homo, had a variant of an amino acid in its teeth, that was quite unique.

The amino acid in question, forms part of a protein known as COL17A1, that together with enamelin play a critical role in the formation and development of teeth. The COL17A1 variant found among Paranthropus is the original, or ancestral version. Modern humans, Neanderthals, and Denisovans carry a mutation, the later, derived variant. So it shows that we, and our homo relatives are in a different lineage when compared to the Paranthropus. The Homo naledi aligns with the primitive non-homo group because it carries the ancestral variant. Hawks writes: "This confirms earlier work showing that naledi is likely an outgroup to modern humans, Neanderthals, and Denisovans". But, I don't know why, tries to argue that naledi and Paranthropus are not closely related: "Because this is an ancestral variant, shared with other primates, it does not support a close relationship between P. robustus and H. naledi." In fact, all primates sampled (except one lemur species) carry the ancestral variant found in naledi and P. robustus, African apes from which our most distant ancestors came from also carry the archaic variant. But somewhere down the line, when the homo genus appeared, they carried a mutated variant that we share with Denisovans and Neanderthals, but not with the primitive naledi or the non-homo Paranthropus.

Hawks adds two interesting facts about the ancestral variant: "So far there is no reporting on this variant in H. antecessor or H. erectus data. One interesting possibility for Homo naledi is that the species may have contributed genes to modern humans. The ancestral COL17A1 variant has not yet been seen in the genomes of living people, which at least suggests that this part of the genome did not have a naledi origin." (See the study on the CO17A1 in Madupe et al., 2017 who mention that Homo erectus and Homo antecessor were not sampled for this amino acid.

The paper published in Cell by Madupe, Hawks, et al., on June 24, 2026 still supports a homo affiliation for naldedi: "... the archaic COL17A1 P635 variant we observe in 5 H. naledi individuals is derived in Denisovans, Neanderthals, and modern humans, and it has not been covered in H. erectus, from either Dmanisi (Georgia) or China, and Homo antecessor.17,29 Interestingly, though, it has been observed in two P. robustus specimens, namely SK835 and SK14132. Determining which variant is present in this and other informative positions, in other extinct hominin species, such as H. erectus and Australopithecus africanus, will help clarify the phylogenetic position of H. naledi."

I have posted about the possibility that Homo habilis is not a homo (more likely an australopithecine), and related to Homo naledi. Today's post adds more evidence to this possibility.

It is intriguing though, to imagine an evolution of homo genus in Eurasia, with australopiths evolving in Africa, (see my post about this), and a much later entry "into Africa" "Out of Asia" of more advanced hominins 300 kya, modern humans.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

An older date for the arrival of Modern Humans in SE Asia

We have all heard about the Out of Africa theory (OOA) that proposes an initial, failed, migration of humans into the Levant, from Africa around 150,000 years ago (150 ky) that died out and left no trace in our modern lineage. Then came the second, and final migration around 50 ky ago which peopled Eurasia, Oceania, and later, America. But, as we will see in this post, this timeline is not so certain.

A paper by Friedline et al., 2023 (Early presence of Homo sapiens in Southeast Asia by 86–68 kyr at Tam Pà Ling, Northern Laos) suggests that humans reached the southeastern side of Asia some 68,000 years ago.

The authors analyzed bone remains from Tam Pà Ling (TPL for short), and concluded that one of the specimens (known as TPL 6), "confirms the presence of H. sapiens by 70 ± 3 kyr, and TPL 7 extends this range to 77 ± 9 kyr, supporting an early dispersal of H. sapiens into Southeast Asia."

This adds evidence of en early presence of humans in the region. Another sites with old dates are the Sumatran one at Lida Ajer, which is around 73 ky old (Westway et al., 2017).

These dates are incompatible with the current OOA theory so how can these remains be fitted into it? The theory should be reevaluated and updated. Were these people survivors from the first "failed" migration? Did they evolve localy? Did they admix with Denisovans or archaics?

The article confirms that human beings lived at TPL for over 56,000 years! Several specimens were analyzed and they show affinities and differences with other humans from Asia.

Some highlighs regarding these people:

• "Geometric morphometric analyses of TPL 6 suggest descent from a gracile immigrant population rather than evolution from or admixture with local archaic populations."
• "The TPL fossils’ clear affinities to H. sapiens suggest that they descended from a gracile H. sapiens population from Africa, the Near East, or locally."
• "considerable shape and size variability is present at Tam Pà Ling... supporting previous observations that high levels of heterogeneity characterize Late Pleistocene modern human groups."
• "TPL 6 and potentially the younger fossils from Tam Pà Ling would represent an unsuccessful dispersal. Whether this dispersal disappeared prior to the main later dispersal or the distinct migrations experienced a period of co-habitation remains unclear with absence of ancient DNA from 50 to 10 kyr."

The analysis of the next oldest remains from the site, TPL, dated to 70 ky, shows that it has "affinities to Pleistocene archaic humans (e.g., non-H. sapiens Middle Pleistocene hominins and Neanderthals from Africa and Eurasia), plotting outside of the range of variation of early and Upper Paleolithic H. sapiens. This is mainly due to its large bi-mental breadth, an archaic feature also found in early H. sapiens and Neanderthals and associated with a wide ramus". An intriguing hint, in my opinion, of admixture with archaics in Euyrasia. The authors point out, however, that it had "a well-developed chin (mental osseum rank 537), a trademark of our species". They also compared TPL to the Chinese fossil Zhiren 3, which is around 100 ky old, and is more archaic, yet also has a prominent chin. The explanation for this feature is admixture of humans with archaics in Asia.

The authors point out the doubts surrounding the age of Zhiren, which could either be "an example of an early dispersal of H. sapiens that was unsuccessful. Alternatively, if the geological age is overestimated it could also be an example of one of the earliest inhabitants from a late dispersal."

Two other specimens, TPL1 and TPL2 are curious; they are 52-40 ky old, but have some oddities. TPL2 is small: 140–153 cm (less than 5 feet tall). TPL1, on the other hand has a roubust skull, with strong brow ridges, jutting lower jaw, which according to the authors "can be generally interpreted as a retention of ancestral morphology rather than admixture with local archaic populations". Why discard admixture with H. erectus or Denisovans? No explanation is given.

The paper concludes "TPL 6... provides direct evidence of an early, possibly unsuccessful, dispersal from Africa or the Near East towards Southeast Asia by 70 ± 3 kyr. TPL 6 is remarkably gracile implying that it descended from a gracile immigrant population and not the outcome of local evolution from, or admixture with, H. erectus or Denisovans. Our semilandmark geometric shape analyses of the other craniomandibular fossils from Tam Pà Ling (TPL 1, 2, and 3) are consistent with previous studies attributing them to H. sapiens, and their considerable shape and size variability suggests that high levels of heterogeneity characterize Late Pleistocene modern human groups."

The TPL6 is gracile, so they interpret it as lacking admixture with archaics. But, why did the other early specimens, TPL 1, 2 & 3, show such high variability, a mix of ancient, robust, and modern features? Doesn't this mosaic of old and modern features hint at admixture?

It seems likely that the first humans reached Southeast Asia much earlier than proposed by the current OOA theory. Their mosaic features hint at admixture with archaics in Asia. Possibly, humans could have originated outside of Africa after splitting from Neanderthal/Denisovans, and spread west into Africa, and east into the domains of the still extant Homo erectus.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

Khoisan and their epicanthic fold

As promised in my previous post, I decided to explore the similar eye-shape in Khoisan Africans and East-South Asians. The former are said to be the "oldest", most diverse group of humans, that split from the original Homo sapiens group and remained isolated in Southern Africa for ovre 150,000 years. Yet they have some particular features not found in other African groups, but common in Eurasia (pale pigmented skin, and a typical Asian feature in their eyes, the epicanthic fold).

Few papers on eye-shape genes

Unexpectedly, even though tens of thousands of papers have been published on genes and their effect on human health and features, there are just a handful dealing with the epicanthic fold, and none of them have identified the genes originating it.

I have found comments on the Internet stating that it evolved independently in Africa and in Asia. That is is the result of convergent evolution (like the one that shaped mammal dolphins, fish sharks, and reptilian ichtyosaurs, or mammalian bats, birds and flying pterodactyl reptiles) where bodies are shaped to forms that are best adapted to their environments. But no in-depth analysis of genes producing these eye-shapes.

Khoisan people.

I wonder if the lack of publications is due to some unconscious bias, where scientists don't want to look into an Asian feature found in a small allegedly "ancestral" population, a fact that seems to go against the established Out of Africa origin of humans.

Why is it prevalent among the "ancient" (150 ky old) Khoisan in southern Africa, and the modern Out of Africa humans in Eastern Asia (40 ky old) and South East Asia?

Its presence elsewhere is due to migrations from Asia, moving into northern Europe, America and Polynesia.

Epicanthal Folds

The inner corner of the eye, or medial canthus has a distinct appearance in some human populations. It is quite frequent among East Asians, and also among Tibetans, Central Asians, South East Asians, American Natives, and even North European groups with ancient Asian origins, like the Sami and Finish people. Interestingly, the Khoisan people also have this feature. The map below shows its global distribution (but the prevalence is lower in America, Europe and South Asia, highest in South Africa and East Asia (Source). The map also provides some genetics to the different regions, but since it came from Reddit, and I haven't found research to back it, I am doubtful. It mixes mtDNA and Y-chromosome haplogroups with the EDAR variant.

One paper (Peng et al., 2015) studied Uyghur people, and found that EDAR V370A may be related to the fold, but it only seemed to be statistically significant for the left eye fold, but not for the right one. The authors also note that EDAR V370 plays a role in embryonic development and therefore affects ectodermal-derived features like teeth and face shape, hair thickness, sweat glands, etc. I have posted about the EDAR gene and the peopling of America. Below is the data from this paper:

The Fold itself

What is the Epicanthal fold: it is a skin fold on the upper eyelid with an oblique or vertical alignment that covers the medial canthus (inner corner) and gives the eye a distinct external appearance. It has no effect on the zize of shape of the eye itself, but it makes it appear as almond shape, more "slanted" and smaller.

"The genetic basis for epicanthus is not well known" (Source), but I came across some interesting facts about the development of this feature: all human embryos: "in all races during foetal life" (Source). Most babies lose them by the time of birth, but other babies are born "with epicanthic folds, In some people the folds are retained into adulthood, while in some people they reduce at an early age... and often grow out of it as the bridge of their nose grows" (Source).

The lower nose bridge a common feature in Asians and Khoisan people influences the muscles on their faces, and the tensions produced by them which may be one of the causes of these folds.

" It is normally most prominent during childhood. As the bridge of the nose gains more height with age, it pulls the skin away from the eye, diminishing and reshaping the fold." Source

Kwon and Nguyen, 2015, in a paper on epicanthic eyes, confirm the uncertain origin of this trait: "the developmental mechanism of Asian epicanthus has not been defined clearly" and attribute the eye shape to the thickening of a muscle (the preseptal orbicularis oculi muscle) caused by an environmental factors such as ultraviolet radiation, cold weather, dust in the air leading to "excessive frowning, and repeated excessive frowning can induce orbicularis muscle hypertrophy ... There would be a strong repeated contraction of upper orbicularis muscle and depressor supercilii muscle in the Asian eyelid from frowning. Excessive muscle contraction would be an unavoidable action in the protection of eyes from environmental harshness. Hence, environmental adaptation would be a basic cause for the formation of the epicanthus"

Those born with this trait would have been better adapted in these harsh enviornments, and the feature could have been fixed in these populations by natural selection. As the Khoisan live in the Kalahari desert, dust there could have selected for this variant. However, why is it not present among people living in the Sahara or in Saudi Arabia, also dusty, desertic, UV-radiated regions?

Asia, Africa and human origins

Interestingly, Yuan, 2019 proposing an Out of Asia and Into Africa theory, suggests an Asian origin for the distinct features of the Khoisan: "Fossils or traits indicating AMH [Anatomically Modern Humans] migration from East Asia into Africa or Europe have been noted before. First, native Africans such as Khoisans are well known to have certain East Asian features such as shoveling teeth, epicanthic fold, and lighter skins"

But how did this trait, so common in Asia reach South Africa and leave no traces in the intermediate regions (Iran, Middle East, South Asia, Caucasus, North Africa, Central Africa, Western Africa)?

Maybe the answer lies in the findings of a paper published by Krishna R Veeramah et al., 2001: the Khosian or people linked to them once occupied a much larger territory:

"Conventional thinking has tended toward a model where KhoeSan initially diverged from the ancestors of all other AMH groups and remained relatively isolated. However, the KhoeSan demonstrate deep genetic connections with other click-speaking peoples in Tanzania (Henn et al. 2011), with proposed time to the most recent common ancestor (TMRCA) estimates ranging from 35 to 110 kya (Chen et al. 2000; Knight et al. 2003; Gonder et al. 2007; Tishkoff et al. 2007). In addition, a genetic link with contemporary Ethiopian populations has also been proposed (Cruciani et al. 2002; Salas et al. 2002; Semino et al. 2002). This, along with linguistic evidence, suggests that the KhoeSan territory once covered a much larger area, extending further northwest toward the Great Rift Valley (Cavalli-Sforza et al. 1994; Blench 2006; Scheinfeldt et al. 2010). Recent autosomal-based analyses show a tendency for KhoeSan and Pygmies to cluster together and away from other sub-Saharan Africans (Zhivotovsky et al. 2003; Tishkoff et al. 2009; Sikora et al. 2011), leading to the hypothesis that the ancestors of these two populations may have once formed a proto-KhoeSan–Pygmy hunter-gatherer group that was geographically widespread before being encroached upon by expanding agricultural populations."

If their homeland reached further north, it is possible that a migration from Asia could have reached Eastern Africa and admixed with the ancestors of modern Khoisan. Then, other African groups, with archaic admixture advanced and pushed them into their current territory, closing the door for furhter mixing. These dark-skinned Africans erased the ancestral San people in East Africa.

Perhaps the Hadza and Sandawe people from Tanzania are a relict of the old San click-speaking people of East Africa

The EDAR gene mentioned further up also influences the shape of teeth, and in this, the teeth of Homo erectus and modern East Asians share the same shape! Research on the EDAR 1540C variant states that "the continuity of shovel-shaped incisors between Homo erectus and modern humans in East Asia was a rationale for the multiregional evolution theory of modern humans, although this theory is not generally supported at present" (Kimura et al., 2009).

So, a bolder alternative to its distribution could be that the ancestral origin is found among the Homo erectus, who originated in Asia, back-migrated into Asia and passed it on to the Khoisan people, with their click language. It entered the continent along a southern Asian route, leaving no trace in Southwestern Asia or North Africa. They entered Africa from the East, settling there, later modern humans picked it up from these erectus in China and in Africa, leading to its current distribution.

Let's see what further research brings.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

San (Khoisan) and Europeans

Following my previous post on similarities between San people in southern South Africa, and Europeans, I read a paper about the San (Khoisan) and their "antiquity". It reports them as an ancient population that retained a large effective population while that of other groups fell (i.e. other Africans, Europeans, Asians, and the Out of Africa migrants).

The paper published in Nature in 2014 by Kim et al., (Khoisan hunter-gatherers have been the largest population throughout most of modern-human demographic history). The image below shows how Ne (effective population) evolves over time (oldest to the right), for San, African Yoruba, Europeans, and Asians. As you can see all groups (actually, the ancestors leading to each of these populations) have similar population sizes till 100,000 years ago when a dramatic drop in population sizes occurs. I don't understand how they obtained Ne values for hominin populations 2 to 4 million years ago, this was the days of Australopiths and probably Homo habilis.

Effective population sizes for San, Africans, Asians and Europeans. Fig. 3 a in Kim et al., 2014

This drop in effective population size is attributed to climate changes within Africa. The paper includes a series of maps as Fig. 12 in its Supplementary Material to explain the process. They can be seen below:

Modern humans originated in Africa (a), blue circle in South Africa seems to imply an origin there, though the paper does not specify the location. Then these people spread north (b), the orange oval marks the new territories. Then came the climate change (c) around 150 or 100 kya. Drought in western and central Africa hit the humans there in central, western, and eastern Africa, but spared the San people in the southern part of Africa. This coincided with a fragmented population (structured) with isolated groups that did not interact with each other (see the different dots and colors on the map, marking these groups). Populations declined central and western Africa, and when the ancestors of Non-Africans (green arrows) (d) migrated Out of Africa (OOA), they carried this lower Ne, and it dwindled even more due to bottlenecks and founder effects as they advanced into Eurasia. The San, however, kept their population intact.

The authors reconstruction of this period is summarized as follows: "After the earliest split, between the ancestral Khoisan and non-Khoisan populations ~100–150 kyr ago, the ancestral Khoisan population maintained their high genetic diversity, while the effective population size of the non-Khoisan continued to decline for 30~120 kyr ago and lost more than half of its diversity. The ‘Out of Africa’ migration ~40–60 kyr ago accounts for the observed population split between African and non-African populations, and the subsequent smaller effective population size of non-Africans compared with non-Khoisan Africans."

Comments

However, and interestingly, as pointed out in my previous post, the San and Europeans share several unique allele variants that are ancestral (found also in Neanderthals and Denisovans) whcih confer lighter pigmented skin than that found among the remaining Africans and also South Asians and Australo-Melanesians, who carry a later (derived) mutation for darker pigmentation.

How does this similarity between a specific OOA group and San people tie in with the evolution and migration sproposed by Kim et al.?

Not well. We would have to imagine a group that split from the San, moved north, lived in isolation in Central Africa, then survived the climate crisis there, moved north, left Africa, surviving the founder effect, bottlenecks and genetic drift, established themselves in Europe and somehow managed to keep their skin-color alleles intact. While all the other groups in Africa mutated and adopted a dark skin set of alleles. Too complex to be the explanation.

The San (Khoisan or bushmen) have always intrigued me since the 1980s movie "The Gods Must Be Crazy", I was taken aback by their pale skin and oriental factions. So different from the usual African features. People living in the deserts of Namibia with a hunter-gatherer culture in the 20th century! I have never found a paper explaining their similarity with East Asians. I will explore this strange trait in a coming post.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

A paper on skin pigmentation: San & Europeans share light skin alleles

I came across a recent paper published in Science in 2017 by Crawford et al., Loci associated with skin pigmentation identified in African populations, which holds some interesting facts about skin color genetics and when the dark and pale variants arose.

I have posted in the past about light skin pigmentation in Amerindians and Neanderthal skin color, but this post will look into light skin alleles shared by the San people of Africa and modern Europeans.

Skin color genes are ancient

When it comments on how skin pigmentation evolved in modern humans, the paper points out that there is a wide variability within Africa, from the most pale group (the San in southern Africa) to the East African people of the Nilo Saharian region, who aret the darkest. It correctly states that the genes causing both dark and light skin color evolved before our Homo sapiens species appeared around 300,000 years ago (300 ky).

Surprisingly, the paper finds that "the ancestral allele is associated with light pigmentation in about half of the predicted causal SNPs; Neandertal and Denisovan genome sequences, which diverged from modern human sequences 804 ka, contain the ancestral allele at all loci." So, our closest relatives in evolutionary terms carried this ancestral white-skinned allele with them. However, the paper tends to downplay this fact, and it says something which sounds the opposite: "These observations are consistent with the hypothesis that darker pigmentation is a derived trait that originated in the genus Homo within the past ~2 million years (My) after human ancestors lost most of their protective body hair" and then, like an afterthought mentions the paler tint of Neanderthals and Denisovans: "... although these ancestral hominins may have been moderately, rather than darkly, pigmented. Moreover, it appears that both light and dark pigmentation have continued to evolve over hominid history."

Shared genes between dark pigmented Africans and Australo-Melanesians

It mentions something I hadn't read before (I was always surprised by the similarity in the dark tint of pigmentation in Melanesians, Australian Aboriginal people, Andamenese islanders and Africans): they share a common genetic origin, and could be identical by descent (IBD). The paper says that "Individuals from South Asia and Australo-Melanesia share variants associated with dark pigmentation at MFSD12, DDB1/TMEM138, OCA2, and HERC2 that are identical by descent from Africans. This raises the possibility that other phenotypes shared between Africans and some South Asian and Australo-Melanesian populations may also be due to genetic variants identical by descent from African populations rather than convergent evolution."

It is indeed interesting to note that the bottleneck and founder effects and loss of diversity among the Out of Africa migration population managed to carry, intact, these alleles across Southern Asia, into Australia and Melanesia, while another group managed to carry the white, paler skin alleles.

A light pigmentation variant shared by San and Europeans

There is a variant at SNP rs1800404 within OCA2, that in its ancestral form (with a cytosine base or "C") is found in dark skinned East Asians, most Africans and Australians and Melanesians. The derived variant with a Thymine base or "T", is found in Europeans and the pruportedly most ancestral human beings, the San from southern Afirca! (found among these two groups in frequencies of over 70%). The split is ancient: " Coalescent analysis indicates that the TMRCA of all lineages is 1.7 Ma (95% CI, 1.5 to 2.0 Ma), and the TMRCA of lineages containing the derived (T) allele is 629 ka (95% CI, 426 to 848 ka)"

The tree shown above has two branches with the African one deeper (older) and shorter ones for most modern populations. Note the Oceanians and South Asians are on the African branch.

The allele shared by San and Europeans dates back approximately to the time Neanderthals and Denisovans split from the Modern human lineage.

Another region that acts upon skin color is HERC2, where SNP rs6497271 comes in an ancestral A variant (with an adenine base) providing dark pigmentation to Australo-Melanesians and Africans (identical in both groups, suggesting an identity by descent), and the derived base, (G) or guanine which is linked to lighter skin pigmentation and found in Europeans, and, yes, in the San people. This one is also old, dating back to "921 ka (95% CI, 703 ka to 1.2 Ma)".

If the dark "A" variant is IBD, the pale "G" one should also be IBD, and this one is possibly older than the Denisovan-Neanderthal / Human split as it is 921,000 years old.

The tree (above) show its distribution globally, with two branches the dark skin variant seems to have longer branches making it look more ancestral than the other, pale skin variants. I don't see the link between Africans and Australo-Melanesians in this tree, as mentioned by the authors.

How did Europeans and San people get to share this variant and the other OCA2 variant, while all the Africans living between both groups have the derived dark pigmentation variants? Note that there is 6,600 km (4,100 miles) between the southernmost tip of Europe in Greece and the San homeland in Botswana/Namibia.

We can imagine different alternatives to explain this: (1) A small population of modern humans split, one headed north into Europe, the other was displaced south into the southern tip of Africa. Between them, a mutation appeared, providing dark pigmentation for people living in the tropical regions of Africa, with benefits like UV protection, etc. (the paper hints that dark skin may have positive effects on other bodily functions: "...some of the pigmentation-associated variants identified here may be maintained because of pleiotropic effects on other aspects of human physiology."

Another option (2) is that pale pigmentation was prevalent among the archaic population that evolved into Neanderthal-Denisovan-Humans and moved with them across Eurasia but a later darker variant appeared in Africa and became predominant there, displacing the pale skin to the southern tip of Africa (San), and migrating out of Africa in a sub-population of modern humans that peopled South Asia and Australia-Melanesia (PNG, Aboriginals, Negrito, Andamanese people). Later overlaid by a wave of paler humans in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and North India. Did the Europeans get pale skin from admixing with Neanderthals, and Asians from Denisovans?

(3) Prehaps ancient archaics had the darker pigmentation alleles, and a separate archaic group was lighter colored, the former remained in Africa (H. habilis), the latter moved into Eurasia (H. erectus?). Modern humans evolved in Asia, starting with Neanderthals and Denisovans, and back-migrated into Africa where admixture with archaics in Africa led to a darkening currently observed there. The san, part of the wave of migrants were displaced and isolated, retaining the original alleles. However, the dark skinned south Asians and Melanesians can't be accounted for with this model. Perhaps there was an Out of Africa migration along coastal South Asia into Melanesia? Or an ancient migration of superarchaics into Asia that mingled there with later populations?

In any case, I find it interesting that contemporary Europeans, who are deemed to be very recent, and the San people, supposedly the oldest intact group of humans, that split from the rest of us over 150,000 years ago, share the same light-skin pigmentation alleles. This oddity indicates that there is something amiss with our current idea of human origins and dispersal.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall ©