Re: 'Out of Africa' still only a theory?!?!?
henry harpending (hxh5@psu.edu)
5 Oct 1995 11:57:07 GMT
Interesting point. Human populations easily double in, say, fifty years.
Yanomamo are doubling in about 25 years. Taking fifty years to be a
conservative rate of doubling in a new environment we need 10 doublings
to multiply the population by 1000, i.e. a thousandfold expansion which is
about what the genetics estimates. This would occur in 500 years, the blink
of an eye.
Henry Harpending, Penn State University
In message <44vh1k$jm7@nnrp3.news.primenet.com> - rspear@primenet.com
(Richard Spear) writes:
:>
:>I'm glad that this thread has not died as I was bemused by something
:>that Holloway posted last week. He refered to the bottleneck evident
:>in either interpretation of AMH origins and posited that even a one
:>million year entry (via erectus) left too few generations to populate
:>the regions later populated by moderns (did I get that right?). I've
:>played with the numbers and used rather small growth rates (0.001,
:>e.g.) and these still yield extremely large pops by (let's say)
:>100,000 years ago.
:>
:>Could someone explain the significance of a one million year old
:>bottleneck to me?
:>
:>Thanks, Richard
:>
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