Before the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors

by Nicholas Wade

  59 Cecilia S. L. Lai, Simon E. Fisher, Jane A. Hurst, Faraneh Vargha-Khadem, and Anthony P. Monaco, “A Forkhead-Domain Gene Is Mutated in a Severe Speech and Language Disorder,” Nature 413:519-523 (2001).

  60 Faraneh Vargha-Khadem et al., “FOXP2 and the Neuroanatomy of Speech and Language,” Nature Reviews Neuroscience 6:131-138 (2005).

  61 Wolfgang Enard et al., “Molecular Evolution of FOXP2, a Gene Involved in Speech and Language,” Nature 418:869-872 (2002).

  62 Svante Pääbo, interview, August 10, 2002.

  63 Richard Klein, The Human Career, University of Chicago Press, 1999, p. 492.

  64 The reason is probably that a rivalry between mitochondria inside the cell would be too disruptive. The sperm’s mitochondria are made to carry a special chemical tag that says “kill me.” As soon as the sperm enters the egg, its mitochondria are destroyed. The egg possesses about 100,000 mitochondria of its own, and has no need for the mere 100 or so contributed by the sperm. Douglas C. Wallace, Michael D. Brown, and Marie T. Lott, “Mitochondrial DNA Variation in Human Evolution and Disease,” Gene, 238:211-230 (1999).

  65 Peter A. Underhill et al., “Y Chromosome Sequence Variation and the History of Human Populations,” Nature Genetics, 26:358-361 (2000).

  66 S. T. Sherry, M. A. Batzer, and H. C. Harpending, “Modeling the Genetic Architecture of Modern Populations,” Annual Review of Anthropology 27:153-169 (1968).

  67 Jonathan K. Pritchard, Mark T. Seielstad, Anna Perez-Lezaun, and Marcus W. Feldman, “Population Growth of Human Y Chromosomes: A Study of Y Chromosome Micro-satellites,” Molecular Biology and Evolution 16:1791-1798 (1999).

  68 P. A. Underhill, G. Passarino, A. A. Lin, P. Shen, M. Mirazon-Lahr, R. A. Foley, P. J. Oefner, and L. L. Cavalli-Sforza, “The Phylogeography of Y Chromosome Binary Haplotypes and the Origins of Modern Human Populations,” Annals of Human Genetics 65:43-62 (2001).

  69 S. T. Sherry et al., “Modeling the Genetic Architecture of Modern Populations,” p. 166.

  70 Richard Borshay Lee, The !Kung San, Cambridge University Press, 1979, p. 31.

  71 Tom Güldemann and Rainer Vossen, “Khoisan,” in Bernd Heine and Derek Nurse, eds., African Languages, Cambridge University Press, 2000.

  72 Yu-Sheng Chen et al., “mtDNA Variation in the South African Kung and Khwe—and Their Genetic Relationships to Other African Populations,” American Journal of Human Genetics 66:1362-1383 (2000). The team sampled a group of !Kung from the northwestern Kalahari Desert known as the Vasikela !Kung.

  73 Alec Knight et al., “African Y Chromosome and mtDNA Divergence Provides Insight into the History of Click Languages,” Current Biology 13:464-473 (2003).

  74 Nicholas Wade, “In Click Languages, an Echo of the Tongues of the Ancients,” New York Times, March 18, 2003, p. F2.

  75 Ornella Semino et al., “Ethiopians and Khoisan Share the Deepest Clades of the Human Y-Chromosome Phylogeny,” American Journal of Human Genetics 70:265-268 (2002).

  76 Donald E. Brown, Human Universals, McGraw-Hill, 1991, p. 139.

  77 Henry Harpending and Alan R. Rogers, “Genetic Perspectives on Human Origins and Differentiation,” Annual Review of Genomics and Human Genetics 1:361-385 (2000).

  78 Richard Borshay Lee, The !Kung San, Cambridge University Press, 1979, p. 135.

  79 Jon de la Harpe et al., “Diamphotoxin, the Arrow Poison of the !Kung Bushmen,” Journal of Biological Chemistry 258:11924-11931 (1983).

  80 Richard Borshay Lee, The !Kung San, p. 440.

  81 Nancy Howell, Demography of the Dobe !Kung, Academic Press, 1979, p. 119.

  82 Steven A. LeBlanc, Constant Battles, St. Martin’s Press, 2003, p. 116.

  83 Lawrence H. Keeley, War before Civilization, Oxford University Press, 1996, p. 134.

  84 Richard Borshay Lee, The !Kung San, p. 399. The odd symbols represent different kinds of click.

  85 Frank W. Marlowe, “Hunter-Gatherers and Human Evolution,” Evolutionary Anthropology 14:54-67 (2005).

  86 M. Siddall et al., “Sea-Level Fluctuations during the Last Glacial Cycle,” Nature 423:853-858.

  87 Exodus 15:8.

  88 Sarah A. Tishkoff and Brian C. Verrelli, “Patterns of Human Genetic Diversity: Implications for Human Evolutionary History and Disease,” Annual Review of Genomics and Human Genetics 4:293-340 (2003).

  89 Jeffrey I. Rose, “The Question of Upper Pleistocene Connections between East Africa and South Arabia,” Current Anthropology 45:551-555 (2004).

  90 Luis Quintana-Murci et al., “Genetic Evidence of an Early Exit of Homo sapiens from Africa through Eastern Africa,” Nature Genetics 23:437-441 (1999).

  91 Martin Richards et al., “Extensive Female-Mediated Gene Flow from Sub-Saharan Africa into Near Eastern Arab Populations,” American Journal of Human Genetics 72:1058-1064 (2003).

  92 John D. H. Stead and Alec J. Jeffreys, “Structural Analysis of Insulin Minisatellite Alleles Reveals Unusually Large Differences in Diversity between Africans and Non-Africans,” American Journal of Human Genetics 71:1273-1284 (2002).

  93 Nicholas Wade, “To People the World, Start with 500,” New York Times, November 11, 1997, p. F1.

  94 Vincent Macaulay et al., “Single, Rapid Coastal Settlement of Asia Revealed by Analysis of Complete Mitochondrial Genomes,” Science 308:1034-1036 (2005). The geneticists decoded the full mitochondrial DNA of people belonging to the lineages M and N, which are the earliest ones found outside Africa, and compared them with L3, the lineage inside Africa from which M and N are derived. Knowing the rate at which mutations occur in mitochondrial DNA, they calculated it would have taken 826 generations, or 20,650 years, for the M and N lineages to have evolved from L3. The time for this process to occur depends on the population size, and knowledge of the time allows the initial population to be estimated. The answer is 550 women of breeding age if the population remained the same size throughout the 20,000 years, and less than that if the population expanded, as was doubtless the case.

  95 T. Kivisild et al., “The Genetic Heritage of the Earliest Settlers Persists Both in Indian Tribal and Caste Populations,” American Journal of Human Genetics 72:313-332 (2003).

  96 Richard G. Roberts et al., “New Ages for the Last Australian Megafauna: Continent-Wide Extinction About 46,000 Years Ago,” Science 292:1888-1892 (2001).

  97 Vincent Macaulay et al., “Single, Rapid Coastal Settlement of Asia.”

  98 Kirsi Huoponen, Theodore G. Schurr, Yu-Sheng Chen, and Douglas C. Wallace, “Mitochondrial DNA Variation in an Aboriginal Australian Population: Evidence for Genetic Isolation and Regional Differentiation,” Human Immunology 62:954-969 (2001).

  99 Max Ingman and Ulf Gyllensten, “Mitochondrial Genome Variation and Evolutionary History of Australian and New Guinean Aborigines,” Genome Research 13:1600-1606 (2003).

  100 Steven A. LeBlanc, Constant Battles, St. Martin’s Press, 2003, p. 121.

  101 Manfred Kayser et al., “Reduced Y-Chromosome, but Not Mitochondrial DNA, Diversity in Human Populations from West New Guinea,” American Journal of Human Genetics 72:281-302 (2003).

  102 Steven A. LeBlanc, Constant Battles, p. 151.

  103 Nicholas Wade, “An Ancient Link to Africa Lives On in the Bay of Bengal,” New York Times, December 10, 2002, p. A14.

  104 Kumarasamy Thangaraj et al., “Genetic Affinities of the Andaman Islanders, a Vanishing Human Population,” Current Biology 13:86-93 (2003).

  105 Philip Endicott et al., “The Genetic Origins of the Andaman Islanders,” American Journal of Human Genetics 72:1590-1593 (2003).

  106 Madhusree Mukerjee, The Land of Naked People, Houghton Mifflin, 2003, p. 240.

  107 Stephen Oppenheimer, The Real Eve, Carroll & Graf, 2003, p. 218.

  108 David L. Reed et al., “Genetic Analysis of Lice Supports Direct Contact Between Modern and Archaic Humans,” Public Library of Science Biology 2:1972-1983 (2004); Nicholas Wade, “What a Story Lice Can Tell,” New York Times, October 5, 2004, p. F1. The second cluster of lice is found only in
the Americas, suggesting that modern people contracted them from Homo erectus in East Asia or Siberia before crossing the Pleistocene-epoch land bridge that joined Siberia to North America. This lineage of lice may have been the dominant kind in the Americas until European colonists brought over the lineage standard in the rest of the world.

  109 P. Brown et al., “A New Small-Bodied Hominin from the Late Pleistocene of Flores, Indonesia,” Nature 431:1055-1091 (2004); Nicholas Wade, “New Species Revealed: Tiny Cousins of Humans,” New York Times, October 28, 2004, p. A1; Nicholas Wade, “Miniature People Add Extra Pieces to Evolutionary Puzzle,” New York Times, November 9, 2004, p. F2. M. J. Morwood et al., “Further evidence for small-bodied hominims from the Late Pleistocene of Flores, Indonesia,” Nature 437, 1012-1017, 2005.

  110 Roger Lewin and Robert A. Foley, Principles of Human Evolution, Blackwell Science, 2004, p. 387.

  111 Richard G. Klein, The Human Career, 2nd ed., University of Chicago Press, 1999, p. 470.

  112 Christopher Stringer and Robin McKie, African Exodus, Henry Holt, 1996, 1999, p. 106.

  113 Richard G. Klein, The Human Career, p. 477.

  114 Matthias Krings et al., “Neanderthal DNA Sequences and the Origin of Modern Humans,” Cell 90:19-30, 1997.

  115 David Serre et al., “No Evidence of Neanderthal mtDNA Contribution to Early Modern Humans,” Public Library of Science Biology 2:1-5 (2004).

  116 A new theory of human origins proposes that the modern humans leaving Africa initially interbred with archaic humans as the emigrants’ wave of advance engulfed the archaic populations. The theory predicts that a majority of sites on the nuclear genome may have some archaic alleles. Vinyarak Eswaran, Henry Harpending, and Alan R. Rogers, “Genomics Refutes an Exclusively African Origin of Humans,” Journal of Human Evolution 49:1-18 (2005).

  117 The Aurignacian tools at this site now seem to have been made by modern humans who occupied the site in between periods of Neanderthal occupation. Brad Gravina, Paul Mellars and Christopher Bronk Ramsey, “Radiocarbon Dating of Interstratified Neanderthal and Early Modern Human Occupations at the Chatelperronian Type-Site,” Nature 438:51-56 (2005).

  118 Martin Richards, “The Neolithic Invasion of Europe,” Annual Review of Anthropology 32:135-162 (2003).

  119 Ofer Bar-Yosef, “The Upper Paleolithic Revolution,” Annual Review of Anthropology 31:363-393 (2002).

  120 Agnar Helgason et al., “An Icelandic Example of the Impact of Population Structure on Association Studies,” Nature Genetics 37:90-95, 2005; Nicholas Wade, “Where Are You From? For Icelanders, the Answer Is in the Genes,” New York Times, December 28, 2004, p. F3.

  121 Patrick D. Evans et al., “Microcephalin, a Gene Regulating Brain Size, Continues to Evolve Adaptively in Humans,” Science 309:1717-1220 (2005); Nitzan Mekel-Bobrov, “Ongoing Adaptive Evolution of ASPM, a Brain Size Determinant in Homo sapiens,” Science 309:1720-1722 (2005).

  122 Nicholas Wade, “Brain May Still Be Evolving, Studies Hint,” New York Times, September 9, 2005, p. A14.

  123 Steve Dorus et al., “Accelerated Evolution of Nervous System Genes in the Origin of Homo sapiens,” Cell 119:1027-1040 (2004).

  124 Richard G. Klein, The Human Career, 2nd edition, University of Chicago Press, 1999, p. 540.

  125 Martin Richards et al., “Tracing European Founder Lineages in the Near Eastern mtDNA Pool,” American Journal of Human Genetics 67:1251-1276 (2000); Martin Richards, “The Neolithic Invasion of Europe,” Annual Review of Anthropology 32:135-162 (2003).

  126 Antonio Torroni et al., “A Signal, from Human mtDNA, of Postglacial Recolonization in Europe,” American Journal of Human Genetics 69:844-852 (2001).

  127 Ornella Semino et al., “The Genetic Legacy of Paleolithic Homo sapiens sapiens in Extant Europeans: A Y Chromosome Perspective,” Science 290:1155-1159, 2000.

  128 Colin Renfrew, “Commodification and Institution in Group-Oriented and Individualizing Societies,” in The Origin of Human Social Institutions, Oxford University Press, 2001, p. 114.

  129 Carles Vilà et al., “Multiple and Ancient Origins of the Domestic Dog,” Science 276:1687-1689 (1997).

  130 Peter Savolainen et al., “Genetic Evidence for an East Asian Origin of Domestic Dogs,” Science 298:1610-1616 (2002).

  131 Lyudmila N. Trut, Early Canid Domestication: The Farm-Fox Experiment,” American Scientist 17:160-169 (1999).

  132 Brian Hare, Michelle Brown, Christine Williamson, and Michael Tomasello, “The Domestication of Social Cognition in Dogs,” Science 298:1634-1636 (2002).

  133 Nicholas Wade, “From Wolf to Dog, Yes, but When?” New York Times, November 22, 2002, p. A20.

  134 Jennifer A. Leonard et al., “Ancient DNA Evidence for Old World Origin of New World Dogs,” Science 298:1613-1616 (2002).

  135 Joseph H. Greenberg, Language in the Americas, Stanford University Press, 1987, p. 43.

  136 Vivian Scheinsohn, “Hunter-Gatherer Archaeology in South America,” Annual Review of Anthropology 32:339-361 (2003).

  137 Yelena B. Starikovskaya et al., “mtDNA Diversity in Chukchi and Siberian Eskimos: Implications for the Genetic History of Ancient Beringia and the Peopling of the New World,” American Journal of Human Genetics 63:1473-1491 (1998).

  138 Mark Seielstad et al., “A Novel Y-Chromosome Variant Puts an Upper Limit on the Timing of First Entry into the Americas,” American Journal of Human Genetics 73:700-705 (2003).

  139 Maria-Catira Bortolini et al., “Y-Chromosome Evidence for Differing Ancient Demographic Histories in the Americas,” American Journal of Human Genetics 73:524-539 (2003).

  140 Michael D. Brown et al., “mtDNA Haplogroup X: An Ancient Link between Europe/ Western Asia and North America?” American Journal of Human Genetics 63:1852-1861 (1998).

  141 Ripan S. Malhi and David Glenn Smith, “Haplogroup X Confirmed in Prehistoric North America,” American Journal of Physical Anthropology 119:84-86 (2002).

  142 Eduardo Ruiz-Pesini et al., “Effects of Purifying and Adaptive Selection on Regional Variation in Human mtDNA,” Science 303:223-226; Dan Mishmar et al., “Natural Selection Shaped Regional mtDNA Variation in Humans.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 100:171-176 (2003).

  143 Mark T. Seielstad, Erich Minch, and L. Luca Cavalli-Sforza, “Genetic Evidence for a Higher Female Migration Rate in Humans,” Nature Genetics 20:278-280 (1998).

  144 Kennewick Man, the 9,000-year-old, non-Mongoloid-looking skeleton discovered in Washington state and claimed by sinodont American Indians as their intimate ancestor, is a sundadont.

  145 Marta Mirazón Lahr, The Evolution of Modern Human Diversity, Cambridge University Press, 1996, p. 318.

  146 Richard G. Klein, The Human Career, p. 502.

  147 Ofer Bar-Yosef, “On the Nature of Transitions: The Middle to Upper Paleolithic and the Neolithic Revolution,” Cambridge Journal of Archaeology 8:(2):141-163 (1998).

  148 Ofer Bar-Yosef, “From Sedentary Foragers to Village Hierarchies,” The Origin of Human Social Institutions, Oxford University Press, 2001, p. 7.

  149 Peter M. M. G. Akkermans and Glenn M. Schwartz, The Archaeology of Syria, Cambridge University Press, 2003, p. 45.

  150 Brian M. Fagan, People of the Earth, 10th ed., Prentice Hall, 2001, p. 226.

  151 The evidence included a Natufian skeleton with a Natufian type arrow point embedded in the thoracic vertebrae. Fanny Bocquentin and Ofer Bar-Yosef, “Early Natufian Remains: Evidence for Physical Conflict from Mt. Carmel, Israel,” Journal of Human Evolution 47:19-23 (2004).

  152 Akkermans and Schwartz, The Archaeology of Syria, p. 96.

  153 Colin Renfrew, “Commodification and Institution in Group-Oriented and Individualizing Societies,” in W. G. Runciman, ed., The Origin of Social Institutions, Oxford University Press, 2001, p. 95.

  154 Natalie D. Munro, “Zooarchaeological Measures of Hunting Pressure and Occupation Intensity in the Natufian,” Current Anthropology 45:S5-33 (2004).

  155 Akkermans and Schwartz, The
Archaeology of Syria, p. 70.

  156 Daniel Zohary and Maria Hopf, Domestication of Plants in the Old World, 3rd ed., Oxford University Press, 2000, p. 18.

  157 Robin Allaby, “Wheat Domestication,” in Archaeogenetics: DNA and the Population Prehistory of Europe, McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, 2000, pp. 321-324.

  158 Francesco Salamini et al., “Genetics and Geography of Wild Cereal Domestication in the Near East,” Nature Reviews Genetics 3:429-441 (2002).

  159 Manfred Heun et al., “Site of Einkorn Wheat Domestication Identified by DNA Fingerprinting,” Science 278:1312-1314 (1997); Daniel Zohary, and Maria Hopf, Domestication of Plants in the Old World, p. 36.