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Where did we come from? Every civilization since the dawn of man has asked that question and every one has had its own creation myth to answer it. Every religion, be it ancient or modern, offers a story of the creation of the first man and woman. Science, too, has its own explanation of human origins, an explanation we might presume, based upon objective analysis of all available scientific evidence—but is it?

In The Descent of Man, Darwin speculated modern humans arose in Africa to eventually populate the earth. This served as the basis for the now widely accepted contemporary theory of Recent African Origins, also known as (RAO). As a consequence of long term funding of research by the National Geographic Society and others, RAO has received widespread media exposure in both print media and television documentaries. If you’ve seen one of these documentaries, you will have heard of it.

Based upon this, one might naturally assume RAO to be the only theory put forward by reputable anthropological researchers to account for the extinction of Homo erectus and advent of Homo sapiens, but to do so would be wrong. RAO is not the only possible explanation of human origin. There is another theory, the Multi-Regional Hypothesis (MRH), that better accounts for all available evidence. Why then, has it been ignored in favor of the RAO? RAO carefully interprets available evidence to avoid offending any of the groups that must not be offended in today’s political climate in order to secure continued funding and thus proves itself politicized science at its most egregious.

From Homo Erectus To Homo Sapiens will explain in detail, point by point, why the Multi-Regional Hypothesis (MRH) better interprets all available evidence— including neurological, genetic, biological, fossil, meteorological and anthropological—than does RAO. Each topic will be examined in detail and in terms the layperson can understand, but more than that, it is the author’s hope that the reader will find the evidence herein not only accessible, but germane to his own life, for if we, the family of man, are to survive as a species, we must understand not only where we are going, but the truth about our origins.

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Chapter One: Theories Of Human Origins

In his 1871 book entitled, The Descent of Man, Charles Darwin speculated that modern humans arose in Africa and then populated the known world. This observation serves as a basis for the widely accepted contemporary theory variously called the Out of Africa model, the recent single-origin hypothesis (RSOH), Replacement Hypothesis or the Recent African Origin (RAO) model. As a consequence of the long term heavy funding of African anthropology research by the National Geographic Society and other funding agencies, this general model or idea has received wide publication in the press as well as many television documentaries. It would seem that the case of our origins is closed. It is not!

These modern concepts are as limited as Darwin’s knowledge of human fossils in the world in 1871. At the time Darwin wrote the Descent of Man, the Java fossil of Homo erectus was unknown until its discovery in 1891. The presence of what became known as Peking Man (Homo erectus pekinensis) was also yet to be discovered in a cave (Zhoukoudian) near modern Beijing, China during the period of 1923-27. Darwin was not necessarily wrong, he simply composed a theory based upon the best knowledge available to him in 1870-71 and lacked 20^th Century information. It may not be an accident that the English might have discovered many human fossils in their former colonies of North, East and Southern Africa. It is as simple as the fact that educated English were there to look for them.

The proponents of the modern Recent African Origin model argue that their model is consistent with the fossil record as well as the genetic history (DNA and mtDNA) of the human species. Are these arguments valid? Does the RAO actually conform to the fossil record? When it is stated that the DNA evidence points to a recent African origin, what does that mean and how are such conclusions reached?

The proponents of RAO have not stated the obvious because that information would “paint them into a corner” by picking only one of the probable dozens of Homo erectus populations. Was there something unique about the African Homo erectus? No. Did this erectus arise at an earlier date in Africa? No.

The proponents of RAO have not suggested an ancestor of modern humans in Africa. The real reason for failing to suggest an ancestor for modern humans, I suspect, is that they would have to explain scientifically why Africa Homo erectus was different or superior to say the Chinese Homo erectus. The decision became political at that point, if it has ever been anything else. There is an interrelationship between the concept of a single origin of humans and the various efforts to statistically “discover” the ancient Eve through mitochondrial research. These ideas fit nicely with the political dogma of multiculturalism and the elimination of racial differences as a topic of polite conversation. They also fit nicely with the worldview and political leanings of Franz Boaz, the “father” of modern social anthropology.

In addition to the notion that modern humans arose in Africa without naming any ancestral group, the proponents of this hypothesis avoid any commitment to explain why “modern” humans might have evolved from an African Homo erectus and not from a European or Chinese Homo erectus. They escape this intellectual trap by insisting that Homo erectus became extinct and that “African moderns” replaced indigenous populations throughout the Old World. We are left with two untenable conclusions: 1. The authors seem to believe that human evolution has been linear from a single original ancestor and 2. By choosing one location of human origins over other potential areas, RAO assumes the unmistakable appearance of a “Special Creation” similar to that suggested by the Bible. While it seems highly unlikely that the proponents of this concept are suggesting that the story of Adam and Eve is actual history, many aspects of their ideas are consistent with Biblical mythology.

The idea that human evolution has been a relatively straight line from early African ancestors to the present is contradicted on many fronts by evidence from elsewhere that can’t be ignored. For instance, human populations with heavy supraorbital ridges over their eyes similar to virtually all living, genetically pure Melanesians, Australians, many primitive tribal groups in Southeast Asia and a small but significant population of individuals from ALL racial groups suggests most strongly that this primitive characteristic of archaic Homo sapiens, actually late Homo erectus, could not have evolved from fully modern Homo sapiens. Specialization arises from generalization and rarely, if ever, the reverse. The RAO proponents seem to avoid these nasty questions by failing to define the skeletal structures of a fully modern human. They simply say that all living humans ARE fully modern humans. This is not a definition. It is an evasion. Skull form is directly representative of the genetic blueprints dictating those structures. Skull structure is as racially distinctive and genetic as skin color. Otherwise, we should eliminate any consideration of DNA from any consideration of human origins. Without a definition of what constitutes the cranial forms (particularly facial) of fully modern humans, the discussion moves into the arena of opinion and politics and abandons the rigors of scientific scrutiny. Virtually all anatomists would insist that fully modern humans, Homo sapiens, have a domed cranium (no trace of a saggital elevation or crest), a complete lack of supraorbital ridges above the eyes and a generally gracile facial structure. An overwhelming percentage of modern Europeans, East Asians, and South Asians, Middle Easterners, North East Africans have these characteristics.

Many groups around the world as well as a small minority in all major racial groups have not evolved past archaic Homo sapiens. To state otherwise is an exercise in creative storytelling. In this sense, any groups with prominent supraorbital structures must be considered to be archaic Homo sapiens. The question then becomes this: do the proponents of the Recent African Origins hypothesis believe that fully modern humans moved out of Africa or were they archaic Homo sapiens—or were they Homo erectus?

One of the greatest challenges to RAO is presented by the existence of the Hobbit fossil recently discovered in a cave on Flores Island, Indonesia. Here is a Homo erectus in miniature that lived a mere 18,000 years ago on that island. Many devotees of the religion of RAO have tried in vain and with immense silliness to discredit this fossil and other similar fossils found in the same cave complex since the original discovery. There have been efforts (and continue to be efforts) to suggest that these individuals are microcephalics. Only a very poorly educated anatomist could have entertained such an idea while viewing the Hobbit fossil side by side with that of an actual microcephalic. The Hobbit is fatal to the theory behind the Recent African Origin of modern humans! That is the fundamental reason for the frantic attempts to discredit this discovery. Not only is the Hobbit clearly extremely primitive, it lived at a time when most of the major racial groups in China, Europe, South Asia and elsewhere had evolved into fully modern Homo sapiens. The Homo erectus ancestors of the Hobbit migrated to Flores Island and then evolved into midget status. Many other animals on Flores Island have also become miniaturized. Human groups living only a few miles from the cave where the Hobbit was discovered are also extremely small and clearly archaic humans. It takes little to no imagination to understand and realize the Hobbit must be an ancestor of the current residents of Flores Island. The only real explanation for the existence of the Hobbit and other primitive peoples on earth today lies in an inescapable fact that there must have been a large number of different and relatively (though not completely) isolated Homo erectus populations throughout the Old World for most of the last two million years. Not all of these Homo erectus groups survived or evolved at the same rate, but they all had the same basic genome and, therefore, belonged to the same species.

Chris Stringer, the major proponent of the Recent African Origins hypothesis, in a rather brilliant bit of subterfuge has claimed that the Hobbit damages the opposing Multi-Regional Hypothesis as it relies on all humans belonging to the same species. This description of the Multi-Regional Hypothesis badly misstates the central thesis that many groups of Homo erectus were evolving at different rates in different locations. The Hobbit is absolutely compatible with the MRH. Stringer’s sleight of hand turns a serious and virtually fatal criticism of the RAO idea into an unwarranted attack on a competing theory. It is very clever, but it won’t float. As an anatomist, Stringer surely must know that the Hobbit represents a primitive human form that could NOT have arisen from his “modern” African migrants even if those moderns were archaic Homo sapiens. To make matters worse, the humans living around the cave on Flores Island where the Hobbit fossils were discovered are very small in stature only slightly taller than the 3.5 foot Hobbit. The inference that the Hobbit represents the ancestors of the people living in the area today is quite unmistakable. That cannot be possible if the RAO hypothesis is even remotely correct!

All modern humans alive today must possess the Homo erectus genome virtually intact. This basic idea is consistent with of the theory of evolution as envisioned by Charles Darwin and hundreds of biologists since the middle of the 19^th Century. There is no evidence that the genome of Homo erectus became extinct while a completely new genome materialized “out of thin air” encoding Homo sapiens. Where would this “new” Homo sapiens genome have originated? Homo sapiens had to have had ancestors. Consequently, those ancestors must have provided the genome that we now associate with modern humans. This must be assumed from the fact that chimpanzees and humans are so genetically close and differ by only about 2% after a separation of 6 or 7 million years and completely isolated evolution for that time period.

Some human groups seem to have evolved faster than others. The Recent African Origins hypothesis is the ultimate in “politically correct” science as it attempts on virtually no evidence to imply that all humans are the same—that race is a social construction as some social anthropologists have suggested—with a recent origin in Africa. Even the brilliant Stephen Jay Gould seems to have abandoned his evolutionary principles when it came to human evolution and especially racial distinctions, but I doubt that he would have countenanced such pseudoscientific nonsense.

Franz Boaz believed “race is a social construct”. Franz Boaz is also considered to be the father of modern social anthropology. He was most likely a lifelong “socialist” who encouraged students to find socialism in all observations even if those concepts were little more than seeing what the observer wanted to see. Today, there are overtly sensitive people who seem to believe that any mention of human evolution or of the obvious differences between racial groups constitutes racism. This same group, I suspect, that might consider gravity as a conspiracy against their delusional efforts to fly like birds.

The Recent African Origins hypothesis appears to be based upon only one African fossil—the fossil skull found at Herto, Ethiopia. This skull is dated at ~160,000 years ago. It has been classified as Homo sapiens idaltu. The authors of the RAO hypothesis consider Herto to be fully modern; it is clearly not a fully modern human owing to the presence of supraorbital ridges. There is little question that this fossil should be classified as archaic Homo sapiens (Hs). The Herto skull looks remarkably similar to the fossil skull found in a cave at Petralona, Greece dating to somewhere between 250,000 to 400,000 years ago. The Petralona skull is classified as Homo erectus (Homo heidelbergensis in some analyses). In my opinion, it should be considered to be an example of European Homo erectus. There are reasons to doubt that Herto is African as opposed to European as a consequence of the facial characteristics of the fossil. The facial construction of Herto is remarkably similar to the face of Petralona.

The European population (Petralona/Greece) and the Herto population (Ethiopia) may have been parts of closely related migratory groups. It is conceivable that Herto represents a later evolutionary state of the Petralona group from Greece and certainly other parts of Europe and not African at all but merely a transient traveler from the north during cold times. The chart of earth temperatures suggests that human populations might have been moving north at about 140 thousand years ago during a warming period that lasted for more than 30,000 years. Massive events re-occur regularly every ~100 thousand years resulting in a massive swing in earth temperature. These changes certainly have little connection to the human population as a cause. Interestingly, this chart when read properly from right to left appears to suggest that carbon dioxide elevations follow increases in earth temperature by possibly as much as a thousand years. This may be another example of statistical correlations run amuck. The historical increases in carbon dioxide could not be related to regular volcanism. The great reservoirs of CO2 on earth are the oceans. If the earth warmed as a direct consequence of regular solar variation, the warming oceans may be the source of rising carbon dioxide as the solubility of CO2 in water is directly proportional to temperature. Beware of deliberately false information suggesting that earth CO2 is at an all time high. That is a rather blatant falsehood. The entire matter is a function of statistics. Does warming release carbon dioxide or does carbon dioxide cause warming. Statistical correlations cannot give us the answer for the simple reason that statistics cannot differentiate cause from effect. Statistics can only illustrate some association between temperature and carbon dioxide. The case remains open and is far from settled on the cause or causes of great long-term climate changes (thousands of years).

It is important to keep these huge amounts of time in mind and related to the very short period of time since the Roman Empire for instance. It appears that humans may have been migrating north during a warm Pleistocene interglacial period after having migrated south during a cold glacial period and not because they are “moderns” bent upon conquering the entire Old World. This climate related migration could be and evidently has been utilized by the RAO group to provide the genetic impression of an African origin. This information could just as easily imply human movement in the opposite direction. This is the stuff that makes statistical correlation the indispensible friend of the politically motivated scientist.

Of the many implications of the RAO hypothesis that are troubling, the notion that all modern humans have a single origin (from a single individual—a mythical, imaginary Eve) is difficult to justify from well-established evolutionary and scientific concepts. The most notable event in human history was the reduction of chromosomes from the 48 of the great apes to the 46 chromosomes of humans. This change occurred about 7 million years ago when two ape chromosomes designated 2A and 2B fused to form a single human chromosome, chromosome 2. This event cannot be termed a (DNA) mutation as it involves the fusion of two chromosomes instead of a change to the DNA of the genes associated with an individual chromosome. Did this chromosome fusion occur simultaneously in a group of individuals or was it a more gradual process? This question relates directly to the notion of a single common origin of all extant humans. Evolution occurs as a consequence of group effects. Individuals do not evolve. Vertebrate evolution is always a group phenomenon. If the fusion of 2A and 2B occurred in only one individual, this individual would most likely be sterile in sexual unions with those with 48 chromosomes. The new fused individual would produce eggs or sperm with only a haploid number of 23 rather than the 24 of it ape relatives. Any mating of this new individual with an ape would have a diploid or full chromosome number of 47 (23 + 24). Since the number 47 is not evenly divisible by 2, cell division would most likely terminate with the death of the fertilized cell. At any rate, the event resulting in the fusion of 2A and B most certainly had to involve a group of individuals. The resulting population would have immediately become a new species that could no longer interbreed with their ape ancestors. One can only speculate on the cause of this chromosomal fusion event. It could have been caused by massive radiation from a supernova or some other significant event effecting an entire group of individuals. At any rate, it happened and resulted in the beginnings of our Hominid genus. Although human fossils are extremely rare and difficult to find, it is certain at this time that a large number of different human species have lived during the last 6 or 7 million years since this fusion event occurred. This chromosomal fusion event almost certainly occurred in Africa as that continent is the location of the closest non-human relatives—the chimpanzees. It is not realistic to think that chimpanzees or their ancestors could have migrated from other parts of the Old World into Africa when the biological barrier of the Congo River alone seems to have caused the isolated speciation of the Bonobos. Having said that, we should not forget nor neglect the existence of the apes of Southeast Asia and their possible relationship to the primate/human family tree. These questions are far from being completely settled.

We should remember that the time between this alleged event of 6 or 7 million years ago and the time of the emergence of Homo erectus is a massive amount of evolutionary time—on the order of nearly 4 million years and possibly longer. It is reasonable to assume owing to this immense amount of time that Homo erectus may have been a rather substantial population by the time it had spread to the entire Old World around 2 million years ago. For the sake of my arguments, it makes no difference where Homo erectus first originated only that he spread throughout the Old World. Throughout this time, it is reasonable to assume that although the Hominid genome was relatively stable and that there may have been considerable differences between different groups of erectus. For many good biological reasons, it is worthwhile to think of Homo erectus as the generalized wild human ancestor much like the wolf is the wild ancestor of domesticated dogs. This observation should not be taken to imply that all modern humans descend from the same group of Homo erectus anymore than all dogs are descended from the same pack of wolves, and certainly not from the same wolf.

Julian Huxley once stated: “man is a domesticated wild species”. I believe he was absolutely correct in that analysis. The difference between man and his dog is that man domesticated the wolf while domesticating himself.

There may be questions about the time when early hominids first learned to control fire, but it is certain that Homo erectus controlled fire by 500,000 years ago and had to have been an accomplished hunter. An anthropologist friend who raises wolves and wolf/dog hybrids as a hobby has suggested that groups of Homo erectus hunters would have been “ like a pack of wolves armed with knives”. The idea inherent and upon which the RAO absolutely depends suggests that these “armed wolves” either became extinct because they could not cope with changing environmental conditions (after having evolved in dynamic often severe environments for hundreds of thousands of years) or that they just blithely welcomed the “superior” newcomers from Africa into their midst. Both of these assumptions border upon the moronic in their lack of intellectual sophistication.

The Recent African Origins hypothesis requires that human groups in other areas either die out or cannot compete with the alleged modern migrants from Africa. All scientific evidence would suggest otherwise.

Any violent confrontation between Homo erectus on his own territory would not have resulted in a win for Homo sapiens and most certainly not for Homo sapiens unless these invaders had much larger numbers and highly superior weapons (I would suggest M-16’s and hand grenades). There is no anthropological evidence of either in China or anywhere else for that matter. One of the more troubling aspects of the RAO is the requirement that Homo erectus either became extinct or could not compete with African immigrants. There is a clear line of human evolutionary descent in the fossil record of China from the earliest Asian Homo erectus up to the present time.

It is virtually certain that Homo erectus did not die out but evolved into Homo sapiens. This is precisely what Charles Darwin believed even with the limited and partial fossil record available to him in 1871. If the authors of RAO acknowledge Homo erectus as the direct ancestor of Homo sapiens and thus comply with the concepts of evolutionary theory as suggested by Darwin, they cannot possibly designate one Homo erectus population over another as the only founding population. As it is, they are suggesting some form of Special Creation for our species. Modern humans just appeared somewhere in East Africa along the Rift Valley according to the impression given by the RAO ideas. This story even has a flavor and odor of alien origins as intelligent beings from far far out in the galaxy favored the earth by inseminating a few hundred pre-human African females giving rise to “modern” humans ready to take a trip to the entire known world.

The RAO group seems to have woven a tale that has some of the same flaws as the Book of Genesis as it describes human origins in the story of Adam and Eve and their sons Cain and Abel. Genesis states that the sons of Adam and Eve got their wives from the Land of Nod. At that point in time, an intelligent and somewhat observant reader might question the validity of this story. If Adam and Eve were the first people and the ancestors of all human populations, how can we explain the origins of the people in the Land of Nod. Realistically, Cain and Abel either married girls from another tribe indicating that Adam and Eve do not necessarily qualify as the first and only people on earth OR they married their sisters. Take your pick! It is nothing less than primitive fiction any way you look at it.

There is, however, a logical answer to all of this. It is the Multi-Regional Hypothesis as proposed by Milford Wolpoff of the University of Michigan and Alan Thorne of the Australian National University. This hypothesis has been criticized by the RAO crowd as lacking any explanation for gene flow and the absence of speciation of separate evolving human groups. These criticisms are not justified by the evidence. The Multi-Regional idea never suggested either human evolution in complete isolation or parallel evolution. It does suggest basically the ideas that I have stated above with the many branches of the Homo erectus family evolving throughout the Old World from Africa to the Middle East to Europe to South and East Asia over the course of at least a million years and probably closer to two million years.

Although the details of the Multi-Regional Hypothesis are more elaborate than I have indicated, it is based upon the complete fossil record illustrating that modern humans have evolved from Homo erectus populations throughout the Old World over the last 2 million years. In this sense, East Asians have evolved from what has been termed as the Asian Homo erectus. Africans have evolved from the African Homo erectus. Caucasians evolved from a Eurasian Homo erectus. I tend to suspect that there were not just three or four main divisions of the common and ubiquitous species called Homo erectus but many dozens of Homo erectus variants. It appears likely that these variants of Homo erectus had already specialized into various racial groups and sub-types by the time that they had colonized the entire Old World more than a million (possibly two million or more) years ago. It is important to understand that these Homo erectus populations carried nearly identical genomes and were subjected to nearly identical selection pressures—hunting and gathering. Natural selection would have operated upon all of the various Homo erectus groups in nearly identical ways with highly similar effects. There would have been minimal pressure for any movement toward speciation. Much of the current confusion, I suspect, has arisen from the use of mutation as a motive force in evolutionary change. Mutation is a generator of diversity and nothing else! Natural selection operates upon that diversity. The mere presence or generation of mutations does not require transmission into the future as a consequence of genetic evolution. If these mutations are extremely negative, they will be eliminated by natural selection.

The significance of the Multi-Regional hypothesis, in my opinion, lies in the split of the Homo erectus populations into various branches about 2 million years ago. It makes little difference where this initial Homo erectus population originated whether Africa, China, or Central Asia (Georgia). If a migration or migrations from Africa occurred, these events took place about 2 million years ago and not 50 or 100 thousand years ago. How is this possible without the evolution of several different human species? This is the set of questions that I intend to answer in the pages that follow. I intend to advance a theory of human gene flow based upon the forms of human group behavior that had to evolve for human survival to occur. As a consequence of the social behavior patterns that had to be common to all hunting/gathering Homo erectus groups, consistent gene flow occurred necessary to maintain a common family of humans. It is important to understand that as long as the human chromosome number remained at 46 all humans are the same species.

Gene flow occurred upon a massive time scale rather than the short time frame generally visualized today. In addition to this idea, it is certain that the genetic behaviors that have allowed the continued successful evolution of our species over hundreds of thousands of years are still an innate part of modern human behavior. We are human today because of this innate, instinctive behavior. Humans act like humans. They do not need to be taught how to be human just as a dog knows how to be a dog or a duck knows how to be a duck. This genetic behavior has been honed for hundreds of thousands of years allowing only the survival of successful behavior. Successful behavior carries the reward of successful reproduction.

This ancient behavior enabled humans to evolve intellectually from a primitive hunter to a contemporary designer of computers. This realization does not imply that the primitive Homo erectus hunter was intellectually inferior to the contemporary computer designer. Today the innate behavior of that hunter is either repressed or penalized by the effects of living in a modern world with laws that are nearly universally invented with little to no basis in nature or from the application of fictitious religious dogma from birth to death. In the case of humans, psychological conditioning before the age of about 10 and certainly before the age of 4 or 5 years insures that social and religious indoctrination appears to be normal and natural.

It is important to recall that the genetic difference between humans and our closest relatives the chimpanzees is only about 2%. This is a very small difference considering that both populations have been evolving independently in completely different environments with unique and different selecting factors for 6 or 7 million years. If the human—ape separation occurred ~7 million years ago, that is difference of about .286% for each million years of separation. Since the necessities of life—nomadic hunting and gathering for different groups of Homo erectus—were similar and differed only in minor environmental factors, it seems that this divergence figure of .286% was probably about half that amount or less per million years in the human family even if no gene flow occurred. The actual calculated difference between living human populations is about .1%. Without invoking mathematical comparisons, it appears as if very little gene flow has occurred or needed to occur for humans to remain members of the same species. It also suggests that the separation of various human groups has been much longer than several hundred thousand and closer to a million years. Many of followers of the Recent African Origins idea seem to believe that their flow charts for various genetic markers add credence to their concepts. It is worthwhile to point out that precisely identical genetic flow charts might result from the dispersal of Homo erectus populations within the time frame of ~2 million years ago. The timing depends entirely upon the rate of alleged mitochondrial DNA random mutations. This rate can be any frequency desired by the designer of historical time frames. It just happens that the advocates of a recent African model desire a number around 200K. Any dating based upon mutation frequencies or other genetic data can be easily manipulated and interpreted to fit nearly any proposed theory. It is reasonable to suggest that genetic differences and the gene flow frequencies might reflect 2 million years just as easily as 200 thousand. It is worth contemplation to note that the difference of .286% per million years between humans and chimpanzees suggests a difference of .0286% per 100,000 years. This figure alone suggests that human groups may have been separated for nearly 400,000 years without any gene flow. The Out of Africa gang has managed to get caught in an intellectual trap of its own design.

Some gene flow did occur between Homo erectus groups whether that interaction was peaceful or violent, it occurred. If even a small amount of gene flow occurred between Homo erectus populations, it is consistent to fully explain the current genetic differences between different racial groups alive today. As long as the human chromosome number remained at 46 in all populations, humans were and continue to be one species.

Since the cornerstone of the Recent African Origins hypothesis rests upon genetic statistics, it should be understood that any such analysis (study) requires a selection (pick and choose) of data. This is one of the fundamental flaws in any acceptance of statistics as a form of scientific proof. If one wishes to diminish the idea of racial differences, DNA data selection might use DNA of racially mixed individuals as one way to slant any conclusion about racial differences. Exemplars of various genetically pure aboriginal and/or racial groups have been disappearing from the Internet for several years only to be replaced by obvious racial mixtures giving the impression that primitive aboriginals are fully modern. There is a persistent rumor that at least one human genome study used the DNA of six or 7 individuals of different races mixed together to hide any genetic differences between racial groups. Again, I would suggest that scientists have a high fiduciary duty to the truth. Such a duty would have been violated by such actions.

At the present time owing to military conquest and modern travel, the gene flow between different human groups has been greatly accelerated and expanded to nearly all human groups on earth today. Although accelerating today, this is a process that has been occurring for all of recorded history. It should suffice to state that genetic analysis of humans living today does not always give a valid and complete image of their ancestral history. The history of the last two thousand years gives massive evidence of an incredible movement of people and genetic influences throughout the world. Great empires did more than simply annex land; they merged different human genetic groups. We only know historically of the more recent empires. These empires although unknown probably extend back in time to the beginnings of settled agriculture—the beginnings of the Neolithic Age. In addition to that, many past wars could be described as genocidal wars in which the entire losing army was killed and their populations then genetically absorbed by the victors as wives or slaves or both.

We should realize that slavery was common throughout the known world until less than two centuries ago. Female slaves were the sexual property of their overlords and owners. The existence of an average of 16 or 17% white genetics in black Americans provides ample evidence of the preceding sentence. This admixture of white genetics into the black population of the United States is naïvely given as an example of “gene flow” resulting from intermarriage on Wikipedia. This high level of racial mixture cannot be explained solely by marriage when such marriages and even sexual contact was against in law in many U.S. states until after the Second World War.

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Chapter Two: Incest And Religion

When the word incest is mentioned, many people act as if something truly disgusting has just occurred. It is the sort of revulsion that one might expect from someone who has just been forced to walk across a dog park barefooted in the dark. Is this a normal and natural reaction to the word, incest, or is it the result of religious and/or social indoctrination? Is there an instinct against sex with close relatives in the human species? Any species? Regardless of public opinion, there appears to be no solid scientific evidence of any instinctual behavior (genetic behavior) against sexual contact between close relatives in any species. If this is truly the case, why are any laws necessary and directed against such behavior? If some instinctual taboo against incest existed, all of us would find any thought of sex with a first cousin or any close relative to be revolting and any law would be completely unnecessary. There are some very notable exceptions. Entire cultures and more than a hundred million humans (mostly Moslems) seem to consider marriage with a first cousin to be desirable. This massive example alone suggests that any incest taboo cannot result from genetic behavior. This behavior cannot be genetically inherited and passed from generation to generation throughout our evolutionary history of at least two million years as Homo erectus— or about 6 or 7 million years since the original human linage separated from apes with the Last Common Ancestor (LCA). If some incest taboo exists in any human society, it has been learned through the imposed forces of social and religious conditioning. There have been major efforts in Western societies to discourage and/or condemn sexual unions between closely related individuals since at least the 10^th and 11^th Centuries in Europe. As a consequence of colonialism, European (Christian) attitudes about sex, love and marriage have been spread about the world by the force of arms and/or missionaries. In the history of colonialism, military force and Christian missionaries were intimately associated. Often the mission of one was not possible without the intervention of the other.

In the Western world, it is certain that the admonition against the marriage of closely related individuals originates in the Catholic Church. The Church generally forbids marriage down to 6^th cousins. The Church did not possess some great insight into genetics or the laws of inheritance in the 13^th or 14^th Centuries. What the Church did have was an imperative to absolute power and a will to violently punish any challenge to that power. The efforts in the maintenance of Church power during particularly the 14^th, 15^th, 16^th, 17^th, and into the 18^th Centuries led to thousands of usually innocent people being tortured, hung, beheaded or burned alive at the stake by an organization that claimed to be spreading the word of God and some form of love. Such brutality was generally sufficient to suppress any deviance from Church dogma irrespective of the imaginary nature of that dogma. Medieval Church power was also maintained through the addition of the 2^nd and 3^rd sons of the landed aristocracy to the priesthood and direct Church control while forbidding the eldest (titled heirs) sons of the landed aristocracy from marrying their cousins in adjoining estates. To put this simply, incest has its messy origin with the efforts of the Catholic Church to gain and maintain power by manipulating the social fabric of their only competitor—the European aristocracy. It may not be an accident that contemporary American Evangelical Christians seem to be preoccupied by sex, politics and tax-free donations (The Big Three—PMS — Power, Money, and Sex)—but they seem to be mostly obsessed with sexual behavior whether it involves marriage and family, incest, age of sexual consent of girls, homosexuality, birth control, abortion, and their ongoing and persistent attempts to impose the church’s sexual doctrines into state law. The Catholic Church provides an historic model for power acquisition and social control under the guise of religious authority, i.e., “speaking for God”. These efforts seem to work very well when applied to intimidated, gullible, and ignorant people.

Many people seem to believe falsely that incest will result in low intelligence or some other form of genetic disease. Many highly educated people even in the hard sciences seem ignorant of the fact that highly inbred strains are crossed to produce hybrids carrying forth the desirable characteristics of the two inbred strains. This process of development has been and continues to be employed in the production of commercial chickens, turkeys, hogs, cattle to some degree, as well as most of the important cereal grains especially corn. Without this form of inbreeding (incest) much of the Third World would be on the verge of starvation. The fundamental reason lies in the fact that such breeding practices have increased the amount of food by at least as much as world population has grown in the last 75 or so years.

The offspring of closely related individuals are simply more uniform and more similar to their parents than those resulting from unrelated parents. Incest does not cause genetic problems; it simply makes genetic characteristics inherent in the parents much more likely to be expressed. It is very easy these days to find scholarly articles even “scientific” papers that purport to show that incest causes genetic problems while suggesting that social animals go to great lengths to avoid inbreeding. There is a general consensus among many biologists suggesting that a breeding population must be of a certain size in order to be biologically viable—able to avoid extinction. This population size is based almost entirely on the number of individuals deemed necessary to avoid inbreeding. In nearly all cases, these ideas are based on the notion that inbreeding threatens the survival of various vertebrate species. Is this really accurate? The answer is NO. DNA does not recognize the DNA from a brother or sister anymore than it does the DNA of a completely foreign individual. There is, however, good evidence suggesting less—not more—reproductive difficulties among closely related individuals based on histocompatibility complexes—or precisely the opposite effect alleged for incest. The mere act of brother/sister reproduction does not result in abnormalities. It does, however, greatly increase the chances that recessive traits will become expressed. Since there are two genes for every trait one from the male and one from the female, any resultant child will have a specific gene from each parent. If these two parents are brother and sister or even first cousins, it is much more likely that genes for specific traits will be the same or very similar. After several generations, inbred populations become very uniform in not only appearance but also in their unseen strengths and weaknesses. Much of the biological objection to small populations that may inbreed lies in the cherished notion of genetic diversity. There is no question that inbreeding progressively reduces genetic diversity within any given inbred population. Genetic diversity is practically the “Holy Grail” of modern population biology. This does, however, present a very narrow view of evolution and certainly of the natural world. The wolf is by any measure a highly diverse animal. Dogs derived through selective breeding (and certainly inbreeding to necessary to produce specific domestic breeds) represent specialized parts of the generalized, diverse wild wolf populations from which dogs originate. Should we believe that specialized dogs are inferior to wolves simply because they are specialists while their wolf ancestors are diverse? Should we believe that the various breeds of dogs are in danger of becoming extinct because they have been inbred to be specialists? It is reasonable to visualize all of the many breeds of dogs as facets or parts of the ancestral wolf populations from which they have been derived. Indeed, dogs represent the specialized parts of the generalized wolf. Can the wolf be regenerated by recombination of these specialized parts—various breeds of dogs? Absolutely not! Ironically, freely breeding dogs recombine to produce a shit brown mutt so common running wild on the streets and alleys of Third World countries. Domestication changes the various wolf descendants in both behavior and form. It seems as if the wolf is lost after domestication even though the genome of the dog is virtually identical to the wolf. A similar effect pertains to all groups of contemporary humans and their wild ancestor, Homo erectus. It is important to ask what changed if the genomes of the wolf and the dog are the same. What changed? We seldom ask this question while actually searching for an answer. In all vertebrate cases, genetic inheritance involves not only coding genes but also the non-coding controlling genes. In addition, a considerable difference may result from repeats of a given gene. Hypothetically we might consider that a Tyrannosaurus rex and a chicken are genetically similar. Why was a T. rex so much larger? It seems probable that T. rex had many repeats of the gene for growth hormone or other genetic elements. The real point is that evolution is not just a matter of the alteration of coding genes. Two absolutely identical coding genomes could produce radically different genetic effects if major changes occur in the activity of the non-coding elements regulating the expression of coding genes. I suspect that much of the differences in dog populations as well as between different groups of people may lie not in coding genes but in repetition of coding genes and changes in non-coding elements of the genome. These changes could be extremely subtle and difficult to discover particularly the dynamic functions of these non-coding genes.

Diversity infers that any population with genetic variety possesses great flexibility in the face of changing environmental conditions. Not all individuals of such diverse groups possess flexibility in a changing environment. It hints at the basis of Darwin’s notion of “survival of the fittest”. Genetically adapted individuals from a diverse group survive while those that are not so endowed may perish. It should be obvious that a completely inbred group (so closely related that virtually all individuals within a group are as closely related as brother and sister) may or may not prosper in a changing environment. If the inbred group is genetically adapted to a given environment, then ALL members of the inbred group will survive while other inbred groups may not survive. Highly inbred groups represent the genetic structure of a single individual—a member of that particular inbred group. It is alleged statistically that only about 11,000 humans survived the massive Toba eruption on the island of Sumatra about 70,000 years ago (the Toba Bottleneck). The actual number of surviving humans may have been many times that number. Since this number has been derived by statistical analysis of DNA, it is seems quite likely that what appears to be individuals may be highly inbred groups that survived the blast of Toba. The number of these groups could have been as many as a thousand or less. Why? I believe the facts of known human behavior demand without question that all human groups at that time were highly inbred, so inbred in fact, that a group might appear in genetic statistics as a single individual.

The observed catastrophic effects of “discovery” upon aboriginal people throughout recorded history may relate not only to lack of exposure to specific human pathogens, but also to the inbred genetics of these groups. The lack of genetic diversity of inbred groups makes them extremely vulnerable when exposed to new and different diseases carried by more modern, genetically diverse, humans with immune resistance. Many today would argue that this fact alone is a persuasive argument against inbreeding. Such conclusions, however, miss the obvious facts that human ancestors were ignorant of the nature of communicable disease, genetics, and sexual choices. These groups were isolated and probably hostile to any known neighbors. All animal populations display territorial behavior from fish to birds to humans.

The survival of an animal like Homo erectus possessing no natural weapons, no fur to keep him warm, surrounded by very dangerous predators ranging from tigers and lions to other human groups who were most certainly cannibals required that human groups must cooperate and act together as a large family. I will return to this idea continuously in the pages that follow as it provides the elusive answers to the alleged “gene flow” problems in human evolution.

Although it is rarely mentioned, massive catastrophes similar to Toba may have acted as selection agents from which only specific genotypes survived the environmental winter that surely followed this volcanic eruption. It would be foolishness of the highest order to consider all human groups to be equally affected by any given environmental change. The “bottleneck” idea as it related to human origins assumes that humans at this time did not wear protective clothing allowing them to resist sudden cold weather. There is precious little evidence for this assumption. A Homo erectus population that could control fire and start fires whenever desired also had the intellectual capacity to make use of the hides that he HAD to remove from the large animals killed for food. The mere fact of human existence in the northern latitudes of Europe and Asia for more than 1,000,000 years suggests that they had become adapted to cold and adept in the use of furs and skins. To believe otherwise is an exercise in very myopic vision. An animal that was smart enough to start fires and cook his meat, smart enough to kill evasive and often dangerous animals, was surely smart enough to realize that these same animals were kept warm by the very hides that Homo erectus had to remove to access the meat.

Several years ago, the idea was proposed that about 10% or more of the northern Chinese male population carried the Y-chromosome of Genghis Khan. A little thought should reveal that this notion is totally preposterous. No man, not even the powerful and virile Genghis Khan, could be spread so thin among that many women. What does this story really reveal? History appears to illustrate that the great Mongol leader only trusted members of his natal tribe (and probably did not trust many of them). It is a safe bet to assume that virtually all of the officers in the great Mongol army were members of the same tribe as their leader. It should be unquestioned that the tribe of Genghis Khan was highly inbred from untold centuries of close inbreeding. Because of the inbred condition of all Mongol tribes, the entire officer corps of the Mongol army would have the same or very similar Y-chromosome as Genghis Khan. Consequently, the invasion of northern China by the Mongol army certainly led to a protracted infusion of Mongol genetics into the conquered Chinese population. What has appeared to be the genetics of the great Khan is actually the genetics of his entire tribe merged into the northern Chinese genome.

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Chapter Three: Some Effects Of Inbreeding

One never suggests that cats whether alley cats or pampered Persians commit incest although many housecats may be as closely related as mother and children. One of the great jokes in this regard deals with a little old lady who calls the vet because she believes her cat is sick. Upon examination, the vet informs the lady that there is nothing wrong with her cat—she is merely pregnant. At that point, the old lady insists to the vet that that is not possible. About that time, a large tomcat crawls out from under the couch. The vet asks her –well, what about him? The little old lady moans, oh doctor, that’s not possible—he’s her brother. It bears noting that the rules governing the genetics of cats and humans are the same. Many Americans—too many Americans—fall into the category occupied by this little old lady.

About 40 years ago, an article appeared in a major American psychology magazine with the title “The Incest Taboo”. Naturally, I was intrigued and read this article with much interest and delight. That this article still reverberates in my memory is evidence that it’s implications stirred my thought processes and also many episodes of joyous laughter. The article was in the form of a report from a professional psychologist (psychology professor) who had reared a female common chimpanzee from infancy to about 12 years old. A female chimpanzee at that age is sexually mature. The male psychologist came to the conclusion that he had discovered evidence of an instinct against sexual contact between father (him) and daughter (female chimpanzee). In this 70’s era article, the psychologist did not reveal his scientific methods or the number of scientific trials. It seemed logical at the time just as it does now that this female chimpanzee was very picky about her sexual partners and was not particularly receptive to the sexual advances of a human male academic. It could be suggested that this psychologist might have profited from some instruction in seduction techniques or at least some instruction in chimpanzee sexual physiology. Female common chimpanzees are not sexually receptive for most of the month but become extremely promiscuous for a few days before and after ovulation near the midpoint of the 35+ day menstrual cycle. Pregnancy should have been the least of this adventurer’s worries. The psychologist evidently mistimed his field trials. This article demonstrates that sexual rejection does not necessarily equate to any indication of a genetic behavior against incest. It also suggests that this psychologist could fall into the category generally regarded as being a sexual pervert who was lucky that this adult (and immensely strong) female chimpanzee did not rip off his male plumbing . Any “incest taboo” is totally cultural without any genetic basis.

In the years since, I have been reminded of the naïve similarity of the stories of an old sea captain and this psychology professor. As the story goes: many years ago, the captain of a great sailing ship discovered after returning home from one of his many long sea voyages that his young, homebound wife had been serially unfaithful to him. He decided to divorce her and to take a very young girl to sea. Since this girl was quite young, he felt that he would be patient and wait for her to grow up and then after a couple of years, she would be ready to take on the role as his wife. When the magical day arrived to sexually consummate the relationship, the captain was horrified when he heard this innocent little girl ask him whether he preferred a blow job or the missionary position. He subsequently discovered that most of his crew had taken turns educating his young future wife in the arts of sexual pleasures.

Those of you familiar with human genealogical records may realize and understand that 11,12 or 13 year-old brides were quite common a few hundred years ago. Ironically, the legal “age of consent” in most U.S. states has progressively increased as the age of sexual maturity has declined. The age of maturity of girls (age of menarche) has decreased to a world wide average of ~11+ years today from an average of ~16 years or more 100 years ago. During the last 50 years, the legal age of consent in the U.S. has increased in many states from an age of 14 or 16 up to 18 and in at least one state the age of consent is 21. One has to wonder about the Constitutionality of a law allowing state control of citizens who have been old enough to vote for 3 years. (The same issue also applies to voting and drinking age statutes.) No better evidence of social activism and the unholy mixture of religion and politics can be found. This appears to be based upon social and political ideologies bringing together the fringes of the American political spectrum from the extremely liberal left wing of the women’s movement to the extreme right wing of the religious conservatives into common purpose for completely different and opposite reasons. This is not the only instance where these two groups who allegedly hate each other are pulling in the same direction! The possible mechanisms causing the relatively sudden decline in the age of menarche of girls after hundreds of years of stability is intriguing. The best bet for this change is artificial lighting and radiation from various technological sources ranging from cathode ray tubes of old fashioned televisions and computers. It should be observed that a large percentage of the world’s population lives in huge megacities whose skies are never dark. Although human brains are not quite as subject to optical radiation as birds, the optically sensitive pineal gland of both birds and humans responds to increasing optical radiation by the secretion of hormones directly affecting the release of sexual hormones (LH and FSH) of the pituitary. The process of increasing length of day and increasing radiation activates sexual behavior in birds. The same mechanism may operate in developing human brains resulting in an earlier increase in sexual hormone output from the pituitary. This phenomenon probably accounts for the tradition of spring as a season of romance and June as a month for weddings. The human pineal gland receives innervation from the optical tract via the superior colliculus of the thalamus. Before electric lighting, human births in the high latitudes, i.e., Scandinavia and Russia, etc. were very much a function of early spring. This would seem to suggest that although sexual receptivity was and remains an omnipresent behavior in northerners as it is in all humans, pre-industrial northerners were highly fertile (ovulating females and males with high sperm counts) only in the early and mid-summer.

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