[JimSEA]

An interesting counter to this can be found in the special edition of Scientific American on human evolution -- Alan G. Thome and Milford H. Wolpoff "The Multiregional Evolution of Humans". The fossil record does not necessarily fit with the "out of Africa 70,000 years ago" senario. Perhaps this is an arguement withour end for the immediate future at least.

[blam]

"An interesting counter to this can be found in the special edition of Scientific American on human evolution -- Alan G. Thome and Milford H. Wolpoff "The Multiregional Evolution of Humans". "

Yup. Wolpoff is my guy. He resembles a Neanderthal. lol.

[AdmSmith]

If we assume that the mutation rate is more or less constant this would imply that the population with the largest variation is the oldest.

A strong indication that we originate from Africa is that the variation of mitochondrial DNA is very large among Africans, and smaller among other groups.