More Seafaring Erectus

"Early manlike creatures may have been smarter than we think. Recent
archaeological finds from the Mediterranean show that human ancestors
traveled the high seas."


http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-08-human-precursors-sea-team.html

15000 yo boats

"A new technique which dates obsidian — volcanic glass which can be
fashioned into tools — suggests that people were mining for obsidian
in Mediterranean waters and shipping the once valuable rocks from the
island of Melos in modern day Greece as far back as 15,000 years
ago."
http://www.pasthorizonspr.com/index.php/archives/08/2011/obsidian-artifacts-point-to-ice-age-mariners-in-prehistoric-greece

Neanderthal survival story revealed in Jersey caves Options

"The La Cotte ravine has revealed the most prolific collection of
early Neanderthal technology in North West Europe, including over
250,000 stone tools."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14677434

Ancient Humans Used Fine-Crafted Tools Earlier Than Thought: Researchers

"If the researchers are indeed correct in their calculations, this
could mean that ancient humans were already involved in refined tool-
making, which requires high-level thinking, much earlier than
thought."

http://hken.ibtimes.com/articles/206702/20110901/ancient-humans-fine-crafted-tools-homo-erectus.htm

Aboriginal Australians descended from early migration of modern humans out of Africa, study says

Little did he know that giving a team of scientists a lock of his hair would provide answers to some profound questions about the origins of humankind in his native Australia. But that is exactly what happened when scientists sequenced his genome and found that he was descended from a very ancient wave of modern humanity out of Africa and eventually into Australia some 62,000 - 75,000 years ago.
He is an Aboriginal Australian. The results of the genetic tests showed that modern humans migrated into Eastern Asia in more than one wave and that he, along with all of his fellow Aboriginal Australians, could claim direct heritage with a very early wave, perhaps even the first wave. This meant that his population constituted one of the oldest continuous populations outside of Africa.
The debate concerning how and when Eastern Asia was populated has been an ongoing one. Central to this has been the question regarding whether modern humans migrated into this part of the world in a single wave or in multiple waves. The origins of the Aboriginal Australians has been an integral part of the total debate.
Morten Rasmussen of the Natural History Museum of Denmark, Copenhagen, and his team of colleagues compared the Aboriginal genome sequence with no less than 79 other genome sequences from Africa, Asia and Europe, including genomes from three Han Chinese individuals*. The results suggest that modern humans actually did migrate in more than one event or wave into East Asia, supporting the multiple event theory, and that the Aboriginal genome represented a very early or ancient migratory event, possibly as long ago as between 62,000 and 75,000 years ago, with their ancestors eventually arriving in Australia at around 50,000 B.P. The suggested African exodus corresponds to a time when many scientists postulate that the first modern humans ventured out of Africa to populate Eurasia. It also suggests that the Aboriginal Australians were the earliest modern humans to occupy Australia. Moreover, their study indicated that most Asians today descend from an original population that migrated into East Asia around 24,000 to 50,000 years ago.

http://popular-archaeology.com/issue/september-2011/article/aboriginal-australians-descended-from-early-migration-of-modern-humans-out-of-africa-study-says

TWO Huan Pop Bottlenecks

W. Amos and J. I. Hoffman
Evidence that two main bottleneck events
shaped modern human genetic diversity
Proc. R. Soc. B (2010) 277, 131–137
Abstract
“There is a strong consensus that modern humans originated in Africa
and moved out to colonize the
world approximately 50 000 years ago. During the process of expansion,
variability was lost, creating a
linear gradient of decreasing diversity with increasing distance from
Africa. However, the exact way in
which this loss occurred remains somewhat unclear: did it involve one,
a few or a continuous series of
population bottlenecks? We addressed this by analysing a large
published dataset of 783 microsatellite
loci genotyped in 53 worldwide populations, using the program
‘BOTTLENECK’. Immediately following
a sharp population decline, rare alleles are lost faster than
heterozygosity, creating a transient excess of
heterozygosity relative to allele number, a feature that is used by
BOTTLENECK to infer historical events.
We find evidence of two primary events, one ‘out of Africa’ and one
placed around the Bering Strait,
where an ancient land bridge allowed passage into the Americas. These
findings agree well with the
regions of the world where the largest founder events might have been
expected, but contrast with the
apparently smooth gradient of variability that is revealed when
current heterozygosity is plotted against
distance from Africa.”

African Hybrids

"We found evidence for hybridization between modern humans and archaic
forms in Africa.
It looks like our lineage has always exchanged genes with their more
morphologically
diverged neighbors," said Hammer, who also holds appointments in the
UA's department
of ecology and evolutionary biology, the school of anthropology, the
BIO5 Institute
and the Arizona Cancer Center."

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/09/110905160918.htm