Out of Asia? Ancient ancestor of modern man walked Sahara 39million years ago

[Goswinus]

The human family tree may have to be rewritten after scientists found evidence that the ancient ancestors of humans, apes and monkeys evolved in Asia - rather than Africa - tens of millions of years ago.

The astonishing claim follows the discovery of four species of early primate in the Sahara desert, dating back 39 million years.

The creatures - or anthropoid primates - are unlike anything seen before in Africa from the same time period or before, suggesting that they evolved elsewhere.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencete...#ixzz13wMVcHKb

Well, the flack the OoA theory gets is not entirely justified, and this comes from someone who is a proponent of the multiregional theory. We still have this image of the Time cover with a black Adam and Eve in our head imprinted and one can't help but feel that we are diluded to think that primordial mankind was Negroid. Actually, a more or less fully-fledged Negroid appears not earlier than 11000BC and some contest that date date and place it right into the Holocene at 4500BC. There can however made a case that the first racially diversified homo sapiens in Africa were unreduced Bushmen-like people and Australoid types, and in the later case it will remain for some a mooted discussion whether we should not interpret it as Archaic Whites as conceived by Hooton, Weinert, Coon and other anthropologists, in which case they would have looked pretty much as the Murrayian Aboriginals in Australia, the Vedda people in India and the Ainu in Japan. In a twisted turn of fate, just as the Apartheid regime acknowledged the ancient legacy of the Khoisanids in South Africa and claimed that the Negroes were latecomers, so it is true for the whole Dark Continent, barring the Pygmees perhaps in the deep inpenetrable forests of the Congo. But next to these relict populations, the Caucasoids may have every right to eke out a living and a destiny in Africa (Reason the more to stick up for our folk in Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe...).

[Osweo]

... they would have looked pretty much as the Murrayian Aboriginals in Australia, the Vedda people in India and the Ainu in Japan.

Has anyone considered a breeding programme to try to revert to the original type? This is what the Ahnenerbe and co. might have ended up entertaining themselves with, had Germany won... What a wasted opportunity! Am I sick in the head?

Wait... We'd better not; the result might end up looking like me.

[Osweo]

If the text pasted in this thread is genuine, it appears Carleton Coon was a near-enough supporter;

In recent microscopic studies of tooth enamel, a difference has been found between enamel patterns in apes on the one hand and both Ramapithecus and man on the other. ... David Pilbeam has found at least six kinds of Ramapithecus in Pakistan and neighboring parts of India. In Africa the succession of the ancestors of three human races, one after another, make that continent seem peripheral rather than seminal, but who can tell?