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Out of Africa by spontaneous migration waves

View ORCID ProfilePaul D. Bons, Catherine C. Bauer, Hervé Bocherens, Tamara de Riese, Dorothée G. Drucker, Michael Francken, Lumila Menéndez, Alexandra Uhl, Boudewijn P. van Milligen, Christoph Wiβing
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/378695
Paul D. Bons
1Department of Geosciences, Eberhard Karls University Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany
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  • For correspondence: paul.bons@uni-tuebingen.de
Catherine C. Bauer
1Department of Geosciences, Eberhard Karls University Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany
2Senckenberg Centre for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment (HEP), Tübingen, Germany
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Hervé Bocherens
1Department of Geosciences, Eberhard Karls University Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany
2Senckenberg Centre for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment (HEP), Tübingen, Germany
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Tamara de Riese
1Department of Geosciences, Eberhard Karls University Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany
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Dorothée G. Drucker
1Department of Geosciences, Eberhard Karls University Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany
2Senckenberg Centre for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment (HEP), Tübingen, Germany
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Michael Francken
1Department of Geosciences, Eberhard Karls University Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany
2Senckenberg Centre for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment (HEP), Tübingen, Germany
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Lumila Menéndez
1Department of Geosciences, Eberhard Karls University Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany
3Departamento de Antropología, Universidad Nacional de La Plata, La Plata, Argentina
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Alexandra Uhl
4Department of Anthropology, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America
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Boudewijn P. van Milligen
5National Fusion Laboratory, CIEMAT, Madrid, Spain
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Christoph Wiβing
1Department of Geosciences, Eberhard Karls University Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany
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Abstract

Hominin evolution is characterized by progressive regional differentiation, as well as migration waves, leading to anatomically modern humans that are assumed to have emerged in Africa and spread over the whole world. Why or whether Africa was the source region of modern humans and what caused their spread remains subject of ongoing debate. We present a spatially explicit, stochastic numerical model that includes ongoing mutations, demic diffusion, assortative mating and migration waves. Diffusion and assortative mating alone result in a structured population with relatively homogeneous regions bound by sharp clines. The addition of migration waves results in a power-law distribution of wave areas: for every large wave, many more small waves are expected to occur. This suggests that one or more out-of-Africa migrations would probably have been accompanied by numerous smaller migration waves across the world. The migration waves are considered “spontaneous”, as the current model excludes environmental or other factors. Large waves preferentially emanate from the central areas of large, compact inhabited areas. During the Pleistocene, Africa was the largest such area most of the time, making Africa the statistically most likely origin of anatomically modern humans, without a need to invoke additional environmental or ecological drivers.

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The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY 4.0 International license.
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Posted July 27, 2018.
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Out of Africa by spontaneous migration waves
Paul D. Bons, Catherine C. Bauer, Hervé Bocherens, Tamara de Riese, Dorothée G. Drucker, Michael Francken, Lumila Menéndez, Alexandra Uhl, Boudewijn P. van Milligen, Christoph Wiβing
bioRxiv 378695; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/378695
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Out of Africa by spontaneous migration waves
Paul D. Bons, Catherine C. Bauer, Hervé Bocherens, Tamara de Riese, Dorothée G. Drucker, Michael Francken, Lumila Menéndez, Alexandra Uhl, Boudewijn P. van Milligen, Christoph Wiβing
bioRxiv 378695; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/378695

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