African Biological Diversity

Africa is the place of emergence of modern humans, often scientifically designated anatomically modern humans, and taxonomically as Homo sapiens sapiens, although sometimes the phrase modern Homo sapiens is used. Sometimes there is confusion because Homo sapiens without the trinomen is used loosely to mean our living species or modern humans in the strict sense.

The evidence for the claim that Africa is the “birthplace” of modern humans is both skeletal and molecular. These will be discussed in posts on this website sometimes by guests. The fossils would seem to indicate a progression in traits that are deemed modern. The molecular studies indicate that living African peoples are the reservoir for the greatest diversity of the truncal lineages, and the greatest diversity in general. What about back migrations to Africa before the emergence of modernity? These could have conceivably contributed to variation but such variation would have been shaped by the African environment, and the final product, considered from the perspective of emergence would still be in Africa. Most scholars do not believe that such migration played a major role.