Science and Ideas Group Out of Africa II: Ancient human dispersal to East Asia and Polynesia
This is the second in our series on prehistoric human diasporas, this time focusing on East Asia and Polynesia. The first talk discussed the ancient dispersal of humans from Africa to Australia and New Guinea and is available on Ashby Village's YouTube channel. Our early human ancestors' second startling accomplishment was to move out of comfortable tropical Africa about 60,000 years ago and into the temperate zone where survival was in some ways more difficult. Along the way they met and interbred with both Neanderthals and a newly discovered type of primitive humans called Denisovans. Perhaps the new genes they acquired helped equip them for living in the colder climate and higher altitude of Central Asia. Ultimately, they moved into East Asia and from there millennia later some of them sailed into Polynesia and settled all the habitable islands of the Pacific Ocean.
This talk will use archaeological, linguistic and genetic findings to explore our current knowledge of these epic migrations.
Here are some things to read before the presentation:
Ancient DNA is revealing the genetic landscape of people who first settled East Asia
Smithsonian: What Does It Mean to be Human?
Genetic History of East Asians
Roger Newman is a retired anthropology and history instructor, most recently at Berkeley City College. He is a founding member of AV's Science and Ideas interest group. He has taught all the major subfields of anthropology: human evolution, archaeology, linguistics, and human cultural variation.