posted on Sep, 19 2012 @ 09:54 PM
Research by three teams of scientists from Wake Forest Baptist, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the University of Washington School of
Medicine, Seattle,have discovered a mutation sequence that may explain the "spark" of humanity.
ScienceDaily (Sep. 19, 2012) — A genetic mutation that occurred thousands of years ago might be the answer to how early humans were able to move
from central Africa and across the continent in what has been called "the great expansion," according to new research from Wake Forest Baptist
Being close to water and consuming shellfish and fish may have contributed to this expansion of the brain.......
Archeological and genetic studies suggest that homo sapiens appeared approximately 180,000 years ago, but stayed in one location around bodies of
water in central Africa for almost 100,000 years. Senior author Floyd H. "Ski" Chilton, Ph.D., professor of physiology and pharmacology and director
of the Center for Botanical Lipids and Inflammatory Disease Prevention at Wake Forest Baptist, and others have hypothesized that this location was
critical, in part, because early humans needed large amounts of the long-chain PUFA docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), which is found in shellfish and fish,
to support complex brain function. "This may have kept early humans tethered to the water in central Africa where there was a constant food source of
DHA," Chilton said. "There has been considerable debate on how early humans were able to obtain sufficient DHA necessary to maintain brain size and
complexity. It's amazing to think we may have uncovered the region of genetic variation that arose about the time that early humans moved out of this
central region in what has been called the 'great expansion.'"
So,ok,but what about all the other discoveries out there recently that pushes all that back a couple 100 thousand years?
What are your thoughts?