Out of Eurasia

From Chris Stringer's most recent book ("The Origin of Our Species"):
And the evidence from Dmanisi is now being added to this rethink, since the lack of very ancient fossil human evidence from Asia, apart from Dmanisi, is considered by archaeologists like Robin Dennell and Wil Roebroeks to reflect a lack of preservation and discovery, rather than a real absence. Combining the primitiveness of the Dmanisi specimens and tools with a similar view of the Liang Bua finds, it is argued that there was a widespread phase of human evolution in Eurasia about 2 million years ago, which is now only represented by the isolated Dmanisi and "Hobbit" fossils. This alternative scenario has a small-brained and small-bodied pre-erectus species, perhaps comparable to Homo habilis or even a late australopithecine, dispersing from Africa with primitive tools over 2 million years ago, reaching the Far East and, eventually, Flores. In Asia, this ancestral species then gave rise to the Dmanisi people and Homo erectus, while Dmanisi-like people reentered Africa about 1.8 million years ago, and evolved into later populations there -- including, eventually, Homo sapiens. So the orthodoxy of Out of Africa 1 is being challenged because of new evidence, and new interpretations of old evidence.

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