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Unit 4: Human Variation and Evolution
Quick questions on The spread of modern humans: WACE Year 12 Human Biology Unit 4
2short Q&A pairs drawn directly from our worked dot-point answer. For full context and worked exam questions, read the parent dot-point page.
What is the Out of Africa hypothesis?Show answer
The Out of Africa hypothesis (also called the replacement model) proposes that anatomically modern Homo sapiens first evolved in Africa, then spread out across the rest of the world in one or more waves of migration. As they spread, they replaced the earlier hominin populations they met, such as Homo erectus in Asia and the Neanderthals in Europe, rather than evolving from them. Under this model, all living humans share a recent common origin in Africa.
What is the multiregional hypothesis?Show answer
The multiregional hypothesis offers a different explanation. It proposes that modern humans evolved more or less simultaneously in several different regions, from the local populations of Homo erectus that had spread out of Africa much earlier. Under this model, gene flow between regions kept all the populations as a single evolving species, so there is no single recent African origin for all modern humans.
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