Recent out of Yemen: new version of the theory of unique and recent origin of modern man

Abstract

It is generally accepted that the human evolutionary history was started in sub-Saharan Africa by the emergence of first individuals belonging to our genus Homo. But details of this evolution, particularly those of its last stage relating to the modern man (Homo sapiens sapiens) emergence, represent until now a controversial topic. Confusion and imprecision associated with certain concepts and definitions have accentuated this controversy and therefore helped to curb the progress of the research in this topic. In this paper I present these problems before presenting a new detailed version of the theory of unique and recent origin of modern man. This version designated “Recent out of Yemen” thesis represents a refined grand synthesis in which my advanced hypotheses are brought together with new additional details. First, from an objective definition of modern man and several solid anthropological arguments I have proposed dates, of about 45,000 years ago for the emergence of our species and 20,000 years ago for that of our subspecies. Second, from analyses of basic genetic results I have shown that the southern Arabian Peninsula would be the most probable place of a so recent emergence of modern man. The various elements of my thesis are presented and discussed following an empirical approach, and then summarized in a scenario that represents a new more consistent image of our evolutionary history.

Key words: Human evolutionary history, Origin of modern humans, Recent out of Yemen thesis, Date of modern man emergence, Place of modern man emergence, Genus Homo definition, Modern man definition, Single origin theory.