If the younger age is correct, then it is possible that Homo erectus may have shared this region with Homo sapiens. Its age is uncertain and, because its exact original location is unknown, published dates have ranged from 50,000 to 500,000 years old. ‘Solo Man’ shares similarities with earlier Homo erectus specimens from Sangiran and is considered to be a late Homo erectus. ‘Solo Man’ - Homo erectus discovered in Ngangdong, Indonesia.This is explained by interbreeding of eastern Eurasian Denisovans with the modern human ancestors of these populations as they migrated towards Australia and Papua New Guinea. Melanesians and Aboriginal Australians carry about 3-5 % of Denisovan DNA. Homo erectus remains have never been found in Australia.Ī second species, the Denisovans, was also know to inhabit this region and evidence shows they interbred with modern humans.

It is possible that these two species may have coexisted, as some dates for Indonesian Homo erectus suggest they may have survived there until as recently as 50,000 years ago. Homo erectus had already been in Asia for at least 1.5 million years. However, Homo sapiens were not the first people to inhabit this region. Modern humans had reached Asia by 70,000 years ago before moving down through South-east Asia and into Australia. Modern Aboriginal people are the result of the assimilation of these two genetic lineages. One lineage was believed to have been the evolutionary descendants of Indonesian Homo erectus while the other lineage had evolved from Chinese Homo erectus. ‘Multiregional’ proponents interpreted the variation found in the fossil record of early Indigenous Australians as evidence that Australia was colonised by two separate genetic lineages of modern humans. The fossil evidence for the earliest Indigenous Australians does show a range of physical variation that would be expected in a single, geographically widespread population. These people belonged to a single genetic lineage and were the descendants of a population that originated in Africa. ‘Out of Africa’ stated that the first humans to colonise Australia came from a recent migration of Homo sapiens through South-east Asia. The ‘Assimilation’ model places greater emphasis on inter breeding, claiming that some Homo sapiens traits evolved in Africa, but many new traits evolved through interbreeding with other archaic populations outside of Africa. The ‘Recent African Origin’ model states that modern human traits merged in Africa and while interbreeding occurred during migrations around the world, these had only minimal impacts on genetic traits of modern humans. There is some debate about the role that this interbreeding had in modern human origins. The broad consensus now is that all modern humans are descended from an African population of Homo sapiens that migrated around the world but bred with local archaic populations as they did so. However, new fossils and improved DNA research have resulted in these models becoming obsolete. During the 1980s and 1990s, the two main viewpoints were the ‘Out of Africa’ and ‘Multiregional’ models. The viewpoints about the origins of these peoples was once entangled with the wider debate regarding the origins of all modern humans.

All that remains part 1 override