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Out of Africa or Multiregional Theory

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Out of Africa or Multiregional Theory
For many years, scientists have wondered about the evolution of mankind. The two theories that scientists have come up with over the years to explain the theory of evolution were the multiregional theory and out of Africa theory. The multiregional theory expresses the idea that Homo erectus developed in different parts of the world. The out of Africa theory expresses that Homo erectus developed in Africa nearly two million-years-ago and as the temperatures changed, they moved throughout the world and developed differently.
“The multiregional view posits that genes from all human populations of the Old World flowed between different regions and by mixing together, contributed to what we see today as fully modern humans. The replacement hypothesis suggests that the genes in fully modern humans all came out of Africa. As these peoples migrated they replaced all other human populations with little or no interbreeding” (Johanson, 2001). “The multi-regional hypothesis argues that our early hominid ancestors, including Homo ergaster and Homo heidelbergensis, migrated out of Africa and thus the evolution of modern humans took place in different parts of the world – a process termed regional continuity. This theory places great emphasis on the notion of steady evolutionary alterations or changes that happen in different regions and produce diverse variations of the species. Evolution of this kind is kept at a regular rate due to an amalgamation of cultural progress and ‘gene flow’ or interbreeding, thus keeping all lineages evolving at the same time. This process is characterized as parallel evolution, which suggests a subtle morphological resemblance between populations of species who are geographically separated” (Edwards, 2012). “The out of Africa view posits that Homo erectus migrated out of Africa the different populations became reproductively isolated, evolving independently, and in some cases like the Neanderthals, into separate species Homo sapiens arose in

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