The forest region of central Africa is the disease epicentre of the universe… It’s described as ‘pathogen rain’ - Peter Walsh
When the family of Albert Perry - a recently deceased African-American man from South Carolina - sent a sample of his DNA to be tested by a genealogy website, they weren’t expecting to rewrite the history of mankind. They were probably just a bit curious.
But Perry’s DNA contained a Y chromosome not seen before, one which potentially reveals that the last common male ancestor in the paternal line of humanity is almost twice as old as previously thought – some 338,000 years, even though the oldest fossil of man is only 195,000 years old.
The DNA was traced back to the Mbo ethnic group in central Africa, based primarily in South West Cameroon, suggesting that the dawn of modern man took place deep in the inhospitable forests of this region rather than the savannahs of East Africa, the area that conventional science has – until now – located as the site of the first homo sapiens.
This Friday, a student-run conference hosted by Cambridge’s Biological Anthropology Division will focus on this groundbreaking research, published earlier this year by a team from the University of Arizona and UCL, to ask some of the major questions it raises: How might this change our understanding of human evolution? Does the forest still influence who we are today?
Relocating Origin will feature experts from Cambridge and elsewhere, including one of the UCL scientists who conducted the original research, Professor Mark Thomas, and will be available to watch through a live webcast.
Image: Forest region of South West Cameroon. Credit: Peter Walsh
Reproduced courtesy of the University of Cambridge