I defined optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) in my post on this subject, so check it out if this definition doesn’t do it for you:

“a method that requires sampling deep within the tuff and in complete darkness. The samples are then irradiated with an atomic reactor and when ultraviolet light is shone onto the irradiated samples, the resulting fluorescence reveals how long it has been since the rock was last exposed to sunlight—or volcanic heat.

OSL can be applied on all sediments and soils, so long as there was adequate daylight exposure to the mineral grains before they were buried. So it assumes light conditions have remained consistent.

Kambiz

“There is now a near consensus among students of human evolutionary biology that the origins of our own species, Homo sapiens, is somehow intimately linked with the first intercontinental ancient hominid, Homo erectus. However, neither the transformation of erectus to sapiens nor the transformation of ancient (archaic) populations of Homo sapiens to their anatomically modern successors (H s sapiens) are matters of agreement in this scientific fraternity. Undoubtedly, there are many factors that make this the case, and any reader of this volume will discern some of those that are most obvious. In fact, there is no consensus among the authors represented in this volume, although the major issues are generally well delineated, and the limitations of the diverse and often disparate lines of evidence are usually apparent (p. xiii.).”
Howell, F.C., 1984, “Preface” to The Origins of Modern Humans: A World Survey of the Fossil Evidence, Eds. Smith FH, F. Spencer, New York: Alan R. Liss, Inc. 1984

This excerpt from the definitive study of its time pre-dates the OOAf replacement model and demonstrates the lack of consensus for any given model for an evolution from H erectus. Another reference is offered here from 1995.

“Despite the considerable efforts of many well-informed investigators, however, no resolution of the controversy is in sight. We think that the slow progress to resolution of the debate can be attributed to differences in metaphysical paradigms of modern origins researchers that in turn result in a biased selection of specimens and/or variables used in analysis.
How selectively biased are researchers? An extensive literature review of published multivariate data invoked in support of “continuity” and “replacement” positions produced some dramatic results (Willamette, 1993, 1994). A total of 680 data points were collected, representing 61 variables on 55 fossils. Of these, only 72 variables on 11 fossils, or 11% of the reported database, were common to both paradigms This means that in the sample, 89% of the data collected were used by members of only one paradigm (p. 488).”

“Given the construal of the paradigm just outlined, theories (more accurately the hypotheses deduced from them), can only be confirmed or discomfirmed according to the tenets of the metaphysic (the construal of “reality” defined by the biases and preconceptions of the paradigm). Outside a particular paradigm, its constituent theories (“hypotheses”) might appear nonsensical.
Despite assertions to the contrary (e.g. Klein, 1989), the venerable history of the debate suggests that simply acquiring more data will not help us choose between opposing paradigms. The reason is that data have no meaning or existence independent of a paradigm that defines and contextualizes them. In light of the plethora of articles and books that have appeared in the last 10 years, it is worth asking ourselves whether we are any closer to solving the question of our origins than we were a century ago. If there is a lesson to be learned from the debate, it is that students of human evolution must begin to confront the inferential basis for their knowledge claims. So far, they have not been much concerned to do so. The result is an interminable debate, now well into its second century, with no resolution in sight (p. 489-490).”

Willarmet, C. M., and G. A. Clark. Paradigm crisis in modern human origins research Journal of Human Evolution (1995) 29, 487-490. 1995

A vast compilation of reference quotes, many gathered before the dawn of blogging, can be found at http://www.humanoriginsolved.com .
OOAm has a potential to unite new data with an old untested idea by consolidating insights gained in the last century and a half of anthropological research. It addresses the long dismissed hypothesis that the American Indian originated in the Western Hemisphere by suggesting that the human species “Homo sapiens (sapiens)” can be traced back into the Americas. OOAm draws attention to the untested nature of this idea; that humankind evolved in the Americas and entered the Eastern Hemisphere only recently, that is, some 45,000- 50,000 years ago. Given the wide range of anthropological tools available today it is time to re-examine the viable alternatives and the potential resolution to the human origins debate an inclusion of the Americas offers human evolutionary science.

I’ve posted a reply to your response, here.

Lev

This is a premature assessment. I’d like you to read Nichols 1992 and Dziebel 2007. “Nichols’s argued that our perspective on an early human language comes from America and Australasia and not Africa and Europe” refers to Nichols 1992. The exact quote is in Dziebel 2007.

Nichols has no affinity to the OOAm hypothesis. She was just trying to work out the best possible stance traditional historical linguistics could take regarding the “peopling of the Americas” after mtDNA genetics had challenged the then-accepted late (Clovis-I) entry into the Americas suggested by archaeology. She also tried to create an alternative to Greenberg’s Amerind hypothesis. The latter was an attempt to make American Indian linguistic diversity compatible with Clovis-I, but Greenberg’s American Indian classification faced a unanimous rebuttal from the specialists in Native American languages, thus opening the doors for a different assessment of linguistic diversity in the Americas and its implications for the timing of the “peopling of the Americas.”

OOAm has been independently developed by me, on the basis of a global analysis of kinship systems and terminologies and the reinterpretation of population genetics, from 1994, and by Alvah Hicks (www.humanoriginsolved.com) on the basis of archaeology and the reinterpretation of genetic data from the late 1980s. I know Nichols personally (Stanford and Berkeley are close by), but she has nothing to do with OOAm.

In Nichols 1990, 1992 she was working under the traditional assumption that New World (America and Australasia in her usage) was peopled from the Old World (Asia, Africa and Europe). That’s why she interpreted high levels of linguistic diversity as indicator of a refugium, and low levels of linguistic diversity as indicator of a spread zone with language replacement. Under the pressure from kinship terminological evidence and the “noise” in the current mtDNA phylogenies, I allowed myself the liberty to remove the assumption that the New World was peopled from the Old World, and allow an infinitely possible number of back migrations including the original OOAm migration to colonize the Old World.

If my opinion, if linguistic diversity levels are taken at face value, then the most parsimonious explanation is the accrual of stock diversity in the homeland and the lack of sufficient time for this accrual in the colonized areas. Language replacements and language loss can occur with equal probability on all continents (agricultural and other expansions are attested in both America and Europe and Africa), while diversity levels are clearly different between Europe/Africa and America/Australasia. Hence, these two factors are of unequal value, and the latter supercedes the former, unless specifically proven otherwise.

Nichols was criticized by Nettle and Dixon, but I think their arguments are invalid because they are based on an ad hoc assumption of who came from where. Nettle shot himself in the foot by admitting that American Indian linguistic diversity is compatible with any time depth, all the way to 100,000 YBP. More about it on anthropology.net.

Another factor is geography: grammatical features studied by Nichols again show unequal and non-random distribution, as you correctly deduced from my anthropology.net posts. Interestingly enough, the geographic range of head-marking (assuming it’s ancestral) is wider than dependent-marking (assuming it’s derived). HM languages are found all over Asia, Australasia and America, while dependent marking languages are largely confined to Africa and Europe. This indicates the transition from HM to DM going into Africa and Europe. I need to double-check it again, though. (mtDNA shows a similar pattern with all African lineages being African-specific and 90% of European lineages being Europe-specific, while Asian and American lineages are found globally.)

While your general caveat that linguistic diversity doesn’t directly resolve a continental population’s age is valid, the same concerns population genetics where America is interpreted as a recently colonized continent because it’s less diverse than others, while Africa harbors the greatest diversity. In reality, genetic diversity is a function of population size. American Indians are less diverse simply because their long-term population size was smaller than the Old World population size. In addition, African genetic lineages are not found outside of Africa, which contradicts the hypothesis of population replacement outside of Africa by Africans.

OOAm is based on the alignment of interdisciplinary data. I understand all the diffuculties with OOAm and with OOAf. I juxtapose them as two theoretically possible variants of a single-origin hypothesis to be able to test one against the other. Since both genetically and linguistically Africans and Amerindians are the exact polar opposites of each other, they are specific enough to warrant such a test and make OOAm or OOAf falsifiable.

Herzog’s review can be found in American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 42, No. 2, Part 1 (Apr. – Jun., 1940), pp. 338-341.

My answer to Oppenheimer’s dispersal model would be the following: there’s a Pacific Coast route that can connect South America to California, the Northwest in North America and then to Southeast Asia, Papua New Guinea and Australia. Then there’s a “Dravidian-Munda” pocket in India (identified by the co-presence and proliferation of mtDNA M and N plus Y-DNA YAP+ lineages, as well as by close similarities to America in kinship systems) which can be connected to South Siberia going northeast and with Africa going southwest. mtDNA X lineages connect North America with South Siberia with Europe and North Africa. Third, there’s a circumpolar route that connects North America, Beringia and Scandinavia (North American kinship systems and myths seem to have a strong association with “northern” regions in Eurasia.) As discussed before, the “Circumpolar route” has some weird continuation in the Khoisans (with their Mongoloid epicanthus) and possibly Australia. Y-DNA identifies Australians as sharing the same clade C with Na-Dene, Australian kinship systems share a lot with North America, including Na-Dene, and at the very same time Northern Australians have versions of the Cosmic Hunt mythological motif otherwise restricted to North America and Siberia, see http://www.folklore.ee/Folklore/vol31/berezkin.pdf)

Beringia, South Siberia, India and possibly the Caucasus appear to be hubs in my global dispersal model. I could add here Scandinavia and Papua New Guinea as other refugia preserving a sample of past distribution of genes, languages and cultural traits, but they are of more local significance.

At the end of the day, all the routes work both ways, hence I can still make use of Oppenheimer for general structure but then reverse the directionality of his migrations. The question is how Oppenheimer can substantiate his directionality by reference to the genetics, languages and cultures (and archaeology, Luis would add) of the peoples found along his routes. But, as I’ve already argued several times, how can we demonstrate an out of Africa migration along a coastal (or any other route), if we don’t have African genetic lineages anywhere outside of Africa?

From the mtDNA perspective, it seems worthwhile to pay attention to the so-called 9pb deletion. This length polymorphism is found in western America from south to north (high frequencies in the Andes), Ainu, South Siberia, Southeast Asia, Polynesia, coastal PNG, India AND in Sub-Saharan Africa among the Pygmies and Bantu. Geneticists would argue that 9bp deletion occurred several times in human evolution (because 9bp deletion is associated with different SNPs in Asia/America and in Africa, hence it falls into different clades – B in Asia/America and L0 in Africa). However this mutation is absolutely identical in Asia/America and in Africa (the same one copy of the same 9 positions locked between the very same two genes), hence it’s unlikely to have happened several times (geneticists are forced to claim that even in Africa in otherwise-closely related populations it occurred at least 2 times). If we assume for a second that 9bp deletion is a unique mutational event that connects Pygmies and Bantu (mind you, it’s not found in the Khoisans) with India, South Siberia, Ainu, Southeast Asia, Oceania and America, then we have a possible route for the spread of the cultural features such as your musical styles.

The 9bp deletion situation is part of a bigger problem with the proliferation of hypervariable sites in human mtDNA (hence, many trees are statistically possible). Geneticists have to resolve internally whether it’s possible for certain mutations such as 9bp deletion to represent common inheritance later obfuscated by recombination, gene flow and the hypervariability of other sites. But a comparison with Y-DNA (YAP+ lineages that account for more than 50% of African lineages are connected to Ainu via Indian and Tibetan variants) suggests that African populations must be related to non-Africans in more straighforward ways than suggested by the current phylogenies of mtDNA.

A good paper to read about the phylogenetic problems in mtDNA reasearch is Hagelberg E. (2003) Implications of mitochondrial DNA recombination for human evolution. Trends in Genetics, 19: 84-90.

German

you let this open on my computer…so i guess i have entered the blogesphere? Your beautiful sister. Hello all others.

R

There are exceptions, however, and the Northwest Coast Indians seem to have had a greater variety of different types, including trumpets, than most other N.American tribes. And Nettl has emphasized the fact that so much of importance in these societies has been lost due to drastic effects of colonialism.

I don’t know of any comparative study of the type you mention, though such studies might exist. Panpipes have not found been among living peoples north of Mexico, but they have been found in Mound Builder sites — along with other artifacts thought to have originated in Mexico.

Panpipes are definitely a part of the African musical picture, along with many similarly organized types of “hocketed” ensemble, such as free pipes, whistles, horns, and trumpets. Free pipes and panpipes are very close, since it’s easy for someone to grab two or more free pipes and start playing them as panpipes and it is only one small step to binding these pipes together.

Pipes and panpipes are commonly found in Africa, SE Asia, Melanesia, and have even been reported for Polynesia. I’m not sure about Indonesia, though. As for N. America (north of Mexico) there is very little to no evidence aside from the Mound Builder sites.

Oppenheimer’s model goes a long way toward explaining this distribution, but it’s hard for me to understand how an OoAm model could. Unless the world was settled by a group from S. America that island hopped across the S. Pacific all the way to Melanesia. Have you ever considered that type of scenario? (If they hugged the coast of all these islands, there’d be no record of their presence, ala the OoAf picture.)