[vintermann]

I don't think less of China for containing a, shall we say, "patriotic" paleoanthropology community. Not any more than I think less of the US for the Book of Mormon being a thing. God knows we have these subcultures in Europe too.

But it is a thing and you need to be aware of it. A result from China which seems to support an out of China theory rather than an out of Africa theory, I am immediately suspicious of.

And you know, just because you and I don't bristle at the thought of descending from ancient Kenyans, lots of other people all over the world do. It's not just "regular" racists, also a lot of e.g. indigenous protected groups.

[whimsicalism]

Given what we now know about backmigration and intermixing (particularly with Denisovans), it's really not coherent to say any "out of" theory is the Truth.

Sure, modern homo sapiens outside of Africa are all descendants of a founding group that left Africa, but they are also descendants of hominids who returned to Africa from elsewhere as well as local hominid populations that had left Africa far earlier (like Neanderthals and Denisovans).

[Retric]

Out of Africa has meaningful consequences even if people mixed back in. For example our closest evolutionary cousins should barring evidence to the contrary also tend to hail from Africa as well.

It’s that kind of reasoning that makes it important to try and be accurate here. Not a fact in isolation but everything else that it implies.

[whimsicalism]

It's all a matter of how far back you look.

[Retric]

The time period you look at also informs what you can extract from that analysis. So it’s not an arbitrary choice free from consequences.