Origin of Modern Man

Four hundred thousand to two hundred thousand years ago, Homo erectus disappeared from the face of the earth and in his place was left archaic Homo sapiens, also known as Homo sapien neandertalensis or Neandertal man. Neandertal man had spread throughout Europe, the Near East, and Asia before one hundred thousand years ago. Then, quite suddenly, anatomically modern humans appeared throughout the Old World, replacing Neandertal man completely by about thirty-five thousand years ago (Fagan, 1989).

The question that arises is whether Neandertal man evolved to become modern man, or if modern humans migrated into the areas that were inhabited by the Neandertals and eventually replaced them. According to Fagan (1989) there are two basic hypotheses. The first is the Neandertal phase hypothesis, which says that Homo erectus populations throughout the world evolved independently, first to archaic Homo sapiens, then to fully modern humans. This hypothesis supports multiple origins of modern man, thus, stating that modern geographic populations have been separated from one another for up to one million years. The second hypothesis uses the Noah's ark model. It states that Homo sapiens evolved in one place then spread across the Old World. Thus, according to this hypothesis, modern geographic populations have shallow roots and were derived from a single source of relatively recent times.

Evidence supports the Noah's ark model, that modern man evol

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me form for sixty thousand years, then, overnight, evolved into a new subspecies forty thousand years ago, when modern humans first appeared in Europe" (1987, 33). The gap in the morphology of skeletal remains between modern man and the coexistent archaic man indicates to Trinkaus and others that the evolution was not local. The oldest anatomically modern humans in Europe date to about thirty-two thousand years ago which provides the transition from Neandertal to modern man for less than five thousand years (Trinkaus, 1983). This seems like an unlikely possibility. An increased gene flow is necessary to explain how Neandertals and anatomically modern humans remained genetically separate within a restricted geographical range for thousands of years (Trinkaus, 1989). Despite the limited time frame their coexistence indicates that modern man evolved elsewhere. If indeed Neandertals had evolved into fully modern humans, it would not make sense for them to coexist with one another. The evolved populations would have advantages over the archaic population, just because there would be no other reason to evolve other than the adaptive advantages; for the archaic population to still be around would not make sense. However, if mode

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