Razib Khan wrote:

The following passage is from the epilogue of The Real Eve: Modern Man’s Journey Out of Africa by Stephen Oppenheimer:

In this book I have offered a synthesis of genetic and other evidence. Everything points to a single southern exodus from Eritrea to the Yemen, and to all the non-African male and female gene lines having arisen from their respective single out-of Africa founder lines in South Asian (or at least near the southern exist). I regard the genetic logic for this synthesis as a solid foundation, and I have based the rest of my reconstruction of the human diaspora upon it. Obviously, the ‘choice’ of starting point (mine or theirs) determined all the subsequent routes our ancestors and cousins took. Tracing the onward trails is only possible as a result of marked specificity in regional distribution of the genetic branches The geographic clarity of both male and female gene trees is a big departure from the fuzzy inter-regional picture shown by older genetic studies. The degree of segregation of lines into different countries and continents is in itself good evidence that once they got to their chosen new homes, the pioneers generally stayed put, at least until the Last Glacial maximum forced some of them to move. The conservative aspect of our genetic prehistory also provides a patrial explanation for the fact that when we look at a person, we can usually tell, to the continent, where their immediate ancestors came from, and understand differences that some of us still call ‘race.’

Oppenheimer wrote the above in the early aughts, as his book was published in 2003. Much of this is generally in line with the ‘orthodoxy’ of the day. I believe that Oppenheimer’s assertion that there was one southern migration out of Africa by anatomically modern humans has gained some advantage over the alternative model of two routes, northern and southern, over the past ten years (Spencer Wells’ The Journey of Man sketches out the two wave model). Other assertions and assumptions have not stood the test of time. In particular, I would contend that generally the ‘conservative aspect of our genetic prehistory’ can no longer be taken for granted. Specifically, it seems likely now that much occurred after the Ice Age and during the Neolithic.

The false inferences of the early aughts were due to two primary problems. First, they relied heavily on the powerful new techniques of extraction and analysis of uniparental ineages; the male and female direct line of descent. Concretely, mtDNA and the nonrecombintant portion of the Y chromosome. The lack of recombination allows for relatively easy reconstruction of phylogenies assuming a coalescent model. Second, the inferences attempt to make connections between the patterns of variation in modern populations, and what one may infer about the past from those patterns. Obviously constructing a phylogeny, or plotting haplogroup frequencies as a function of geography, is rather straightforward science. But using these results to generate inferences of the past is often more of an art than a science, and implicit assumptions lurk behind the causal chains. Consider for example the utilization of modern Anatolian (i.e., Turkish) genetic variation as a reference for the expansion into Europe of Neolithic farmers from the Near East. This of course presumes that modern Anatolians are a good proxy for ancient Anatolians. There are various suggestive reasons for why this is a plausible assumption, but assemble enough plausible assumptions, and rely on their joint likelihood, and you construct a very rickety machinery of possibility.

In early 2007 I began to have serious doubts about the orthodoxy of genetic conservatism. The primary trigger was the story of the Etruscans. Here is the crux of the issue: there are two models for the origins of the Etruscans, first, that they were the pre-Indo-European autochthons of Italy, or, that they were the migrants from the eastern Mediterranean, in particular Anatolia. The second may seem an outlandish hypothesis, but there were several tendrils of evidence to support it. But perhaps the ’support’ which weighed most against it is that the fact that the Anatolian model has an ancient source, the Greek historian Herodotus. I should perhaps put historian in quotes as well, because Herodotus is often viewed more as a repeater of myths, and derided by some as the ‘father of lies’ (in this he stands in sharp contrast to contemporary perceptions of the ‘modern’ Thucydides, though revisionists have begun to challenge this narrative). In contrast, the model that Etruscans are indigenous to Italy, and that their ‘exotic’ foreign traits were simply acquired through trade and cultural diffusion, dovetailed well with the post-World War II ‘pots not peoples’ paradigm. That cultural change was ubiquitous, while at the same time populations were immobile. It was boring, prosaic, and conservative, and so an ideal null hypothesis.

But here it turns out that Herodotus was right, and archaeologists were wrong. Genetic analysis of modern Tuscans from isolated villages shows that some are surprisingly closely related to extant eastern Mediterranean lineages. Genetic analysis Tuscan cattle showed that they were surprisingly closely related to extant eastern Mediterranean lineages of cattle. Finally, extraction of ancient Etruscan DNA showed that they were closely related to extant eastern Mediterranean lineages. The overlap was often with Anatolia, and combined with fragmentary linguistic and archaeological data, the evidence clearly points to an exogenous origin for the Etruscans. The boring null hypothesis was wrong. After these genetic stories gained prominence I went and reread recent archaeological texts on the Etruscans, and there were many models which showed exactly how Etruscan cultural uniqueness derived back to prehistoric Italy. It seems in hindsight that the prior assumption served as an interpretative filter, and people saw patterns that they were primed to see based on what they ‘knew’ to be the history of prehistoric and early Iron Age Tuscany. (...)

"Here is the crux of the issue: there are two models for the origins of the Etruscans, first, that they were the pre-Indo-European autochthons of Italy, or, that they were the migrants from the eastern Mediterranean, in particular Anatolia."

The reason why local DNA traits persist is not because nobody went anywhere, but because 99% of the population everywhere stayed put working the land. Incoming Romans, Greeks, Huns or whatever only scratched the surface. Politically, historically and sometimes linguistically invasions were very important. Genetically not so much.

Tyrannical wrote
And yet, OOA claims that modern humans left Africa and fully replaced all other humans around the globe.

Swamping and/or replacing a much smaller hunting population by incoming agriculturalists is a completely different matter and has happened in recent human history in the Americas and Australia.

Tyrannical wrote:In the US area of North America, the natives were virtually wiped out. There are very few Indians left, and even fewer that are any where near "pure" blood. The Indians also contributed very little to the European immigrant's gene pool.

Almost completely the opposite happened south of the US. The large majority of "Hispanics" are very heavily influenced by native admixture.

Leonidas wrote:You make very good points and I have read the Jared Diamond book. Disease played a big role in the Americas as did the density of agricultural settlement. It is also important I think that the settlers coming to America and Australia were often 'land hungry' that is to say they were looking to found farms on what to them was 'unused' land.

Many of the historical migrations in Europe and the Middle East involved peoples who aimed to conquer the land and exploit it by dominating the existing farming people. The Normans for instance did not start digging the the ditches or ploughing themselves and nor did the Arabs who took over Egypt. They became the upper class and lived by taxes and rents paid by the peasants.

Even the vikings, who did settle on the land to a certain extent, were often simply looking to extort wealth (danegeld) from the people already there.