The idea can be expressed as follows: "A very small group of
humans left Africa 60 thousand years ago; they were on the brink
of extinction, but they managed to follow the coastline of Asia,
eventually reaching Australia, and subsequently expanding to
colonize the interior of the Eurasian landmass"I have recently
become aware of several new papers that directly challenge this
view. Instead of writing a new post about each of them, I've
decided to combine them all in one post. The first one by
Delagnes et al. in the Journal of Human Evolution describes
Shi’bat Dihya 1 and 2, a couple of ~55,000-year old inland human
settlements in the Wadi Surdud basin (Yemen). From the paper:
Our fieldwork at the Wadi Surdud in Yemen demonstrates that
during the period of the supposed expansion of modern humans out
of Africa ca. 60-50 ka, and their rapid dispersal toward
southeastern Asia along the western and southern Arabian
coastlines, the interior of this region was, in fact, occupied
by well-adapted human groups who deve