Having been linked to this page, an interesting question arises (see pic below). It shows, in a rather simplistic way, some of the evolutionary paths of mankind. An the immediate thing of note is the outliers that are the San people, who seem to have followed their own genetic path. And this made me curious.
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| the path of evolution, from bbc page mentioned above |
The San are one of the names for the indigenous people of South Africa, who are small with yellow-brown skin and small hands and feet. They also have a society with a large degree of gender equality, which is interesting on a number of levels.
A brief look over the human genome project explains that Africans have apparently significantly more genetic diversity than the rest of the population of the world, as the migration out of Africa led to the specification and genetic branching of the species. The San people are especially diverse, as Dr Tyler-Smith summarises: "if all humans except the San went extinct, human genetic diversity wouldn't decrease that much".
Colloquialism aside, it is an interesting thought... It has been suggested that they may have become isolated from other ancestral groups for about 100,000 years - possibly due to some climate related events... but then rejoined at a later point. If that hadn't happened we might have evolved into 'two separate species' which is quite a steadying thought in my opinion.
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