A Historical Study On The Location Of Modern Human Origin

The question on the location of modern human origin has been a hotdebate throughout the world. There are two opposing views–“origin fromAfrica” and “origin from multi-region” about the origin of modern human.Theory of the origin from Africa considered that modern humans originatedin Africa, but theory of the origin from multi-region considered that modernhumans originated in multiple areas. The controversy about two theoriesbegan with1940, has been continued ever since, and is far from over.During this period, the questions on origin of modern human were studiedby the scientists of many fields arranging in ancient anthropology, anatomy,immunology, genetics, molecular anthropology, and so on. A lot of fruitfulresults were achieved, which could provided reference for the human originstudy and deepened understanding on the development about own origin.In this paper, the history of the development about argument of modernhuman origin was studied on the basis of previous studies and historicalfacts. The thesis contains the following three parts:1. The thesis explains the historical background related to human originand the former achievement. In addition, the main arguments and researchstatus on human origin are analyzed and summarized. The result shows thatmodern human origin is the most controversial basic theoretical problem inthe anthropology field at present.2. The thesis details the argument history and introduces evidenceobtained by supporters in different time on “origin from Africa” and “originfrom multi-region”. The central points, evidences and shortcomings of twoopposing theories were compared. It comes to the conclusion that thecontroversy of modern human origin began in1939with the proposal of“multi-center origin theory” by Franz Weidunreich(1873-1948), the debate reached the climax in1980s, and has been continued to the present.3. The thesis summarizes the progress of modern human origin in the21st century. As modern biology technology is applied to the study ofhuman origins,“origin from Africa” has gradually taken the mainstream.But “origin from Africa” is still unable to completely defeat the “origin frommulti-region” because of lack the direct fossil evidence. At the same time,some researchers propose a few new viewpoint such as “gene blendingtheory” and “human origin zones theory”. The problem about modernhuman origin has become more complication.