Out of Africa & archaeology

Dienekes points me to a new paper in Science which purports to add an archaeological layer of data to the "Out of Africa" paradigm which initially burst onto to the scene in the 1980s due to the molecular clock & mtDNA (though Chris Stringer and others long argued for a form of "Out of Africa" based purely on fossil morphology). The Independent has a good summary of the major points. The short of it is that this paper seems to suggest a) One major Out of Africa event via the "Southern Route" (i.e., along the coast of southern Eurasia out of East Africa) b) Subsequent radiations from India for all Eurasian lineages c) Loss of complexity of toolkit in Australia A few points. First, the general model is outlined in verbose detail in The Real Eve by Stephen Oppenheimer (not surprising, the genetics that the author of this paper appeals ...