Out of Africa: mend it, don't end it!

Dilettante human genetics blogger Dienekes Pontikos has a post up with a somewhat oblique title, Is multi-regional evolution dead? I say oblique because a straightforward title would be "Multi-regionalism lives!" He posted a chart from a 2008 paper which outlines various models of human origins, and their relationship to molecular data at the time. I have also posted the chart, but with a little creative editing on the "assimilation" scenario to reflect the possible Neandertal and Denisovan admixture events. Of these models the "candelabra" can be rejected as highly implausible. It posits very deep roots in a given region for distinct human populations. Unless you accept some sort of hominin population structure in Africa which were maintained by distinctive migrations out of Africa then the "replacement" model can be discarded (since the classic replacement model did not posit ancient African population structure being of any relevance outside of Africa you'd ...