Q1. Did modern man evolve in Africa, and spread from there into all regions of the Earth?
A1. No.

The idea that modern Man evolved in Africa, and spread from there into the rest of the world, has achieved amazing acceptance with the public and with anthropologists. Amazing, because the concept virtually lacks any evidence to support it, and it's even puzzling to see why it should have been put forward in the first place.

The reasoning, such as it is, seems to have been that some important early human-linked fossils were first discovered in Africa, in the Rift Valley. From here there has been a giant leap to conclude that 'modern man' also 'came' from Africa.

Looked at from the outside, the concept is close to absurd. We have these landraces of dark-skinned, black-haired African people with mostly kinky hair. Then some of them abruptly leave Africa for the rest of the world, where they change into landraces of blond Scandinavians, sallow-skinned Chinese, and red-haired Scots and Russians with white skins. Meanwhile, those back in Africa remain as they were.

This concept goes against all logic, and moreover has no evidence from such things as the blood-group distributions shown above. What's more, the detail in the claims of some out-of-Africa supporters is breathtaking.

Here is one such assertion from Nicholas Wade (p. 75 in [38]).

"The epic ... crossing of the first modern humans into the world beyond Africa cannot be reconstructed in ... detail. Still, some essential features of this ancient exodus are clear enough. The first, based on genetic analysis, is that there seems to have been just a single emigration of modern humans from Africa. A second genetic inference is that the number of those who left was probably quite small .. as few as some 150 people ..." .

Wade's estimate of the date of this exodus is about 50,000 years ago. Readers will be left to judge how well Wade's picture compares with the present one of a continually mingling and developing matrix of landraces, encompassing the whole world population.