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. 2016 Jul 5;371(1698):20150244. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2015.0244

Figure 6.

Figure 6.

The multiple events of the evolution of modern humans. The evolution of modern humans is a very rapid event in the context of evolution as a whole, but is nonetheless composed of many dispersed events or transitions. Each of these (and others not yet discovered) contributed to the totality of the modern human transformation. Behaviour: 1, the development of mode 3 technologies (the African Middle Stone Age), common to all later hominins; 2, the appearance of novel behaviours in the African Middle Stone Age; 3, the appearance of symbolic use of material culture in the African Middle Stone Age; 4, the Eurasian Upper Palaeolithic; 5, Later Pleistocene cultural and technological intensifications; Morphology: 6, earliest appearance of anatomically modern humans (Omo Kibbish, Ethiopia); 7, widespread distribution of modern human phenotypes in Africa and the Levant; 8, establishment of extant human population distributions; Dispersals: 9, dispersals of ancestors of Neanderthals into Eurasia; 10, dispersals across Africa, and to a limited extent into Eurasia; 11, major Eurasian dispersals out of Africa; 12, post Last Glacial Maximum dispersals; Extinction: 13 and 14, extinction of H. heidelbergensis populations in parts of Africa and Eurasia; 15, extinction of modern humans in the Levant; 16, extinctions of Neanderthals, other archaic populations (?), and some modern human populations before or during the Last Glacial Maximum; Genetics: 17, divergence of ancestors of later larger brained hominins from ancestral H. heidelbergensis populations; 18, divergence of ancestors of Eurasian archaics (Neanderthals and Denisovans) and African modern human lineages; 19, divergence of Neanderthals and Denisovan lineages; 20, diversification of Eurasian (eastern and western) Neanderthal populations; 21, divergence of early African population and Levantine populations; 22, out of Africa/into Eurasia, Sunda, Sahul divergences; 23, divergence of Eurasian and Sunda/Sahul populations; 24, diversification of Eurasian populations; 25, divergence of Sunda and Sahul populations. Admixture events between populations not shown. (Online version in colour.)