Proto-Australoid

Proto-Australoid

The Proto-Australoids are a hypothesized group of ancient hunter-gather people descended from the first major wave of modern humans to leave sub-Saharan Africa ~100,000 years ago. This hypothesis of human migration was developed in the 1950s, but more recent scientific evidence suggests that the first surviving wave of modern humans to leave sub-Saharan Africa did so ~65,000 years ago rather than ~100,000 years ago.

Proto-Australoids are characterised by gracile body types, and are thought to have had deep dark-brown skin color and wavy, curly or frizzy black hair. They are also thought to have had long heads and broad, flat noses.

Furthermore, the most parsimonious hypothesis with regards to the physical appearance of the members of this group is that, similar to contemporary Africans, they expressed deep dark brown skin and black, tightly coiled, natural afro-hair (as opposed to the black, wavy or curly hair associated with Aboriginal Australians) (Windschuttle & Gillin, 2002). In light of the overwhelming evidence suggesting that the ancestral mammalian (including primate) hair texture was very likely within the range of straight/wavy to curly, the idea that the first modern humans expressed tightly coiled hair runs counter to the intuition that straight/wavy or curly hair was also the ancestral trait for modern humans.

Nevertheless, given the overwhelming evidence that humanity arose recently (~200,000 years ago) in sub-Saharan Africa, the extreme rarity of straight/wavy or even curly hair in contemporary sub-Saharan Africa in favor of tightly coiled Afro-hair suggests that, long before the development of our species (Homo sapiens sapiens), the ancestors of the first modern human migrants out of Africa had already adapted to conditions selecting for the unique sub-Saharan African afro-hair texture. In this sense, as suggested by Windschuttle and Gillin (2002), an intimation that the early modern humans resembled contemporary Aboriginal Australians is less parsimonious than the assertion that they more likely resembled contemporary sub-Saharan Africans (and/or "Negritos") in appearance.

Read more about Proto-Australoid:  Migration

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Proto-Australoid - Migration
... See also Coastal migration The so called "proto-Australoids" (or, more likely, as suggested above, the "Afro-Negritos"), are thought to have begun their ... From there some believe that some of the Proto-Australoids pushed on into Siberia and eventually crossed the Bering Land Bridge (or followed a coastal ... The 1950s proponents of a "proto-Australoid" population wave theorize that remnants of this early founding population may be found today in the southern portion of the Indian subcontinent ...