Ever since Charles Darwin published his theories on evolution, scientists all over the world have been working to discover the true, full history of mankind's journey from living in the jungles of Africa to populating the whole world. This article "Not Out of Africa" tells the story of a lone Australian archaeologist whose 1968 discovery would rock the foundations of everything we knew, or thought we knew, about the beginning of mankind.
In the year 1968 it was believed by all that the human race had begun in Africa. Supposedly, many different species in the genus Homo had arisen in Africa and spread throughout the world around 2 million years ago. About 120,000 years ago Homo sapiens arose and spread throughout the world replacing the indigenous peoples of the homo family. In 1968 an Australian archaeologist, Alan Thorne, discovered a 60,000 year old fossilized skeleton in a dried up lake in the aboriginal land of Australia. While this discovery does not seem that out of the ordinary, because older remains have been found in Africa and Europe, it is quite astonishing due to the fact it was found in Australia and was the remains of a Homo sapien. According to the theory of evolution it was impossible for any Homo sapiens to be 60,000 years old and in Australia, because by the supposed timeline Homo sapiens did not have enough time to migrate from Africa to Australia in 60,000 years. Due to this and later findings by Thorne in the same area, he and a few other scientists decided that the current theory of evolution was incorrect and a new theory was needed. They believed that there had been only one kind of homo species, Homo sapiens. They said that Homo sapiens had migrated from Africa 2 million years ago and had slowly begun to populate the whole world, evolving as they migrated. This new theory has not been agreed upon by all scientists but it seems that this story of mankind is the most plausible.