Interesting theory.

Where do snakemen fit into all of this?

"you are a man, you are not a fish. you walk on two legs, Homo Erectus. did i say homo? i didn't mean it, THURGOOD!!!"

The multiregional theory has always been controversial; but from what I gather, it seems to have a growing following in science.
Problem is that Africa has a "time-line" of the human race laid out. They've yet to find Asia's "LUCY" if you know what I mean.
Last year scientists did DNA tracing, and ultimately concluded that all humans did indeed come from Africa at one point long ago.

One thing that's always intrigued me has been the junk DNA in our body. There is still not explanation for the meaning behind the junk DNA. Some say it's mutations, some say it's PROOF that HSs have had genetic modifications by extraterrestrial beings. Yes, you've read this right. There's a following of people that believe we've been altered over thousands of years and are being carefully documented by Aliens.

I think that's primarily made up of Obama enthusiasts.

There was a supposed race of super humans that live around 70,000 years ago - Atlantis, Rama, Mu, etc. Supposed. Any proof of this would disprove or rewrite human history.
I read this book called Fingerprint of the Gods which discussed the possibility of Antarctica being 2000 miles north of where it is now due to a controversial theory called crust displacement. The book was a pretty decent read..
Talked about all the similarities between ancient beliefs and religions, and how Kulkukan, RA and other deities where indeed real at one point and assisted the ancients. Borderline fantasy, but interesting nonetheless.

Not really, this theory acknowledges that the Aryan race came from Ultima Thule and was manipulated by the Pledieans.

Scientology is real and shit.

Wait, what? What about Pangaea? That makes sense and, as far as I know, the idea of tectonic plates moving all these continents isn't considered controversial.

REAGANOMICS!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It does not disprove plate tectonic theory. Charles Hapgood is the man behind the modern belief: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_Crustal_Displacement

I think i remember hearing that Einstein held intrest in this subject too

There are no Australopiths outside of Africa, there will never be an Asian Lucy.

Based on skeletal features determined from a VERY small sample of individuals some people are determined to split Homo erectus into three different species, Homo ergaster being from Africa, Homo erectus being from Asia, and Homo georgicanus being from Europe, and there is no definitive conclusion in sight, at least not until far more specimens are uncovered.

It's the equivalent of grabbing 60 modern people from Africa, 20 from Asia and 10 from Europe and trying to cast them into groups based on physical markers, of course you can focus on their differences or their similarities, some people will say they are the same, others will say they are different, but the sample size is far too small to determine what the vast majority of paleoanthropologists and biologists believe, that given an appropriate sample size the variation drops to a level consistent with a single species.

Furthermore, there is no evidence for, and is in fact evidence against (Aril's DNA tracing) the idea that Homo sapiens evolved separately in each of the afore mentioned instances, the simplest answer is usually correct in science and genetics, and the simplest answer in this case is that three (supposedly) separate groups did not evolve in the same way over the same period of time, and instead one group evolved first and spread over the world, either integrating the regional groups or out-competing them to extinction.

No, this theory isn't proven either, but it is the most accepted by anthropologists and biologists alike.

Most importantly, the author of this book, who conveniently self published online, presumably because no legitimate bookstore would sell his work (save online where online subscribers can sell their wares without question), has ZERO qualifications to make any argument on the subject, math, law, economics, chemistry and physics do not a geneticist make, which I'm sure is why no self respecting biological anthropologist would spend any time reading his work. Equally as hilarious as this person's attempt at throwing his worthless two cents into a discipline he has no business being in, is the fact that running the ISBN through google provides 4 links, one to the page above, two to online bookstores (one in German...) and the last to STORMFRONT.ORG.

only Bal-Sagoth knows the truth.

If you stopped there, it would be a scientifically-valid response.

Humanity has diverged many times in the past, with variants dying out and interbreeding.

I don't know what I think on this issue; it's clear evolution branched and produced different abilities for human races and ethnicities and classes, however.

Yea, man. There are no australopiths outside of Africa. There are a very minute number of scientists which believe someday they'll find ones outside of Africa, but I highly doubt it. The vast majority of anthropologists/biologists/etc. believe everything started in Africa. I did not even bother reading the link above so I cannot speak for it or against it. The fact of the matter is that everything is still in THEORY and nothing has been proven yet. They simply need more evidence.
However, given the attainable evidence we have now, I think it is safe to assume that the theory is correct in that evolution occurred by different means given the environmental aspects of the different areas of the world. One things about humans is that we have the ability to adapt to our surroundings, which is why we can live in any climate, elevation, weather, etc. Of course, the ideal environment doesn't contain extremities, but you know what I mean.
I honestly can't remember the name of the documentary I watched about the DNA tracing, but I can tell you it was on PBS. They alluded that their findings proved the multi-regional theory false. I'm sure during our life time, scientists will find more proof to back the theories up.
One thing that is still intriguing the scientific community is the "hobbit" species they've found in the Pacific..

This is the only hard science on race evolution. Required reading people.
http://www.charlesdarwinresearch.org/reb.html

Truth and Consequences : Responses to Rushton and Kendler
Contents

1. References

By: Marvin Zuckerman
University of Delaware

As in previous responses to critiques of his work, Rushton (1991, this issue) restates his “truth,” ignoring or sidestepping the major criticisms and adding new “data” to clinch his case. Many of the critiques of Rushton's theory and “data” by psychologists, anthropologists, and ecologists have been published since my article (Zuckerman, December 1990) was written. Readers should consult these as well as Rushton's responses to them. I will limit my response here to the points made in Rushton's comment.

“Populations that produce the fewest gametes average the largest brains” (Rushton, 1991, p. 983). This correlational statement is based on an ordering of three populations (races) on three variables: dizygotic twinning, fertility (birth rates), and brain size. Rushton interprets differences in dizygotic twinning as an index of a genetically determined gamete production rate, and says that “no known environmental variable is capable of producing the inverse relationship between gamete production and brain size” (p. 983). But twinning is affected by dietary influences on the production of follicle stimulating hormones. Twinning rates have declined by 40%–50% in Europe and Nigeria in the decades since World War II, probably reflecting improvements in diet (Weizmann, Wiener, Wiesenthal, & Ziegler, 1990). Eysenck (1991) has recently suggested that racial differences in IQ could be eliminated in large measure, or even completely by dietary aid. Changes in nutrition could also account for IQ and brain size and height increases over the last half century in economically developed nations (Lynn, 1990).

Multiple births are only a very minor part of population birth rates, and it is differences in the latter that constitute the heart of Rushton's application of r−K theory to humans. Birth rates (fertility) reflect human beliefs, values, and the use of contraception as well as gamete production, and contraception is obviously a more crucial factor than gamete production. All of these, except gamete production, are known to be related to social class, which has been ignored as a variable in most of the racial comparisons. The race difference in fertility is confined to Blacks of lower education. Among Blacks with any college education and among wives of professional men, the birth rate tends to be lower for Blacks than for Whites (Weizmann et al., 1990). In regard to head and brain size, Rushton ignores the anomalies pointed out by his critics. Gross brain weight is more relevant than skull size to any hypothesis involving brain function, although it is still neurologically naive. Black Americans were shown to have heavier brains than American, French, and English Whites, and these in turn had heavier brains than Kenyan Blacks (Tobias, 1970). As with personality, the variability within the three “races” makes general comparisons among them meaningless, and aggregation only serves to hide the variability.

Rushton (1991) implies that Stringer's (1990) review of the evidence for human evolution somehow supports his own theory of an evolutionary progress in intellectual capacity and social and sexual restraint going from the Black to the Mongoloid races. All that paleontology shows is that all extant human races are variants of a species that evolved in East Africa about 200,000 years ago and then spread to Asia and Europe, with racial physical features probably evolving later in response to climatic conditions. Contrary to Rushton's assertion, the tropics are regarded as more stable environments favoring K selection (Weizmann et al., 1990) and cold weather is normally an agent or r selection (Anderson, 1991). Anderson described the fallacies of Rushton's ideas from the perspectives of an ecologist. In terms of ecology alone, one could make a better case for African populations being K-selected and Asian populations being r-selected.

It is still not clear why Rushton chose to analyze extraversion (E) and neuroticism (N) and ignore psychoticism (P) in his analysis of Barrett and Eysenck's (1984) cross-cultural study. Rushton's theory suggests differences in socialization (P), not in sociability (E), between the races. Lack of parental and marital investment, lack of sexual restraint, and criminality are characteristics of the antisocial personality. P and sensation seeking are related to psychopathy, and E is not (Harpur, Hare, & Hakstian, 1989). Blacks score lower, not higher, than Whites on sensation seeking, and the ordering of the races on P in Barrett and Eysenck's study is in the reverse order to that predicted by Rushton's theory. Rushton totally ignores the basic data from the study showing that overall similarity of personality does not show grouping by the racial characteristics of the countries involved.

Rushton (1991) prefers to use national crime statistics, a dubious index of basic personality differences given the relation of crime rate to socioeconomic status. Rushton faults me for using national data, such as the incidence of antisocial personalities in the American population, but counters the lack of international evidence for his theory in the P dimension with a study of teachers' ratings of “social adjustment” in 4- to 6-year-old children in French Canadian preschools.

The illustration of Nazi research used in my article (Zuckerman, 1990) was taken from a paper by Anne Harrington (in press) and concerned the question of whether all scientific research is beyond challenge on ethical grounds. Admittedly, this was an extreme example, because the research resulted in physical harm to the victims rather than mere derogation. But behavioral scientists also had a role in legitimization of Nazi racial ideology (Muller-Hilll, 1988).

Copernicus's hypothesis was rejected on theological, not scientific, grounds. Whatever Rushton believes, his critics have sound scientific reasons for questioning his proposition. His implicit comparison of himself with Copernicus and his unshakeable belief in the absolute truth of his conclusions suggest an attitude that is immune to scientific criticism.

Kendler's (1991, this issue) criticism deals with the second part of my article and is limited to the area of intelligence and abilities. Kendler says that affirmative action programs are based on the assumption of equal distribution of abilities among all “breeding populations.” Modern population geneticists do not regard Blacks, Whites, and Asians as “breeding populations,” and researchers on race do not use morphological or serological criteria for race because there are no such infallible criteria.

Even if one accepts the behavior–genetic evidence that 50% to 70% of the variance in measured intelligence in Whites is based on genetics, this still leaves a substantial influence of environment. It is a common misconception that something with a strong genetic influence is not changeable by environmental manipulation. Affirmative action is not based on the assumption of equal abilities, but on an assumption of some malleability of abilities and of the motivational elements that are also important in academic and vocational achievement.

Kendler (1991) cites Tay-Sachs disease and sickle-cell anemia as examples of worthwhile purposes of racial definition (are Jews a race or an ethnic group?). Genetically caused diseases are not the same as complex traits; the latter are usually polygenetic and based on complex interactions and correlations between heredity and environment that are just beginning to be studied.

Kendler (1991) is correct in saying that policymakers will use congenial conclusions from behavioral scientists. Are the findings on the sources of racial differences firm enough to provide a basis for social policy? How should they be applied? Saying that a trait is 50% genetic and 50% environmental does not tell you which 50% is most influential for a given population, at a given time, in a given environment, or how modifiable the trait is, or how one might go about changing it. In the absence of sound data on interaction effects it would be best to continue to operate on the basis of policies consistent with the basic values and goals of the society.
References

Anderson, J. L. (1991). Rushton's racial comparisons: An ecological critique of theory and method. Canadian Psychology, 32, 51–60.

Barrett, P., & Eysenck, S. B. G. (1984). The assessment of personality traits across 25 countries. Personality and Individual Differences, 5, 615–632.

Eysenck, H. J. (1991). Raising IQ through vitamin and mineral supplementation: An introduction. Personality and Individual Differences, 12, 329–333.

Harpur, T. J., Hare, R. D., & Hakstian, R. (1989). Two-factor conceptualization of psychopathy: Construct validity and assessment implications. Psychological Assessment: Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 1, 6–17.

Harrington, A. (in press). Studying race differences, or the problem of ‘value-free’ science. Psychologische Beitrage.

Kendler, H. H. (1991). Unanswered questions about racism and scientific purpose. American Psychologist, 46, 984.

Lynn, R. (1990). The role of nutrition in secular increses in intelligence. Personality and Individual Differences, 11, 273–285.

Muller-Hill, B. (1988). Murderous science: Elimination by scientific selection of Jews, Gypsies, and others, Germany 1933–1945. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.

Rushton, J. P. (1991). Racial differences: A reply to Zuckerman. American Psychologist, 46, 983–984.

Stringer, C. B. (1990). The emergence of modern humans. Scientific American, 263(6), 98–104.

Tobias, P. V. (1970). Brain-size, grey matter, and race—Fact or fiction. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 32, 3–26.

Weizmann, F., Wiener, N. I., Wiesenthal, D. L., & Ziegler, M. (1990). Differential K theory and racial hierarchies. Canadian Psychology, 31, 1–13.

Zuckerman, M. (1990). Some dubious premises in research and theory on racial differences: Scientific, social, and ethical issues. American Psychologist, 45, 1297–1303.

on the off chance that no one reads that, I'm aware of Rushton, his methodology has been repeatedly questioned for scientific validity since he arrived on the scene, his work is far from any measure of scientific consensus, and is by no one in science, considered "hard science."

Aril, Given the attainable evidence that you brought up, Human DNA leading us to Africa, the physical variation between different erectus samples is moot, if and only if we are going by what evidence we have now.

Conservy, I'm not sure what part of my post you didn't understand, let me know and I'll clear it up in the most scientific way possible, I might even throw in a formula for you.