Was Africa the cradle of humanity?

The idea that Africa was where humans originated has been drilled into our heads for decades, but cracks are beginning to appear, and they are being published by well-known scientists in top-level journals. If it is not true, how can we explain the data from a biblical perspective? To do that, we can turn to any number of ideas, including patriarchal drive, inbreeding, differential mutation rates, selective sweeps, differences in starting population sizes among the modern world populations, higher rates of recombination in the sub-Saharan population, and massive waves of migration into Africa (several of which can be documented) later in history. The biblical account fits the data beautifully.

Links:

Carter R, Patriarchal Drive. BiblicalGenetics.com, 8 Jul 2020. BiblicalGenetics.com/patriarchal-drive.

Carter RW. 2019. Patriarchal drive in the early post-Flood population, Journal of Creation 33(1):110–118. Creation.com/patriarchal-drive.

Carter R, Twisting tales with ancient DNA. BiblicalGenetics.com, 4 Apr 2020. BiblicalGenetics.com/twisting-tales-with-ancient-dna.

Wieland C, Carter R. Not the Flintstones—it’s the Denisovans. Creation.com, 25 Jan 2011. Creation.com/denisovan.

Early man outside of Africa: Bechly G.  Fossil Footprints from Crete Deepen Controversy on Human Origins. Evolution News, 6 Sep 2017. EvolutionNews.org/2017/09/fossil-footprints-from-crete-deepen-controversy-on-human-origins.

Bergström A, Stringer C, Hajdinjak M, Scerri EML, Skoglund P. 2021. Origins of modern human ancestry. Nature 590 (7845):229. doi: 10.1038/s41586-021-03244-5.

Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History. On the origin of our species. ScienceDaily, 10 Feb 2021. Sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/02/210210133410.htm.

Pavid, K. Modern human origins cannot be traced back to a single point in time. Natural History Museum, 10 Feb 2021. nhm.ac.uk/discover/news/2021/february/modern-human-origins-cannot-be-traced-back-to-a-single-point.html.

Hinch AG, et al. 2011. The landscape of recombination in African Americans. Nature 476(7359):170–5. doi: 10.1038/nature10336.