Zana and the Old African Element

The complication with the Sykes finding that the DNA of Zana the Wild Woman contains DNA from a female line that stayed in Africa and did not mingle with the Out of Africa people is that the people that stayed in Africa did include a more archaic form that evidently interbred with the local equivalents of Neanderthals (The Kabwe type AKA "Rhodesian man")

 

 

In 2011, DNA tested from African hunter-gatherer groups (Biaka Pygmies, San, and Mandinka) concluded that part of the genetic material found in these modern African populations was inserted into the African genome approximately 35,000 years ago from a now-extinct species, not found in the DNA of non-Africans, that broke away from the modern human lineage around 700,000 years ago. http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110905/full/news.2011.518.html
 In 2012 another study was done testing DNA from 3 sub-Saharan African populations (Pygmies, Hadza and Sandawe), indicating that the ancestors of the African populations bred with different archaic species of hominins, probably 40,000 years ago.[but possibly up to 10000 years ago]
 http://www.nature.com/news/hunter-gatherer-genomes-a-trove-of-genetic-diversity-1.11076

A report in New Scientist dated January 16, 1993, entitled "On the Origin of Races" stated, it was reported that evolutionary anthropologists are now proposing nothing less than the complete abolition of Homo erectus, on the grounds that the species is insufficiently distinct from Homo sapiens. The report proposed that all fossil remains of Homo erectus and Archaic Homo sapiens (including Neanderthals) should be reclassified into a single species, Homo sapiens which is to be subdivided only into various contemporaneous geographic races. The various assorted terms such as Homo erectus, Solo Man, Neanderthal Man, Rhodesian Man and so on simply mean the same as “Us.”

 

This statement is not universally accepted, however it is the one I follow myself.