Affinities of European Upper Palaeolithic Homo sapiens and later human evolution

Vark, G. N. van; Bilsborough, Alan; Henke, Winfried

doi:10.1016/0047-2484(92)90088-q

Cited by 21 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…While new dates have tended to show the contrast between Africa and elsewhere with regard to the age of the modern population, a number of studies have also established the morphological unity of all modern humans. Metric analyses have overwhelmingly shown that living human populations share far more with each other than with their local antecedent populations (Howells, 1973(Howells, , 1989Stringer, 1996a,b;Stringer et al, 1997;van Vark and Bilsborough, 1991;van Vark et al, 1992). The modern human morphological homogeneity, the discontinuities in the fossil record outside Africa, the chronological contrast between the first appearance of modern humans in Africa and in the rest of the world, and the tropical body proportions of the earliest modern Europeans in contrast to those of Neanderthals led to a wide acceptance of a view developed gradually and independently since the late 1970s of a single origin, a recent origin, and an African origin (Brä uer, 1989;Holliday, 1997;Howells, 1976Howells, , 1989Lahr, 1996;Lieberman, 1996;Stringer et al, 1984;Turbón et al, 1997;Waddle, 1994).…”

Section: Origins and Diversity: Historical Perspectives On Recent Hummentioning

confidence: 99%

Towards a theory of modern human origins: Geography, demography, and diversity in recent human evolution

Lahr¹,

Foley²

1998

Am. J. Phys. Anthropol.

337

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The origins of modern humans have been the central debate in palaeoanthropology during the last decade. We examine the problem in the context of the history of anthropology, the accumulating evidence for a recent African origin, and evolutionary mechanisms. Using a historical perspective, we show that the current controversy is a continuation of older conflicts and as such relates to questions of both origins and diversity. However, a better fossil sample, improved dates, and genetic data have introduced new perspectives, and we argue that evolutionary geography, which uses spatial distributions of populations as the basis for integrating contingent, adaptive, and demographic aspects of microevolutionary change, provides an appropriate theoretical framework. Evolutionary geography is used to explore two events: the evolution of the Neanderthal lineage and the relationship between an ancestral bottleneck with the evolution of anatomically modern humans and their diversity. We argue that the Neanderthal and modern lineages share a common ancestor in an African population between 350,000 and 250,000 years ago rather than in the earlier Middle Pleistocene; this ancestral population, which developed mode 3 technology (Levallois/Middle Stone Age), dispersed across Africa and western Eurasia in a warmer period prior to independent evolution towards Neanderthals and modern humans in stage 6. Both lineages would thus share a common large-brained ancestry, a technology, and a history of dispersal. They differ in the conditions under which they subsequently evolved and their ultimate evolutionary fate. Both lineages illustrate the repeated interactions of the glacial cycles, the role of cold-arid periods in producing fragmentation of populations, bottlenecks, and isolation, and the role of warmer periods in producing trans-African dispersals.

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Section: Origins and Diversity: Historical Perspectives On Recent Hummentioning

confidence: 99%

Towards a theory of modern human origins: Geography, demography, and diversity in recent human evolution

Lahr¹,

Foley²

1998

Am. J. Phys. Anthropol.

337

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show abstract

“…However, recent redating of the material shows that it is in fact ∼130,000 years old, which appears too old for admixture with incoming humans (Rink et al 1995), and its lack of specialization is almost certainly a result of its position early in Neanderthal evolution. Pleistocene modern Europeans cannot be shown to have special affinities with Neanderthals (Stringer et al 1984;Howells 1989;Van Vark 1990;Van Vark and Henke 1992).…”

Section: Neanderthal Admixturementioning

confidence: 99%

The Context of Human Genetic Evolution

Foley¹

1998

Genome Res.

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The debate on modern human origins has often focused on the relationship between genes and fossils. Although more and more genetic evidence has been accumulating in favor of a recent African origin for modern humans, it has been assumed by many that the fossil evidence remains ambiguous. On the contrary, it has been clear for some time that the fossil evidence does not support the multiregional model: Fossils and archeology indicate a pattern of multiple dispersals from and beyond Africa, against which the genetic data can be compared. The continuing value of paleobiology is in complementing genetic information by revealing the context of human evolution: locating the dispersals and extinctions of populations in time and space, correlating these events with the environmental forces that shaped them, and providing an increasingly detailed understanding of the morphology and technology of early humans.Molecular biology has revolutionized the study of human evolution. The importance of fossils as the primary source of information about our past has been steadily undermined as it has become possible to infer detailed aspects of recent human history from the distribution and frequency of genes found around the world today. To some extent, a fusion of paleontological and genetic approaches came about last year with the extraction and sequencing of ancient DNA from an extinct hominid, the Neanderthal type specimen (Krings et al. 1997), but this is likely to remain a rarity. Ancient DNA, however, has been able to confirm that humans and Neanderthals belonged to different populations over the last quarter of a million years and that Neanderthals did become effectively extinct.These results fit in with an increasingly consistent interpretation of human evolutionary genetics. Compared with chimpanzees and other apes, the human population is relatively lacking in genetic diversity (Ruvolo et al. 1993); such genetic variation as does exist occurs primarily within populations rather than between (Relethford and Harpending 1994); African populations are more diverse genetically than those found anywhere else in the world (Vigilant et al. 1991;Cavalli-Sforza et al. 1994;Watson et al. 1997); and for the most part, non-African patterns of genetic variation can be treated as a subset of African ones. The chronological and demographic context of the processes of diversification has been strongly disputed, but several genetic systems indicate that living populations derive from a relatively small population (effective population size between 5000 and 50,000 individuals) (Rogers and

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“…They increased in number as well as evincing what has been described as a ''creative explosion'' (Pfeiffer, 1982) exemplified by artistic representation (Sieveking, 1979). By contrast, Neandertals disappeared as a discernible entity in the Eurasian fossil record (van Vark, Bilsborough & Henke, 1992).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Developmental Stress in Immature Hominines from Late Pleistocene Eurasia: Evidence from Enamel Hypoplasia

Skinner

1996

Journal of Archaeological Science

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Affinities of European Upper Palaeolithic Homo sapiens and later human evolution

Cited by 21 publications

References 14 publications

Towards a theory of modern human origins: Geography, demography, and diversity in recent human evolution

Towards a theory of modern human origins: Geography, demography, and diversity in recent human evolution

The Context of Human Genetic Evolution

Developmental Stress in Immature Hominines from Late Pleistocene Eurasia: Evidence from Enamel Hypoplasia

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