New fossil study rejects 'E...( t from the center of the ancient human ...)

t from the center of the ancient human population might retain easily identifiable resemblances to ancient peoples, if there were any. They compared a number of different features of the fossil skulls from the Mladec cave in the Czech Republic and a skull from the Willandra Lakes region of Southeastern Australia to the other fossil skulls that could be ancestors. In each case, they analyzed in how many respects the Mladec and Australian skulls were like the other skulls and in how many respects they were different.

They found that the Mladec and Australian skulls shared characteristics distinctive to the more ancient African and Near Eastern population. But at the same time, the fossils also had distinctive resemblances to more ancient fossils within their regions, many more than could be explained by chance alone. "These features amount to a smoking gun for continuity within these regions, " says Hawks.

The findings are the latest evidence in the continuing scientific controversy about the origin of modern Homo sapiens. Many scientists believe that all living humans can trace their ancestry exclusively to a small group of ancient humans, probably Africans, living around 100,000 years ago. This explanation, known as the Eve hypothesis or replacement theory, means that all other early human groups, whose fossils date from this time back to almost two million years ago, must have become extinct, possibly wiped out in a prehistoric genetic holocaust.

Other scientists, including Wolpoff and colleagues Hawks, Frayer, and Hunley, maintain that there is little evidence that a small group originating in a single geographic region replaced the entire population of early humans. The genetic evidence has always been unclear, Wolpoff and colleagues note, because different genes support different theories: mitochondrial genes support replacement theory while nuclear genes support the development of an older, worldwide species of human
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Contact: Diane Swanbrow
swanbrow@umich.edu
734-647-4416
University of Michigan
10-Jan-2001

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