The Accidental Species: Misunderstandings of Human Evolution (33 page)

7
M. H. Wolpoff, “Competitive exclusion among Lower Pleistocene hominids: The single species hypothesis,”
Man
6 (1971): 601–614.

8
R. E. F. Leakey and A. C. Walker, “
Australopithecus
,
Homo
and the single species hypothesis,”
Nature
261 (1976): 572–574.

9
K. Harvati et al., “The Later Stone Age Calvaria from Iwo Eleru, Nigeria: Morphology and chronology,”
PLOS One
6 (2011): e24024, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0024024.

10
See for example R. Dennell, “Early
Homo sapiens
in China,”
Nature
468 (2010): 512–513; Y. Hou and L. X. Zhao, “An archeological view for the presence of early humans in China,”
Quaternary International
223–224 (2010): 10–19; X. Gao et al., “Revisiting the origin of modern humans in China and its implications for global human evolution,”
Science China: Earth Sciences
53 (2010): 1927–1940; and C. Shen et al., “The earliest hominin occupations of the Nihewan Basin of northern China: Recent progress in field investigations,”
Asian Paleoanthropology
(2010): 169–180.

11
D. Reich et al., “Genetic history of an archaic hominin group from Denisova Cave in Siberia,”
Nature
468 (2010): 1053–1060.

12
M. Stoneking and J. Krause, “Learning about human population history from ancient and modern genomes,”
Nature Reviews Genetics
12 (2011): 603–614.

13
D. Curnoe, “A 150-year conundrum: Cranial robusticity and its bearing on the origin of Aboriginal Australians,”
International Journal of Evolutionary Biology
(2011), doi:10.4061/2011/632484.

14
A. Urbain, “Le kou-prey ou boeuf gris cambodgien,”
Bulletin de la Société Zoologique de France
62 (1937): 305–307.

15
M. V. Erdmann et al., “Indonesian ‘king of the sea’ discovered,”
Nature
395 (1998): 335.

16
V. V. Dung et al., “A new species of living bovid from Vietnam,”
Nature
363 (1993): 443–445.

17
W. Robichaud, “Physical and behavioral description of a captive saola,
Pseudoryx nghetinhensis
,”
Journal of Mammalogy
79 (1998): 394–405.

18
I have sometimes wondered whether I might compile a list of antelopes and other ungulates (the okapi isn’t an antelope, but a relative of the giraffe) whose names would be useful in such a context. I once placed ADDAX in a competitive setting, much to the chagrin of my opponent, who challenged it and lost. Others worth keeping up your sleeve are GNU, TOPI, KOB, ELAND, PUDU, KUDU, BOK, NYALA, NILGAI, IMPALA, and ORYX. I am sure you can think of lots more.

19
“Notes,”
Nature
64 (1901): 188.

20
See for example J. B. Buhs,
Bigfoot: The Life and Times of a Legend
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009).

21
There are many recent, excellent accounts of human evolution, and the material in this chapter draws on several. I recommend (in no particular order) C. Stringer,
The Origin of Our Species
(London: Allen Lane, 2011); D. Falk,
The Fossil Chronicles: How Two Controversial Discoveries Changed Our View of Human Evolution
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011); J. Reader,
Missing Links: In Search of Human Origins
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011); and A. Gibbons,
The First Human: The Race to Discover Our Earliest Ancestors
(New York: Anchor, 2007). For the student there is the 2011–2012 edition of R. Jurmain et al.,
Introduction to Physical Anthropology
(Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning)—but for your coffee table it
would be hard to beat A. Roberts,
Evolution: The Human Story
(London: Dorling Kindersley, 2011).

22
P. Shipman,
The Man Who Found the Missing Link: The Extraordinary Life of Eugène Dubois
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001).

23
A. C. Haddon, “
Eoanthropus dawsoni
,”
Science
37 (1913): 91–92.

24
I have borrowed the term “Piltdown committee” and drawn on Dean Falk’s excellent account of events in
The Fossil Chronicles: How Two Controversial Discoveries Changed Our View of Human Evolution
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011). Falk’s account of the possible suppression of Dart’s 1929 monograph on
Australopithecus africanus
—which remains unpublished to this day—is especially noteworthy.

25
Those more used to baseball are invited to substitute the appropriate metaphors.

26
R. Dart, “
Australopithecus africanus
: The man-ape of South Africa,”
Nature
115 (1925): 195–199.

27
See the correspondence column in
Nature
115 (1925): 234–236 for immediate reactions from several members of the Piltdown committee, notably Sir Arthur Keith and Arthur Smith-Woodward, who had to some extent staked their reputations on Piltdown. The debate between Dart and Keith became somewhat acrimonious, as shown by the exchange in
Nature
116 (1925): 462–463.

28
R. Broom, “Some notes on the Taungs skull,”
Nature
115 (1925): 569–571.

29
R. Broom, “A new fossil anthropoid skull from South Africa,”
Nature
138 (1936) 486–488; R. Broom, “The dentition of
Australopithecus
,”
Nature
138 (1936): 719; R. Broom, “Discovery of a lower molar of
Australopithecus
,”
Nature
140 (1937): 681–682; R. Broom, “Discovery of teeth of
Australopithecus
,”
Nature
140 (1937): 680; R. Broom, “More discoveries of
Australopithecus
,”
Nature
141 (1938): 828–829; R. Broom, “The Pleistocene anthropoid apes of South Africa,”
Nature
142 (1938): 377–379; R. Broom, “Further evidence on the structure of the South African Pleistocene anthropoids,”
Nature
142 (1938): 897–899; R. Broom, “Structure of the Sterkfontein ape,”
Nature
147 (1941): 86; R. Broom, “Mandible of a young
Paranthropus
child,”
Nature
147 (1941): 607–608; R. Broom, “The origin of man,”
Nature
148 (1941): 10–14; R. Broom, “The hand of the ape-man,
Paranthropus robustus
,”
Nature
149 (1942): 513–514; R. Broom, “An ankle-bone of the ape-man,
Paranthropus robustus
,”
Nature
152 (1945): 389–390; R. Broom, “The upper milk molars of the ape-man,
Plesianthropus
,”
Nature
159 (1947): 602; R. Broom and J. T. Robinson, “Size of the brain in the ape-man,
Plesianthropus
,”
Nature
161 (1948): 438; R. Broom, “Another new type of fossil ape-man,”
Nature
163 (1949): 57; and R. Broom and J. T. Robinson, “Eruption of the permanent teeth in the South African fossil ape-men,”
Nature
167 (1951): 443. Broom died, vindicated but still publishing, at the age of eighty-four—his obituary by W. E. LeGros Clark appeared in
Nature
167 (1951): 752. Broom’s discoveries were, like Dart’s, not immune to the view
that they were more likely to be fossil apes than hominins—see the letter by E. Schwarz,
Nature
138 (1936): 969, countered by Broom,
Nature
139 (1937): 326.

30
Even Sir Arthur Keith was won over, with a gracious admission in
Nature
159 (1947): 277.

31
D. Black, “Tertiary man in Asia—The Chou Kou Tien discovery,”
Bulletin of the Geological Society of China
5 (1926): 207–208.

32
D. Black,
On an Adolescent Skull of
Sinanthropus pekinensis
in Comparison with an Adult of the Same Species and with Other Hominid Skulls Recent and Fossil
(Peking: Geological Survey of China, 1931); F. Weidenreich, “The new discovery of three skulls of
Sinanthropus pekinensis
,”
Nature
139 (1937): 269–272.

33
P. Teilhard de Chardin and W. G. Pei, “The lithic industry of the
Sinanthropus
deposits in Choukoutien,”
Bulletin of the Geological Society of China
11 (1932): 315–364; D. Black, “Evidences of the use of fire by
Sinanthropus
,”
Bulletin of the Geological Society of China
11 (1932): 107–108.

34
G. H. R. von Koenigswald and F. Weidenreich, “The relationship between
Pithecanthropus
and
Sinanthropus
,”
Nature
144 (1939): 926–929.

35
J. S. Weiner et al., “The solution of the Piltdown problem,”
Bulletin of the British Museum (Natural History) Geology
2 (1953): 139–146.

36
B. G. Gardiner, “The Piltdown forgery: A re-statement of the case against Hinton,”
Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society
139 (2003): 315–335.

37
V. Morell,
Ancestral Passions: The Leakey Family and the Quest for Humankind’s Beginnings
(New York: Touchstone, 1996).

38
L. S. B. Leakey, “A new fossil skull from Olduvai,”
Nature
184 (1959): 491–493.

39
L. S. B. Leakey et al., “A new species of the genus
Homo
from Olduvai Gorge,”
Nature
202 (1964): 7–9.

40
R. E. F. Leakey, “Evidence for an advanced Plio-Pleistocene hominid from East Rudolf, Kenya,”
Nature
242 (1973): 447–450.

41
D. Curnoe, “A review of early
Homo
in southern Africa focusing on cranial, mandibular and dental remains, with the description of a new species (
Homo gautengensis
, sp. nov.),”
Homo: Journal of Comparative Human Biology
61 (2010): 151–177.

42
Some recently discovered fossils confirm that there were at least two kinds of early
Homo
. See M. G. Leakey et al., “New fossils from Koobi Fora in northern Kenya confirm taxonomic diversity in early
Homo
,”
Nature
488 (2012): 201–204.

43
B. Wood and M. Collard, “The human genus,”
Science
284 (1999): 65–71.

44
L. R. Berger et al., “
Australopithecus sediba
: A new species of
Homo
-like australopith from South Africa,”
Science
328 (2010): 195–204.

45
S. Semaw et al., “2.5-million-year-old stone tools from Gona, Ethiopia,”
Nature
385 (1997): 333–336; S. P. McPherron et al., “Evidence for stone-tool-assisted consumption of animal tissues before 3.39 million years ago at Dikika, Ethiopia,”
Nature
466 (2010): 857–860.

46
J.-L. Arsuaga, “Three new human skulls from the Sima de los Huesos Middle Pleistocene site in Sierra de Atapuerca, Spain,”
Nature
362 (1993): 534–537.

47
J. M. Bermúdez de Castro, “A hominid from the Lower Pleistocene of Atapuerca, Spain: Possible ancestor to Neandertals and modern humans,”
Science
276 (1997): 1392–1395. For a general review of hominin variation and taxonomy during this period of time, see G. P. Rightmire, “
Homo
in the Middle Pleistocene: Hypodigms, variation and species recognition,”
Evolutionary Anthropology
17 (2008): 8–21.

48
F. Brown et al., “Early
Homo erectus
skeleton from west Lake Turkana, Kenya,”
Nature
316 (1985): 788–792.

49
Once again, for a discussion of these issues see B. Wood and M. Collard, “The human genus,”
Science
284 (1999): 65–71.

50
C. J. Lepre et al., “An earlier origin for the Acheulian,”
Nature
477 (2011): 82–85.

51
R. Ferring et al., “Earliest human occupation of Dmanisi (Georgian Caucasus) dated to 1.85–1.78 Ma,”
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA
108 (2011): 10432–10436.

52
D. Lordkipanidze et al., “Postcranial evidence from early
Homo
from Dmanisi, Georgia,”
Nature
449 (2007): 305–310; L. Gabunia et al., “Découverte d’un nouvel hominidé à Dmanissi (Transcaucasie, Géorgie),”
Comptes Rendus Palevol
1 (2002): 243–254.

53
C. J. Lepre et al., “An earlier origin for the Acheulian,”
Nature
477 (2011): 82–85.

54
R. Dennell and W. Roebroeks, “An Asian perspective on early human dispersal from Africa,”
Nature
438 (2005): 1099–1104.

55
I. McDougall et al., “Stratigraphic placement and age of modern humans from Kibish, Ethiopia,”
Nature
433 (2005): 733–736.

56
C. W. Marean et al., “Early human use of marine resources and pigment in South Africa during the Middle Pleistocene,”
Nature
449 (2007): 905–908.

57
R. L. Cann et al., “Mitochondrial DNA and human evolution,”
Nature
325 (1987): 31–36.

58
J. Wainscoat, “Out of the Garden of Eden,”
Nature
325 (1987): 13.

59
R. E. Green et al., “A draft sequence of the Neandertal genome,”
Science
328 (2010): 710–722.

60
D. Reich et al., “Genetic history of an archaic hominin group from Denisova Cave in Siberia,”
Nature
468 (2010): 1053–1060.

61
M. F. Hammer et al., “Genetic evidence for archaic admixture in Africa,”
Proceedings of the National Academy of Science of the USA
108 (2011): 15123–15128; K. Harvati et al., “The Later Stone Age Calvaria from Iwo Eleru, Nigeria: Morphology and chronology,”
PLOS One
6 (2011): e24024, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0024024.

62
I’ve always been puzzled by Genesis 4:17: “And Cain knew his wife; and she conceived, and bare Enoch: and he builded a city, and called the name of
the city, after the name of his son, Enoch.” Where did Cain find his wife, and all the other citizens of Enoch? Obviously, they were already there, yet unrecorded, outside Cain’s African Eden.