Marta Lahr : An extended origin: Climate, populations & palimpsests in the evolution of Homo sapiens

The Center for the Dynamics of Social Complexity is happy to announce a series of free webinars for Spring 2021 on Human origins and cultural evolution: Celebrating the 150th anniversary of The Descent of Man.
www.dysoc.org/d...
Speaker: Marta Lahr (Human Evolutionary Studies, Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge, UK)
Topic: An extended origin: Climate, populations and palimpsests in the evolution of Homo sapiens
Date: 11:45 a.m. EST Tuesday, February 9, 2021
Abstract: In the 1980s, a recent origin of Homo sapiens in Africa was proposed, leading to enormous controversy before its eventual acceptance. More than thirty years on, this model is now the orthodoxy. But is the model still valid? Ancient genomic and hominin fossil data have challenged the short chronology of the original model, the idea of complete replacement of archaic forms, as well as the notion of a single out of Africa dispersal of modern humans. Together, these lines of evidence might suggest a more prolonged process, under different climatic conditions, and possibly involving multiple populations, which may be best described as multiregional evolution at a continental level. However, new fossils have revealed the presence of parallel hominin lineages in Africa in the last million years, while archaeological and faunal evidence points to important local discontinuities. In this talk, I will discuss new evidence and ideas about our African origins, and consider the extent to which we should rethink the theoretical premises of the original 'out of Africa' model. At the end, I will explore the question of what may explain the evolutionary success of our species.