Neanderthal, La Chapelle-aux-Saints
Fossils matter. Fossils are evidence. That was Milford Wolpoff's refrain in the 1987 NOVA documentary which heralded the long cresting of mitochondrial Eve and Out of Africa. Fossils remain highly relevant and important when it comes to deeper time phylogenetic relationships
, but it does seem that they have only served to supplement the genetic data when it comes to recent human origins (e.g., calibrate and fine-tune molecular clocks). The paleoanthropologist Tim White
, whose own position on human origins is at some contradiction from Milford Wolpoff's, nevertheless felt the need to reiterate the relevance of fossils at a conference several years ago where most of the participants were geneticists (we received a preview of Ardi
). Chris Stringer, who advocated for an Out of Africa model before Allan Wilson and his students roiled the academic waters often seems to have been relegated to nothing more than ...
