Re: Homo Fossil timeline

Dan Barnes (
Tue, 17 Sep 1996 12:24:29 GMT

In article <51fj96$>, says...
>Not to get into the "who begat who" line of logic
>concerning early man, but lets talk about the
>chronology of the fossils. I have seen some timelines
>for Europe that progress from a Homo Erectus, through
>Neanderthals, and early modern to modern man. If I
>have it straight, the Neanderthal is largely a artifact
>of Europe and the Near East, with Erectus covering the
>Pleistoscene in Asia and Africa with "modern man"
>coming earlier in Africa and quickly showing up on
>the European and Asian land mass.
>Is this close? Now to get into the begatting!

It is part of the multiregional arguement that AMHs evolved from Neanderthals in
Europe. Neanderthals did evolve from erectus (or its equivalent in Europe) and
then migrated to the Middle East.

>Neanderthal period?

This has been disproved by Santa Luca (1978).

>Why would the Neanderthal physiology have been limited to
>Europe and near east when the climatic changes that
>supposedly favored the physique were considerably more
>widespread? (Were there central/east Asian Neanderthals?
>I think not?)

No, as above. Europe (and Africa) could have been isolated for long periods of
time and, unlike in the Far East, they were not able to migrate from their climatic
area (due to the Med.) and so developed to the respective climates.

>What are the morphological markers for Erectus vs Neanderthal
>vs the different current races? Is it possible that the
>European racial traits may have more in common with the
>neanderthal whereas the Asian racial traits may be more
>the characteristic traits of the earlier homo fossils, there
>may be any grouping of these traits among modern man.

This, again is the multiregional arguement. This continuity of traits has been
used to support the Continuity models of human evolution rather than the
Replacement models (e.g. the Afro-European Sapiens and Recent African
Evolution Models

>old, etc)

The Origins of Humankind site now has a Message Board devoted to the
Neanderthals and we hope to cover these and other Neanderthal based topics
there as well.

Apologies for the length.