#FlintFriday

Exhibition 9th July to 1st August.

Figure-stones of Fontmaure.

Watford Museum,

194 High Street,

Watford

Hertfordshire

WD17 2DT

Opening times: Thursday-Saturday 10:00-17:00

Free Admission

Oxford University - right behind the mainstream narrative

Stone tool assemblages and models for the dispersal of Homo sapiens out of Africa, 2015, Quaternary International (in press), by Groucutt et al purports to test models for the dispersal of Homo sapiens out of Africa.
https://www.academia.edu/10985350/Stone_tool_assemblages_and_models_for_the_dispersal_of_Homo_sapiens_out_of_Africa
Consider this for a moment. The mostly Oxford based researchers contend that analysis of stone tools can yield information relating to biological or cultural dispersion.
Even if the authors of the paper were able to reliably identify the culture or "species" of human responsible from a given assemblage of stone tools, any analysis concerning the distribution or "pattern of dispersal" would relate only to preservation conditions and chance detection. The idea that a species could be tracked by simply referring to a set of etically described stones is critically flawed and therefore the results are untestable and unscientific.
Any (subjectively) perceived similarities between so called East African lithic assemblages and those from elsewhere is moot in the face of the continuity of in-situ technological development evident from the Middle Palaeolithic into the Upper Palaeolithic at sites throughout Europe.
The assertion that "Most researchers accept that Homo Sapiens evolved in Africa during the late Middle Pleistocene" is argumentum ad populum and ignores the mounting genetic, fossil, stone tool and cultural evidence which refutes it.

#Flintfriday

Hertfordshire Exhibition venue to be announced

Right or wrong?

Published recently by the authors (Holliday, Gautney and Friedl) and Jean-Jaques Hublin (one of the commentators) on Academia.edu is Right for the Wrong Reasons: Reflections on Modern Human Origins in the Post-Neanderthal, 2014, Current Anthropology: 55(6), pp. 696-724.
Genome Era.

https://www.academia.edu/9697813/Right_for_the_Wrong_Reasons_Reflections_on_Modern_Human_Origins_in_the_Post-Neanderthal_Genome_Era

The authors contend that the persistence of Neanderthal genes is more readily explained by the Assimilation (AM) model than the Replacement with Hybridization (RWH) model and reject Multiregional Evolution (MRE).

"We argue this because we reject one of the major tenets of MRE: global gene flow that prevents cladogenesis from occurring. First, using reconstructions of Pleistocene hominin census size, we maintain that populations were neither large nor dense enough to result in such high levels of gene flow across the Old World."

All scenarios suggested for population sizes are at best untestable and at worse entirely fictitious (Bednarik 2013). The failure of many Pleistocene archaeologists to comprehend the implications of taphonomic logic are readily illustrated by the tendency to base these population estimates on the archaeological record. Of course this record is not a record of human population sizes and/or distribution but rather is representative of where the best preservation conditions occur and where researchers have looked. For instance, some estimates assume that there were large unpopulated regions. However, as Bednarik (2013) suggests, a sensible null hypothesis would be to assume that by 45,000 years ago all environments of four continents were as densely occupied as their carrying capacities allowed for. In other words, that there was a contiguous population from Africa to Asia. In such a scenario, following thousands of years of regionalisation reticulate introgression, genetic drift and episodic genetic isolation may all have occurred as suggested by Franz Weidenreich's in 1946. Note that the multiregional model of polycentric  human evolution has diagonal lines (Figure 1) which accommodate these conditions.
The Assimilation theory (AM) concedes the occurrence of genetic exchange between so-called "Neanderthals" and "Modern Humans", i.e. it accepts that they are conspecific - able to produce fertile offspring (Bednarik 2011). AM merely claims an in-flow of African genes. All models of reticular gene flow are in fundamental agreement with the original "trellis" diagram of Weidenreich and AM is no exception however positioned. Wrong isn't right.

Figure 1. Franz Weidenreich's trellis diagram 1946.

What the authors attempt to do is show that these population estimates, which more often than not are simply circular references to the dominant and false Pleistocene archaeological narrative, support the idea that cladogenesis may have occurred - resulting in "modern humans". The duration of time required for reproductive isolation to have occurred is suggested to be in the region of 1 million years and therefore the conclusion of the authors' is at odds with their own estimate as Wolpoff notes in his commentary. They are right and wrong for the right reasons.