The revolution that wasn't: a new interpretation of the origin of modern human behavior.

Until recently, the Y chromosome seemed to fulfil the role of juvenile delinquent among human chromosomes — rich in junk, poor in useful attributes, reluctant to socialize with its neighbours and with an inescapable tendency to degenerate. The availability of the near-complete chromosome sequence, plus many new polymorphisms, a highly resolved phylogeny and insights into its mutation processes, now provide new avenues for investigating human evolution. Y-chromosome research is growing up.

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The human Y chromosome: an evolutionary marker comes of age

The origin of living Homo sapiens has once again been the subject of much debate. Genetic data on present human population relationships and data from the Pleistocene fossil hominid record are used to compare two contrasting models for the origin of modern humans. Both genetics and paleontology support a recent African origin for modern humans rather than a long period of multiregional evolution accompanied by gene flow.

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/239/4845/1263.full.pdf

Genetic and fossil evidence for the origin of modern humans

Hominids—both living and past—exhibit considerable variation in body size and shape. Both theoretical considerations and empirical observations indicate that some of this variation may be attributable to climatic adaptation. Application of the simple thermoregulatory principle of increasing and decreasing body surface area/body mass in hot and cold climates, respectively, may explain the major systematic differences in body form between living and fossil hominids inhabiting tropical and higher latitude regions of the world. Consideration of potential climatic influences on morphology has important ramifications for reconstructing body form and behavior of past hominids, interpreting geographic and temporal variability and migrational events, explaining the origins and perfection of hominid bipedalism, and better understanding changes in brain size and encephalization during hominid evolution. © 1994 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/ajpa.1330370605

Morphological adaptation to climate in modern and fossil hominids

Late Pleistocene human population bottlenecks, volcanic winter, and differentiation of modern humans☆

The Qafzeh1 and Skhul2,3 caves in Israel have yielded the remains of over 30 hominids. Despite their association with Mousterian deposits, these have been recognized as forerunners of other Homo sapiens sapiens on morphological grounds and have been called 'Proto-Cro-Magnons'1. Other west Asian caves (Amud, Tabun, Kebara and Shanidar) have yielded skeletal remains of Neanderthals associated with similar Middle Palaeolithic deposits. The lack of precise dates for these deposits has made it difficult to ascertain which of the two hominids was present first in the area1'4–9. Recently we reported an age of ≈60 kyr for the Neanderthal burial at Kebara6 (Israel). Here we report thermolumines-cence dates for 20 specimens of burnt flints recovered from the hominid-bearing layers of Qafzeh1. The dates, which range from ∼90 to 100 kyr bp, provide an independent measure for the great antiquity of southwest Asian modern humans which have previously been dated to ∼40 kyr bp on the basis of European models7–9 . Our results also exclude a close phylogenetic relationship between the Cro-Magnons and Neanderthals1,4–6.

G. Valladas

Papers

Thermoluminescence dating of Mousterian Troto-Cro-Magnon' remains from Israel and the origin of modern man

TL Dates of Burnt Flints from Jelinek's Excavations at Tabun and their Implications

Flint thermoluminescence dates from the CFR laboratory at Gif: Contributions to the study of the chronology of the middle palaeolithic

On the dose-rate dependence of the thermoluminescence response of quartz

A simple semi-automatic TL apparatus of new design.