Posted: Mon 23 May 2005 15:00 Post subject: Race and Human Evolution: A Fatal Attraction
Book Review:
By Milford Wolpoff and Rachel Caspari. Simon and Schuster, $25; 448 pp., illus.
Its title notwithstanding, this book isn't really about "race" as such. Rather, it is an attempt by two leading advocates of "multiregional continuity" to establish respectable historical antecedents for their theory, currently one of the two major competing models of later human evolution. Multiregional continuity holds that the roots of our species run very deep in time in various regions of the Old World. The competing notion is that Homo sapiens arose only within the last 200,000 years, migrating out of Africa to replace more primitive human relatives that had already populated Europe and Asia.
Paleoanthropologists Milford Wolpoff and Rachel Caspari, of the University of Michigan, argue that Homo sapiens did not make a recent appearance on the evolutionary stage but instead showed up almost two million years ago in the guise of what they used to call Homo erectus: a big-faced, technologically primitive hominid of only modest brain size, whose principal resemblance to us was a body of reasonably modern proportions. Now, however, Wolpoff and Caspari prefer to regard this highly archaic form as a variant of Homo sapiens, taking the view that all of the many dramatic anatomical and behavioral developments in human evolution during the last two million years took place within a single species--our own. The rationale for this claim is that the invention of human culture allowed the suspension of various normal patterns of evolutionary change, most notably the budding off of new species from old ones. Quite simply, Wolpoff and Caspari believe that humans have been able to play the evolutionary game under a new set of rules.
The authors delve deeply into the histories of physical anthropology and evolutionary biology in search of an intellectual genealogy for their viewpoint. They exhume a great deal of fascinating material, especially about the monogenist/polygenist debates of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (concerning single or multiple origins for modern human "races") and turn-of-the-century German evolutionary and genetic thinking. Only in the 1930s and 1940s, however, do they find a true progenitor for their views: German anatomist Franz Weidenreich, the foremost student of Peking man Homo erectus fossils. Like Wolpoff and Caspari, Weidenreich regarded these early humans as a form of Homo sapiens and saw evidence for the persistence, over vast spans of time, of separate but interlinked human lineages in different parts of the world.
The heart of their argument, however, lies in their perception that various continuities in skeletal anatomy characterize the human fossil records in particular regions of the world. Wolpoff and Caspari do not dwell much on the details, but early in the book, for instance, they recount how, many years ago, Wolpoff was amazed by how closely his reconstruction of the million-year-old Sangiran 17 cranium from Java resembled those of the 10,000-year-old modern humans from Australia's Kow Swamp. The latter, he felt, could have been derived from the former purely by a reduction in robustness and an increase in brain size--seemingly inexorable trends operating elsewhere in the world at the same time.
The problem, however, is that even after reconstruction, the face of Sangiran 17 remains massively distorted. For example, the unfortunate individual could not have breathed through the nose with which it is currently endowed. Nonetheless, we are told that the ancient Javans are the precursors of the modern Australians, and we are provided with "proof" in the form of a drawing of these two skulls in which they are compared from the angle most advantageous to the authors' point of view.
Similarly, Wolpoff and Caspari see continuity in European fossils, with Neanderthals as an intermediate link in the chain that led to modern Europeans. They believe that because they had fairly bulky brow ridges over the tops of their eye sockets and (very occasionally) braincases that bulged at the back, some (actually few) of the earliest modern Europeans were descended from the Neanderthals. But such a gestalt assessment of anatomy is not adequate. In all modern people, the brow ridges, if any, are formed differently from those of Neanderthals, and any protruding at the rear of the skull bears none of the anatomical hallmarks of the Neanderthals.
To their credit, Wolpoff and Caspari are careful to disavow any implication, that the various extant human races have existed as discrete entities throughout the past two million years; rather, during this time "humans have been a single widespread polytypic species [that is, a species with distinctive regional variants], with multiple, constantly evolving, interlinked populations, continually dividing and merging" (italics theirs). They are thus emphatic that the continuities they see in some physical features do not mean the long-term persistence of discrete, recognizable human populations.
Still, that two such thoughtful, erudite, and influential scholars could claim that the extraordinary diversity of anatomies seen among the fossil hominids of the past two million years should be brushed under the rug of a single species is as much proof as one could ever wish of the extreme insularity of the science of paleoanthropology. Unlike other branches of paleontology, paleoanthropology is descended from human, not comparative, anatomy--an inheritance that has brought with it an exquisite sensitivity to variation among individuals within species. To recognize such variation is a salutary thing, but postwar paleoanthropologists have too often fallen prey to the notion that individual variation is almost the only kind of variation that we see in the human fossil record.
As a result, the literature of paleoanthropology is cluttered with references to various "archaic" forms of Homo sapiens that other paleontologists would assign to distinct species. Not that paleontologists working with other fossil animal groups ignore individual variation, but they are also concerned with the patterns of. diversity that signal the presence of discrete species. And if we use normal paleontological criteria, we find that extinct humans present a routine example of such diversity. Modern human beings are the only surviving twig on a great, branching bush of evolutionary experimentation.
No surprise, then, that the theory of multiregional continuity represents only a sectarian reading of the human fossil record. But attack is the best form of defense, and along the way Wolpoff and Caspari take liberal swipes at viewpoints other than their own. A particular target is the "African Eve" hypothesis preached by many molecular biologists, who trace an unbroken line of descent among all living humans to a female, probably a Homo sapiens, who lived in Africa about 100,000 to 200,000 years ago. (Despite the implications of the name, this Eve was nothing more than one member of the population that gave rise to us all.) This notion has been widely debated, and Wolpoff and Caspari score some significant hits. Nonetheless, the ultimate repository of our evolutionary history is our fossil record, and despite Wolpoff and Caspari's assertions to the contrary, right now the fossil evidence suggests a relatively recent origin for Homo sapiens (perhaps 120,000 to 150,000 years ago), most likely in Africa.
This new species spread rapidly and, as successful species normally do, developed regional variants during the climatic vicissitudes of the last ice age. More recently, in contrast, the predominant (and equally normal) process has been one of fusion among those variants, which is why no modern systematist would attempt the hopeless task of classifying them. Here is where Wolpoff and Caspari join the mainstream of paleontological thinking, for they recognize, as clearly as anyone, that intraspecific variants are ephemera: diversifying, combining, and disappearing in an endless, braided stream. Hence, possibly, the Fatal Attraction of their book's subtitle, which echoes the human misery that a fixation on the fictitious purity of race has brought in its wake.
The reason I asked is because the reviewer is incredibly gentle and delicate in exposing the Wolpoffs. Tatersall is a good guy. He teaches but is also the resident paleoanthropology guru at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. He was the first to highlight the strong evidence (now widely accepted) that our species is only about 100 ky old, although anatomically identical humans had been around since about 200 ky ago. The difference is language and all that that implies. We can speak; they could not.
Wolpoff and Caspari (Wolpoff's wife) are the last two surviving adherents of the notion that we evolved simultaneously all over the world (Chinese from Chinese apes, Europeans from European apes, Africans from African apes, Australians from Australian apes, etc.) and that there was no dispersal of our species out of Africa 60 ky ago. These two die-hards have made it clear in the literature that no evidence could ever convince them to alter their beliefs. They deny that DNA is real. They have almost become a laughing stock in the world of paleoanthropology and remain known to the public only because ignorant journalists are ordered by even more ignorant editors to always get both sides of every story.
(This is also why George W. Gill of the U. of Wisconsin is invariably quoted whenever the "race" notion is discussed. He is the last living anthropologist who believes that there are three "races" and that they are biological sub-species. He is probably the only sympathetic colleague that the Wolpoffs have left.)
The reason I asked is because the reviewer is incredibly gentle and delicate in exposing the Wolpoffs. Tatersall is a good guy. He teaches but is also the resident paleoanthropology guru at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. He was the first to highlight the strong evidence (now widely accepted) that our species is only about 100 ky old, although anatomically identical humans had been around since about 200 ky ago. The difference is language and all that that implies. We can speak; they could not.
Wolpoff and Caspari (Wolpoff's wife) are the last two surviving adherents of the notion that we evolved simultaneously all over the world (Chinese from Chinese apes, Europeans from European apes, Africans from African apes, Australians from Australian apes, etc.) and that there was no dispersal of our species out of Africa 60 ky ago. These two die-hards have made it clear in the literature that no evidence could ever convince them to alter their beliefs. They deny that DNA is real. They have almost become a laughing stock in the world of paleoanthropology and remain known to the public only because ignorant journalists are ordered by even more ignorant editors to always get both sides of every story.
(This is also why George W. Gill of the U. of Wisconsin is invariably quoted whenever the "race" notion is discussed. He is the last living anthropologist who believes that there are three "races" and that they are biological sub-species. He is probably the only sympathetic colleague that the Wolpoffs have left.)
Thanks for clarifying this for me. The world of academia can be confusing with everyone proving, then disproving each other's findings.
Also, sorry about the reference, I'll remember next time to include the proper credits.
The world of academia can be confusing with everyone proving, then disproving each other's findings.
This is a bit off-topic, but it gives me a chance to philosophize. I agree that changes in what the "experts" say are unsettling to most people. But it is not all of academia that triggers this discomfort. The humanities have not changed what they teach for many decades. It is only the hard sciences that change what they teach whenever new evidence arises.
Most people are uncomfortable with this shifting because most people rely on The Voice of Authority. For example, few people are willing to personally examine the tabulated composition of Neandertal DNA in order to see how much it differs from human DNA. Scientists agree that Neandertals were a different species from us and could not possibly have interbred with us. A dozen different tests so far of different Neandertal specimens' DNA have shown them to have been almost as different from us as chimps are. Instead, most people say, "the textbooks say that Neandertals were a separate species, so this is good enough for me."
But science as a learning technique gives no weight to The Voice of Authority. None. And so, if tomorrow someone were to find the DNA of a Neandertal/human hybrid in some ancient bones, then every follower of the scientific method would immediately switch sides in the debate without moment's hesitation.
Thomas Henry Huxley, the famous British biologist, once noted that the greatest tragedy of science was when a beautiful theory was slain by an ugly fact. Tragedy it may be, and definitely unsettling to a public that wants to depend on science as The Voice of Authority. But that is the way that science works. Facts alone rule.
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