2. Are we smarter than our ancestors?

1 Jean-Jacques Hublin, quoted in Carl Zimmer, ‘Oldest Fossils of Homo Sapiens Found in Morocco, Altering History of Our Species’, New York Times, 7 June 2017.

2 Daniel Richter, Rainer Grün, Renaud Joannes-Boyau, Teresa E. Steele, Fethi Amani, Mathieu Rué, Paul Fernandes, Jean-Paul Raynal, Denis Geraads, Abdelouahed Ben-Ncer, Jean-Jacques Hublin and Shannon P. McPherron, ‘The age of the hominin fossils from Jebel Irhoud, Morocco, and the origins of the Middle Stone Age’, Nature 546, 8 June 2017, p. 293.

3 Rick Potts, quoted in Ed Yong, ‘A Cultural Leap at the Dawn of Humanity’, The Atlantic, 15 March 2018.

4 Ibid.; quote from Alison Brooks.

5 Chris Stringer, quoted in Ian Sample, ‘Skull of Homo erectus throws story of human evolution into disarray’, Guardian, 17 October 2013.

6 Mark Maslin, quoted in ‘Human evolution driven by climate change’, UCL News, 17 October 2013.

7 Susanne Schultz, ibid.

8 See Milford Wolpoff and Rachel Caspari, Race and Human Evolution: A Fatal Attraction, Basic Books, New York, 1998.

9 Milford Wolpoff in an interview, www.grahamhancock.com/interviews/MilfordHWolpoff.php March 2012.

10 Chris Stringer in an interview with Jim Al-Khalili for The Life Scientific, BBC Radio 4, 14 February 2012.

11 Alan Templeton, ‘The “Eve” Hypothesis: A Genetic Critique and Reanalysis, Contemporary Issues Forum: A Current Controversy in Human Evolution’, American Anthropologist 95 (1), March 1993.

12 Eleanor M. L. Scerri, et al., ‘Did Our Species Evolve in Subdivided Populations across Africa, and Why Does It Matter?’, Trends in Ecology and Evolution 33 (8), August 2018, pp. 582–94.

13 David Reich, Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past, Oxford University Press, 2018, p. 17.

14 Scerri, et al., op. cit.

15 Ibid.

16 M. F. Hammer, et al., ‘Genetic Evidence for Archaic Admixture in Africa’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA 108 (2011), pp. 15123–8.

17 J. Lachance, et al., ‘Evolutionary History and Adaptation from High-Coverage Whole-Genome Sequences of Diverse African Hunter-Gatherers’, Cell 250, 2012, pp. 457–69.

18 David Reich, op. cit., p. 209.

19 Ibid., pp. 40–1.

20 S. Sankaaraaraman, et al., ‘The Genomic Landscape of Neanderthal Ancestry in Present-Day Humans’, Nature 507, 2014, pp. 354–7.

21 Emilia Huerta-Sánchez, et al., ‘Altitude adaptation in Tibetans caused by introgression of Denisovan-like DNA’, Nature 512 (7513), 2014, pp. 194–7.

22 Christopher Henshilwood, quoted in John Noble Wilford, ‘In African cave, signs of an ancient paint factory’, New York Times, 11 October 2011.

23 Christopher Henshilwood, et al., ‘Engraved ochres from the Middle Stone Age levels at Blombos Cave, South Africa’, Journal of Human Evolution 57 (2009), pp. 27–47.

24 Ian Tattersall, ‘Africa: continent of origins’. Lecture delivered at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for the Symposium ‘Genesis: Exploration of Origins’, New York, 2004.

25 Christopher Henshilwood, quoted in Ian Sample, ‘Earliest known drawing found on rock in South African cave’, Guardian, 12 September 2018.

26 Francesco d’Errico, et al., ‘An Engraved Bone Fragment From c. 70,000-Year-Old Middle Stone Age Levels at Blombos Cave, South Africa: Implications for the Origin of Symbolism and Language’, Antiquity 75 (2001), pp. 309–18.

27 Christopher Henshilwood, et al., ‘Middle Stone Age shell beads from South Africa’, Science, 304 (2004), p. 404.

28 Steve Connor, ‘Stone-Age humans began using lethal technology 71,000 years ago to fight Neanderthals’, Independent, 7 November 2012.

29 For a detailed account of this African archaeological record, see Sally McBrearty and Alison Brooks, ‘The revolution that wasn’t: a new interpretation of the origin of modern human behavior’, Journal of Human Evolution 39 (5), 2000.

30 Ibid., p. 49.

31 Ibid.

32 Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, Vintage, 2014, p. 13.

33 Ibid., p. 22.

34 Ibid., p. 24.

35 Ibid., p. 23.

36 Ibid.

37 Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel: A Short History of Everybody for the Last 13,000 Years, Vintage, 1998, p. 39.

38 Ibid., p. 40.

39 See J. Doebley, ‘Mapping the genes that made maize’, Trends in Genetics 8, 1992, pp. 302–7; Reich, op. cit., pp. 7–8.

40 Reich, op. cit., p. 16.

41 Ibid., p. 17.

42 G. Cochran and H. Harpending, The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution, Basic Books, New York, 2009, p. 31.

43 H. Harpending, ‘The Biology of Families and the Future of Civilization’, (minute 38), Preserving Western Civilization 2009 Conference.

44 Robinson Meyer, ‘Ancient Humans Lived in China 2.1 Million Years Ago’, The Atlantic, 11 July 2018.

45 C. S. Henshilwood, F. d’Errico, R. Yates, Z. Jacobs, C. Tribolo, G. Duller, N. Mercier, J. C. Sealy, H. Valladas, I. Watts and A. Wintle, ‘Emergence of modern human behavior: Middle Stone Age engravings from South Africa’, Science, 295 (2002), pp. 1278–80.

46 McBrearty and Brooks, op. cit., p. 453.

47 Ibid., pp. 453–563.

48 Ian Tattersall, op. cit.

49 Daniel Everett, Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes: Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle, Profile Books, 2008.

50 Barry Hewlett, Intimate Fathers: The Nature and Content of Aka Pygmy Paternal Infant Care, University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, 1991.

51 Ibid., p. 31.