RETURN TO THE HOMINID JOURNEY....
This, of course, is but one story of modern human evolution, a story that multiregionalists energetically combat. None seem to relish this more than Milford Wolpoff, an anthropologist at the University of Michigan. Where Stringer and others see marked physical differences and evolutionary gaps separating modern from pre-modern people, Wolpoff sees similarities and continuity. Where they see different human groups -- such as Neanderthals and modern humans -- as separate species, he views everything from Homo erectus through Homo sapiens as a single entity, joined under the "big tent" of multiregional evolution. In Wolpoff's view, although different populations have developed distinct regional features, human groups have been in enough genetic contact to maintain the species' integrity for more than a million years.
To prove his point, Wolpoff notes what may seem a trifling bit of anatomy: the rim of the opening of a nerve canal in our lower jaw. In most pre-Neanderthal people and Homo sapiens, he says, this structure is an oval. However, in both Neanderthals and many of the first modern Europeans who supposedly replaced them, it forms a jagged, irregular shape. Wolpoff says it's unlikely that such a trait evolved twice by sheer chance alone. "How could people come and totally replace another group but still pick up this meaningless characteristic?" he asks. "You may as well believe it happened because Tinkerbell came along with her little wand and pinged them on the head." Based on this and other anatomical evidence, he reasons that Neanderthals and modern Europeans must be genetically linked, either through direct descent or interbreeding.
What's more, as he reminds his opponents, the story of Neanderthals and moderns in Europe is but a small piece of the overall picture of human evolution. The fate of the Neanderthals (whatever it was) is hardly resounding proof of replacement across the globe. "Even if Europe was a case of total replacement, and every Neanderthal was gunned down in his bed by people sweeping through with AK-47s, it still wouldn't disprove multiregionalism," Wolpoff says. "It would just mean that Europe has replacement. But you still have to think about the rest of the world."
Wolpoff believes the best evidence for multiregionalism comes from Asia. He and Alan Thorne, an anthropologist at the Australian National University, contend that fossils from China, Indonesia, New Guinea and Australia, when lined up by age, show a smooth, unbroken transformation from Homo erectus into modernity, with no sudden influx of distinctly African features at any time. They argue that many features seen in Indonesian people today, such as a rolled ridge on the eye sockets, can be traced clear back to Dubois' Java Man.