Rethinking "Out of Africa"

The video and the text of a talk by Christopher Stringer, a paleoanthropologist, who is himself a good example of a cultured and evolved man, which is to say that he is clear-headed, generous, willing to reconsider new facts, and persistent.

I'm thinking a lot about species concepts as applied to humans, about the "Out of Africa" model, and also looking back into Africa itself. I think the idea that modern humans originated in Africa is still a sound concept. Behaviorally and physically, we began our story there, but I've come around to thinking that it wasn't a simple origin. Twenty years ago, I would have argued that our species evolved in one place, maybe in East Africa or South Africa. There was a period of time in just one place where a small population of humans became modern, physically and behaviourally. Isolated and perhaps stressed by climate change, this drove a rapid and punctuational origin for our species. Now I don’t think it was that simple, either within or outside of Africa...

Edge.org [11.12.11]