On Wed, 12 Nov 1997 Steve Meyers <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Andrew Millard's interesting post of 11 Nov concluded:
>
> >Accepting the genetic evidence for a bottleneck mentioned above leads
> >to acceptance of an Out Of Africa II scenario rather than a Multiregional
> >Evolution scenario for the origin of modern humans, and thus to place
> >the dispersal event of interest at c.120-100ka.  Therefore it is amongst
> >archaic Homo sapiens and possibly late Homo erectus *in Africa* that we
> >should seek this diet, and probably in some smaller (but as yet
> >undefined) part of Africa.
>
> I have a question for Andrew:
> Why do you only go as far back as late Homo erectus?

Essentially I was arguing when our *most recent* common ancestral diet
was, which is clearly that of archaic Homo sapiens in Africa.  Homo
erectus is another species, although ancestral, and therefore more removed
from us.  The late African Homo erectus (sensu lato) were presumably
moving towards being like modern humans, but the further back you go, the
more likely it is that the diet was different, particularly given the
glacial-interglacial cycles occurring at the time of H.s. arising from
H.e.  It is quite possible that the speciation involved a dietary shift.
Hence I would prefer to look at our own species if possible, and if not
then the most closely related part of another species.

Of course if you take the regional continuity hypothesis, then the common
ancestral diet is that of early H.e., but, given the apparently rapid
spread of that species around the world, the best we can do might be to
look at late H. habilis.

Andrew

 =========================================================================
 Dr. Andrew Millard                              [log in to unmask]
 Department of Archaeology, University of Durham,   Tel: +44 191 374 4757
 South Road, Durham. DH1 3LE. United Kingdom.       Fax: +44 191 374 3619
                      http://www.dur.ac.uk/~drk0arm/
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