About Hofmeyr
The article sort of has me stumped.
How is it that a paper about the European affinities of a South African skull doesn't mention nonmetric traits that forensic anthropologists use to distinguish Europeans from Africans?
The morphometrics are interesting and all, but isn't a little odd that 13 out of the 19 cranial landmarks measured are on the temporal bone?
That clustering pattern (Hofmeyr clusters with Upper Paleolithic Europeans, these together are an outgroup to more recent people): Did you notice that this is exactly the same pattern that is supposed to indicate population replacement when Neandertals end up as the outgroup? Maybe Mesolithic people swept through the world replacing Upper Paleolithic people?
Or maybe we should rethink those cluster diagrams?
References:
Grine FE, Bailey RM, Harvati K, Nathan RP, Morris AG, Henderson GM, Ribot I, Pike AWG. 2007. Late Pleistocene skull from Hofmeyr, South Africa, and modern human origins. Science 315:226-229. doi:10.1126/science.1136294
John Hawks Department of Anthropology
University of Wisconsin—Madison
Copyright © 2007 John Hawks