In an interesting piece in The Guardian on possible proto-gorilla/proto-human hybridization, the journalist lobs this grenade:
But now that the once popular “single-origin model” of the evolution of Homo sapiens has been disproved, and the previously controversial “multiregional hypothesis” has been proven by DNA evidence, perhaps we need a rethink. According to the multiregional hypothesis all modern people, including modern Africans, are the descendents of breeding and hybridising between separate ancestral groups, all at various stages of evolutionary development.
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Evolutionary lice research has helped palaeoanthropologists, including Stringer, to embrace the multi-regional hypothesis. “I’m sure there is plenty more to come from the lice research,” he told me. We know that it took 4m years, 5-9m years ago, for our ancestors to completely split from archaic chimps. During that time hybrids would have been born that mated both with our ancestors and ancestral chimps.
The issue here is semantics. I think regular readers of this weblog will know to be more cautious than to contend that the “single-origin model” of our species has been “disproved,” while its inverse has been “proven.” Those are strong words in science. Additionally, I seriously doubt that Chris Stringer would identify as a multi-regionalist. Some wires …