quote:
IT requires interbreeding amongst the various Homos. We have no way, as far as I know, to determine if the offspring would be viable, never mind that they actually did cross.
Actually, it doesn't require breeding among different species.
What the MH proposes, if I understand it properly (and I don't buy into it myself, by the way -- but I'm not an anthropologist), is that the world-wide population of
Homo erectus evolved into
H. sapiens. Basically, it proposes that gene flow was high enough throughout the world-wide population that whenever an innovation toward
H. sapiens arose somewhere, it spread throughout the world wide
H. whatever population. So the world-wide population was, at all times, a single inter-breeding species.
The regional differences (like the modern Asian characteristics allegedly seen in Asian specimens of
H. erectus) would be those traits that, because of random chance, never propagated beyond the more-or-less local population.
Actually, if their god makes better pancakes, I'm totally switching sides. --
Charley the Australopithecine
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