Reticulate evolution and the human past: an anthropological perspective

Abstract

Context: The evidence is mounting that reticulate (web-like) evolution has shaped the biological histories of many macroscopic plants and animals, including non-human primates closely related to Homo sapiens, but the implications of this non-hierarchical evolution for anthropological enquiry are not yet fully understood. When they are understood, the result may be a paradigm shift in evolutionary anthropology.

Objective/methods: This paper reviews the evidence for reticulated evolution in the non-human primates and human lineage. Then it makes the case for extrapolating this sort of patterning to Homo sapiens and other hominins and explores the implications this would have for research design, method and understandings of evolution in anthropology.

Results/conclusion: Reticulation was significant in human evolutionary history and continues to influence societies today. Anthropologists and human scientists—whether working on ancient or modern populations—thus need to consider the implications of non-hierarchic evolution, particularly where molecular clocks, mathematical models and simplifying assumptions about evolutionary processes are used. This is not just a problem for palaeoanthropology. The simple fact of different mating systems among modern human groups, for example, may demand that more attention is paid to the potential for complexity in human genetic and cultural histories.

• Agency
• complexity
• heterarchy
• hybridization
• palaeoanthropology

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the organizers of the “Human Biology of the Past” symposium for the invitation to present this paper and Sheila Severn-Newton for realizing Figures 3–5 (copyright reserved). ICW gratefully acknowledges support from the European Research Council (ERC Project 269586, DISPERSE), the Holbeck Charitable Trust, the Leathersellers’ Company Charitable Fund, the Department of Archaeology (University of York) research fund and a Charles A. Lockwood Memorial Grant administered by the Primate Society of Great Britain. NPW wishes to thank DG Research for funding the COMPLEX project (308601). We are also grateful to two anonymous reviewers and to Heather Winder for helpful comments on this manuscript.