Fossil Evidence on Human Origins and Dispersal

The close relationship of humans with apes has been recognized for many years. Darwin (1871) was very specific in his inferences about the common ancestor between humans and apes. He recognized the subdivision of the Catarrhini from other primates, and divided it into the monkeys and the anthropomorphous apes, with humans part of the latter group; and he further states that as “chimpanzees and gorillas…are now man's nearest allies, it is somewhat more probable that our early progenitors lived oh the African continent than elsewhere.” Darwin also had some more speculative things to say about early human ancestors, for instance, inferring that they had frugivorous diets (based on analogy of morphological form of teeth), that they were restricted to hot climates (loss of hair), and that they had diverged from the apes by the middle Miocene (because of the known existence of the of the fossil ape Dryopithecus in the...