Beyond Regional Centrism: No Exceptions, Only Universals

Core Proposition Evolution recognizes no privileged regions, only universal rules. The mid-latitude oscillation belt (35°–40°N) was the core crucible of modern human evolution — not as a variant of any regional centrism, but as a necessary corollary of Pleistocene biogeographic universals. Abstract Modern human origins research has long been polarized between the African Replacement (RAO) model and the East Asian continuity hypothesis. This chapter argues that both frameworks share a common methodological flaw: geographic centrism — the attribution of evolutionary privilege to specific regions without independent biogeographic justification. Drawing on the Intermediate Disturbance Hypothesis from ecology and established principles of biogeographic constraint, we demonstrate that the 35°–40°N latitudinal belt functioned as the primary "tempering zone" during the Pleistocene — not because of any inherent superiority of its landmass, but because its glacial-interglacial temperature amplitude (6–12°C, corresponding to S-values of 0.6–0.8) falls within the optimal range for accelerated evolutionary change. By contrast, tropical Africa (S = 0.2–0.3) experienced evolutionary stasis, while high-latitude Europe (S = 0.8–0.95) suffered recurrent population bottlenecks and marginal extinction. We review seven independent and interlocking hard-boundary barriers — climatic, hydrological, physiological, faunal, and demographic — that collectively falsify the “Out-of-Africa” narrative on biogeographic grounds. We conclude that Homo sapiens verus — characterized by advanced cognition and complex culture — is not the exclusive product of any single continent, but rather the outcome of universal evolutionary forces operating under specific latitudinal and climatic constraints.The LSED framework is temporally invariant: under LGM conditions, dispersal is barred by hard biogeographic boundaries; under interglacial conditions (e.g., MIS 5e), outgoing populations remain untempered and must undergo mid-latitude tempering to achieve the transition to Homo sapiens verus. The argument is thus structurally independent of the choice of exit time.