Lumpers and splinters

Lumper is a redirect to this article. On the German Roman Catholic theologian see Gottfried Lumper .

Spread and further development of the genus Homo , view 1 (lumper):
a long existing species with various regional variants

Propagation and development of the genus Homo , View 2 (Splitter):
regional and temporal variations are as independent chronospecies established

Lumpers and splinters are two names for the representatives of opposing approaches in the classification of individual cases, which must be assigned according to strictly defined categories. Lumper assume that the differences between the entities to be classified are not as great and not as significant as the similarities and therefore tolerate a relatively large range of variation. Splitters, on the other hand, establish narrow definitions for their categories and create new, additional categories if individual cases do not meet the existing definitions.

Lumper is derived from the English verb to lump ' to put together' , ' to lump together' , Splitter is derived from the English verb to split 'to divide something' , ' to split up'. The current use of the pair of opposites lumper / splitter goes back to a publication by the American human geneticist Victor Almon McKusick in 1969.

Lumpers and splinters are known from numerous specialist areas (see, for example, Amerindian languages ), they are often also referred to in German with these terms - in the absence of a German equivalent.

Paleoanthropology

In paleoanthropology , lumpers or splitters describe researchers with opposing approaches to hypothesizing the origin of species . As LUMPUR those researchers are called, which defined by them chronospecies attribute a geologically long existence and therefore define a few chronospecies. As Splitter those researchers are called, defining a plurality of consecutive chronospecies which have consequently each is only one geologically short period of time.

Examples of the consequences of the two different approaches are the numerous, differing names for fossils of the genus Homo from the epoch from around two million years ago to around 150,000 years ago. Certain fossils recovered in Spain are assigned to Homo erectus (Lumper), Homo heidelbergensis or Homo antecessor (splinters) , depending on the researchers' point of view . Other fossils are sometimes referred to as archaic Homo sapiens (lumper), and sometimes as Homo rhodesiensis (splinters).

The different perspectives of paleoanthropologists have their origin in the 1940s, when it became common to name each newly discovered hominine fossil with its own species or even generic name. Ernst Mayr rearranged this “confusing variety of names” in 1950 by arguing that the ancestors of Homo sapiens had a similarly variable body structure as the now-humans and that it was therefore inappropriate to emphasize the differences between individual fossils. Therefore, he called the oldest finds from South Africa as Homo transvaalensis (today: Australopithecus africanus ); between this species and Homo sapiens he placed only one species, Homo erectus , in which he grouped Pithecanthropus erectus , Sinanthropus pekinensis and the lower jaw of Mauer (the holotype of Homo heidelbergensis ). His specifications, which among other things assumed a straightforward transformation from the older species to the next younger, were not supported by clear descriptions of the characteristics ( diagnoses ) that distinguish these three species . For this reason, and to the extent that the view later prevailed that there were also extinct "side branches" in the human family tree , many researchers again tended to emphasize the differences between the fossils and subsequently to increase the variety of names again .

literature

• Emiliano Bruner: The Species Concept as a Cognitive Tool for Biological Anthropology. In: American Journal of Primatology. Volume 75, No. 1, 2013, pp. 10-15, DOI: 10.1002 / ajp.22087

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Victor McKusick: On lumpers and splitters, or the nosology of genetic disease. In: Perspectives in Biology and Medicine. Volume 12, 1969, pp. 298-312; Full text (PDF file; 1.9 MB)
2. ↑ Jeffrey H. Schwartz , Ian Tattersall : Fossil evidence for the origin of Homo sapiens. In: American Journal of Physical Anthropology. Volume 143, Supplement 51 (= Yearbook of Physical Anthropology ), 2010, pp. 94-121, doi: 10.1002 / ajpa.21443 .
3. ^ Ernst Mayr: Taxonomic categories in fossil hominids. In: Cold Spring Harbor Symposia on Quantitative Biology 1950. Volume 15, 1950, pp. 109-118, doi: 10.1101 / SQB.1950.015.01.013 .