Milford H. Wolpoff

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Milford H. Wolpoff (* 1942 in Chicago ) is an American paleoanthropologist . He became internationally known for a special interpretation of human tribal history .

Wolpoff completed his studies in anthropology and mathematics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, first with a bachelor's degree (1964) and then - with the minor subjects zoology and archeology - with a doctoral degree (1969); for his dissertation he dealt with the topic “Metric Trends in Hominid Dental Evolution”. Wolpoff has been Professor of Anthropology at the University of Michigan since 1977 . One of his first PhD students was Tim White .

In the 1970s Wolpoff began to sift through the hominid fossils kept in American, African and European museums - especially from the transition from the Middle Pleistocene to the New Pleistocene - since 1979 also at the Institute for Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing . This resulted in close collaboration with Chinese researchers and a rejection of the theory of punctualism and a reference to the theory of gradualism in the evolution of the hominini .

Deviating from the majority opinion of the international palaeoanthropologist community, which, based on fossil finds and genetic analyzes (" Mitochondrial Eva "), assumes that modern humans ( Homo sapiens ) will emerge before 100,000 to 200,000 in Africa and only then will spread of humans Wolpoff the hypothesis that the African, Asian and European types of Homo sapiens developed in all three continents - largely independently of each other - from the Homo erectus , who immigrated from Africa to Asia and Europe thousands of years earlier . He published this hypothesis of the multiregional origin of modern man in 1984 together with Wu Xinzhi ; it forms the opposite pole to the out-of-Africa theory and is represented by “a small group of passionate supporters”. As early as 1971, Wolpoff had put the stone tools found in Europe in relation to the homo- fossils known up to then and doubted whether the Neanderthals were replaced by Homo sapiens . In 2004, Wolpoff again called for the European type of Homo sapiens to "recognize the Neanderthals as ancestors".

Milford H. Wolpoff is a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science , the American Anthropological Association , the American Association of Physical Anthropologists , the Paleoanthropology Society, and Sigma Xi , among others . He is married to the anthropologist Rachel Caspari , who also teaches at the University of Michigan.

Fonts (selection)

  • Competitive Exclusion among Lower Pleistocene Hominids: The Single Species Hypothesis. In: Man , Volume 6, 1971, pp. 601–614, full text (PDF; 1.9 MB)
  • with Alan G. Thorne: Regional Continuity in Australasian Pleistocene Hominid Evolution. In: American Journal of Physical Anthropology , Vol. 55, 1981, pp. 337-349
  • with Jakov Radovčić, Fred H. Smith and Erik Trinkaus : The Krapina Hominids: An Illustrated Catalog of the Skeletal Collection. Mladost Press and the Croatian Natural History Museum, Zagreb 1988
  • with Alan G. Thorne: Multiregional Origins of Modern Humans. In: Spektrum der Wissenschaft , 6/1992, pp. 80-87
  • With David W. Frayer, Alan G. Thorne, Fred H. Smith, and Geoffrey G. Pope: Theories of Modern Human Origins: the Paleontological Test. In: American Anthropologist , Volume 95, No. 1, 1993, pp. 14–50, doi : 10.1525 / aa.1993.95.1.02a00020 , full text (PDF; 5.1 MB)
  • Human evolution. McGraw Hill Higher Education, 1995, ISBN 978-0070718272
  • Paleoanthropology. McGraw-Hill, 2nd edition 1999, ISBN 978-0070716766
  • with Rachel Caspari: Race and Human Evolution: A Fatal Attraction. Simon & Schuster, 2002, ISBN 978-1416577966
  • with Alan G. Thorne: The multiregional evolution of humans. In: Scientific American , 2/2003, pp. 46–53, full text (PDF; 200 kB)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Milford H. Wolpoff: Metric Trends in Hominid Dental Evolution. (= Case Western Reserve Studies in Anthropology 2). Case Western Reserve University Press, Cleveland 1971, ISBN 978-0829501995
  2. ^ Metric Trends in Hominid Dental Evolution. Review by William W. Howells in: American Anthropologist. Volume 76, No. 1, 1974, pp. 197-198, doi : 10.1525 / aa.1974.76.1.02a01150
  3. ↑ Milford H. Wolpoff, Wu Xinzhi and Alan G. Thorne: Modern Homo sapiens origins: a general theory of hominid evolution involving the fossil evidence from East Asia. In: FH Smith and F. Spencer (Eds.): The Origins of Modern Humans: A World Survey of the Fossil Evidence. Alan R. Liss, New York 1984, pp. 411-483.
  4. ^ Richard Stone: Signs of early Homo sapiens in China? In: Science . Volume 326, 2009, p. 655, doi : 10.1126 / science.326_655a ; Literally: "A rival idea with a small band of ardent backers holds that those who left Africa interbred with humans they met on other continents."
  5. ↑ Milford M. Wolpoff, David S. Brose: Early Upper Paleolithic Men and Late Middle Paleolithic Tools. In: American Anthropologist. Volume 73, 1971, pp. 1156–1194, doi : 10.1525 / aa.1971.73.5.02a00160 , full text (PDF; 4.9 MB)
  6. ↑ Milford Wolpoff et al .: Why not the Neandertals? In: World Archeology. Volume 36, No. 4, 2004, p. 538, doi : 10.1080 / 0043824042000303700
personal data
SURNAME Wolpoff, Milford H.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American paleoanthropologist
DATE OF BIRTH 1942
PLACE OF BIRTH Chicago