Homo sapiens in the Eastern Asian Late Pleistocene

Abstract

Recent fossil and genetic data poses new questions about the degree of variability of the Late Pleistocene fossils from China and the possible interaction of modern humans with other archaic hominins. This paper presents a general overview of the variability of the dental fossil record from some key Late Pleistocene localities in China. Our study reveals that despite having similar chronologies, not all the samples present the same suite of derived traits. This finding may reflect complex demographic dynamics with several migrations and dispersals and/or a degree of population substructure similar to that described for the African continent. Simple and linear models to explain the origin and dispersals of Homo sapiens seem to be progressively outdated by the new fossil, demographic and genetic evidence. In addition, we warn about genetic admixture as a possible source of morphological variability and we hypothesize that some skeletal features of Homo floresiensis and Denisovans could be related to their hybridization with other hominin groups.