Before the Neanderthals: Hominid Evolution in Middle Pleistocene Europe

Abstract

Hublin’s (1998) influential “accretion model” essentially places all Middle Pleistocene European fossils in a single variable lineage culminating in Homo neanderthalensis. In this contribution I briefly examine the morphological justification (1) for regarding Homo neanderthalensis as a fully individuated Late Pleistocene entity, and (2) for the coexistence not of one but for two hominid clades (at least) in Europe during the Middle Pleistocene. One of those clades is entirely endemic to Europe and includes, along with the Neanderthals, hominids such as those from Steinheim, Reilingen and the Sima de los Huesos at Atapuerca. The other, broadly contemporaneous with it, shows none of the cranial synapomorphies of this “Neanderthal clade.” Instead, it unites forms such as Mauer, Arago and Petralona with a cosmopolitan group of fossils that includes Kabwe and Bodo in Africa, and Dali and Jinniushan in China. It is to this group that the nomen Homo heidelbergensis applies; and as long as the Neanderthal-related Sima de los Huesos specimens continue to be misguidedly attributed to Homo heidelbergensis, major confusion will reign in European Middle Pleistocene hominid systematics.