The Problem of Species and its Handling by Anthropologists

Abstract

The unclear concept of “species” as a category of biological research is discussed as specifically applied to human evolution. The concept is a rigid 18th century pre-evolutionary category that complicates biological thinking about dynamic processes of evolution. Currently, there are 23 defintions of “species” used by biologists. With the above in mind, a discussion of the hominin fossil record is presented in terms of the number of purported “species” into which the fossils can be straightjacketed. The conclusion is that the simplest hypothesis, that of a single human species being present at any point in time during the last few million years, cannot be reliably falsified with the evidence currently available.

Keywords: Ancient DNA, Darwin, Diversity, Linnaeus, Mayr, Palaeoanthropology, Species definition, Variability.

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