Paper short abstract:

Evolutionary changes in Homo, and their relationship with Pleistocene and environmental change, are of wide interest. We approach them via current theoretical perspectives, and local records in Africa, especially Kilombe and Cornelia

Paper long abstract:

Rapid evolutionary changes in Homo, and their relationship with Pleistocene climatic and environmental change, are of wide interest. We approach the topic in relation to current theoretical perspectives, and in terms of local records in East and South Africa, especially those of Kilombe and Cornelia. The core problems are to see whether the evolutionary changes have bene driven along as a direct result of environmental changes, as some authors would argue, or whether they include strong elements of internally driven or autonomous change, resulting in part from competition processes within species, perhaps as much as or in some cases more than external factors. Although resolution of data is limited, such processes can be studied usefully using the parallels of the records in East and South Africa - evident for example in Homo species and artefact traditions such as the Oldowan and Acheulean - and their differences, notable often in the diversification of climate and vegetational patterns, and in the evolution of non-hominin mammalian fauna. Explanations for fast driven changes need to be valid for these wider patterns, as well as for the specific evolution of Homo, which appears to be more rapid than that of most other lineages, but which can be studied in their context. In this paper we consider the relationship of the archaeological record to long and short term environmental changes in the two areas aiming to take into account biases in preservation, and aspects of stasis and of 'progression' in the records.