Hypothesis compatibility, hypothesis testing, and Homo sapiens evolution in Southern Eurasia

In the past decade, new fossil sites combined with advances in genomics have led western paleoanthropologists to focus on the Asian evidence for human evolution in a way not seen since the 1920s. Back then, European scientists fanned out across Southern, Southeast, and Eastern Asia in search of proof for Osborne’s “Central Asian Theory” whereby Homo sapiens evolved in the Central Asian plateau. In contrast, today’s research starts with the idea of a primarily African origin for our species, and tends to retrofit the Asian data into associated assumptions. Here I demonstrate that while the Asian data are compatible with ideas that dominate current scientific discourse—such as an African origin for Homo sapiens and popular renderings of Denisovans—they have not been duly tested against the alternative models posited by Asian scholars in the scientific literature for decades. I expand upon these models to give voice to these scholars, and to encourage inquiry into hypotheses of our species’ evolution in Southern Asia and Oceania that challenge the current canon.