Lumpers and splitters

Lumper and Splitter are two different names for the representatives of contrasting approaches to the classification of individual cases that need to be allocated in accordance with strictly defined categories. Lumper assume that the differences between the entities to be classified are not as big and not as significant as the similarities and therefore tolerate a relatively wide range of variation. Splitter, however, put precise definitions as for their categories, and create new, additional categories for individual cases do not meet the existing definitions.

Lumper is derived from the verb to lump ( " put together, throw in a pot " ), cluster is derived from to split ( " divide something split "). Today's use of opposites pair lumper / splitter goes back to a publication of the U.S. human geneticist Victor Almon McKusick from the year 1969.

Lumper and splitter are made of numerous specialist areas known (see, for example, Native American languages), are not always named in German with these designations.

Paleoanthropology

In paleoanthropology referred lumper or splitter researchers with conflicting approaches when setting up hypotheses about the origin of the species. As Lumper those researchers are referred to, the attribute defined by them Chrono species a geologically long existence and therefore define a few Chrono species. As a splinter those researchers are referred to, which define a plurality of successive Chrono species which have consequently each exist only a geologically short period of time.

An example of the consequences of the two different approaches are numerous, differing names for the genus Homo fossils from the period of around two million years ago until about 150,000 years ago. To be certain, salvaged in Spain Fossils - depending on the perspective of the researchers - to Homo erectus found ( Lumper ) to Homo heidelbergensis or Homo antecessor ( splitter). Other fossils are referred to in part as archaic Homo sapiens ( lumper ), partly as Homo rhodesiensis ( splitter).

The different perspectives of paleoanthropologists have to call their origins in the 1940s, when it became customary each newly discovered hominin fossil with its own kind or even genus name. This " confusing names Diversity" arranged Ernst Mayr 1950 new, by arguing the ancestors of Homo sapiens would have a similar variable physique obsessed as the now - people and that it was therefore inappropriate to emphasize the differences between individual fossils. Therefore he called the oldest, originating from South Africa finds as Homo transvaalensis (today: Australopithecus africanus); between this type and Homo sapiens, he placed only a single species, Homo erectus, Pithecanthropus erectus in which he, Sinanthropus pekinensis and the lower jaw of Mauer summarized ( the holotype of Homo heidelbergensis ). Its provisions which, among other things, a linear transformation of the older style to the next younger subordinate, however, were not underpinned by clear descriptions of these three types distinguishing characteristics ( diagnoses). Therefore, and to the extent that in the later the view prevailed that there was very probably extinct " side branches " in the human family tree, several researchers have tended again to emphasize the differences between the fossils and in consequence the name diversity to increase again.