Milford H. Wolpoff

Milford H. Wolpoff ( born 1942 in Chicago) is an American paleoanthropologist. He became internationally known through a special interpretation of the evolutionary history of man.

Wolpoff completed his studies in anthropology and mathematics at the University of Illinois at Urbana -Champaign with a Bachelor's degree first (1964 ) and then - with minors in zoology and archeology - with the Doctor degree (1969 ) from; for his thesis he dealt with the topic "Metric Trends in Hominid Dental Evolution ." Since 1977, Wolpoff is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Michigan. One of his first PhD was Tim White.

In the 1970s, Wolpoff, held under custody in American, African and European museums hominid fossils began - especially from the transition from the Middle Pleistocene to Late Pleistocene - to sift, since 1979 also at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing. From this grew a close collaboration with Chinese researchers as well as a rejection of the theory of punctuated equilibrium and a reference to the theory of gradualism in the evolution of Hominini.

Notwithstanding the majority opinion of the international paleoanthropologists community that emanates because of the fossil record and genetic analyzes ( " Mitochondrial Eve" ) from an emergence of modern humans (Homo sapiens ) in front of 100,000 to 200,000 in Africa and only then following propagation of man, represents Wolpoff the hypothesis of African, Asian and European type of Homo sapiens had in all three continents - developed previously immigrated from the year hundreds of thousands from Africa to Asia and Europe, Homo erectus - largely independently. This hypothesis of the multiregional origin of modern humans, he published in 1984, together with Wu xinzhi; it forms the antithesis to the out- of-Africa theory and is represented " by a small group of passionate supporters ." In 1971, Wolpoff had the stone tools found in Europe set and doubted that Neanderthals were replaced by Homo sapiens in relation to the previously known Homo fossils. 2004 Wolpoff called in relation to the European type of Homo sapiens again, " the Neanderthals recognized as ancestors ."

Milford H. Wolpoff is a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Anthropological Association, the American Association of Physical Anthropologists, the Paleoanthropology Society and Sigma Xi of. He is married to the anthropologist Rachel Caspari, who also teaches at the University of Michigan.

Works

• Competitive exclusion among Lower Pleistocene Hominids: The Single Species Hypothesis. In: Man, Volume 6, 1971, p 601-614, Full Text (PDF; 1.9 MB)
• Alan G. Thorne: Regional continuity in Australasian Pleistocene hominid evolution. In: American Journal of Physical Anthropology, Volume 55, 1981, p 337-349
• With Jakov Radovčić, Fred H. Smith and Erik Trinkaus: The Krapina Hominids: An Illustrated Catalog of the Skeletal Collection. Mladost Press and the Croatian Natural History Museum, Zagreb 1988
• Alan G. Thorne: Multi Regional origin of modern humans. In: Scientific American, 6/ 1992, p 80-87
• With David W. Frayer, Alan G. Thorne, Fred H. Smith and Geoffrey G. Pope: Theories of Modern Human Origins: the Paleontological test. In: American Anthropologist, Volume 95, No. 1, 1993, pp. 14-50, doi: 10.1525/aa.1993.95.1.02a00020, Full Text (PDF; 5.1 MB)
• Human Evolution. McGraw Hill Higher Education, 1995, ISBN 978-0070718272
• Paleoanthropology. McGraw -Hill, 2nd edition 1999, ISBN 978-0070716766
• With Rachel Caspari: Race and Human Evolution: A Fatal Attraction. Simon & Schuster, 2002, ISBN 978-1416577966