Multiregional Hypothesis

The multiregional hypothesis or multiple origins was the primary complete theory of the origin of the modern humans.  The Multiregional hypothesis history goes back more than fifty years, to Wcidcnrcich's formulation. It tries to describe not only about the origin of the Homo sapiens, however also the survival of the anatomical diversity in the modern geographical populations. According to the multiregional hypothesis, this diversity occurred from the evolution of the individual traits (via genetic drift and adaptation) in several different geographical areas which became established in the early populations of the Homoerectus and continued through to the modem people and this persistence is called as regional continuity.

In its original formulation, the multiregional hypothesis posited limited gene flow (mating) between different geo­graphical populations and was therefore dubbed the can­delabra hypothesis. It has since been modified, with gene flow between populations now viewed as an important com­ponent. This most recent formulation, developed principally by Alan Thome ( of  The Australian  National University, Canberra) and Milford Wolpoff ( of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor), is now known as the multiregional evolution hypothesis.  It views the erectus to sapiens transformation as a balance between the maintenance of distinctive regional traits in the anatomy through partial population isolation and the maintenance of a generically coherent network of population throughout the Old World through significant gene flow. The recent, single origin hypothesis has a shorter history, dating back to Louis Leak’s ideas developed in the 1960s. Leakey considered the Early and Middle Pleistocene hominis of Africa to be better candidates for modern human ancestry than the Homoerectus fossils of Asia; the latter, he said, were an evolutionary dead end. W.W. Howells later dubbed the notion of a single origin the Noah’s ark model. The most extreme form of this recent African origin ( or out of Africa) hypothesis, which assumes substantial  replacement  of archaic population by invading  modern humans , is most  closely associated with Chris Stringer, of the Natural History Museum, London. Multiregional hypothesis accepts some interbreeding between archaic and early anatomically modern population but sees its long term effects as minor. The hypothesis views the establishment of regional anatomical traits in today’s geographic populations as the result of adaptation and genetic drift in local population during the last 100,000 years.

Questionnaire:

• What is multiregional hypothesis?  Explain.