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

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