Fossil remains and genetic data suggest that modern humans come from Africa, and in the last decade anthropologists, archeologists, linguists and other scientists have tended to identify our species' biological origin with the origin of modern intelligence.
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In sum, certain behavioral innovations seem to appear in Africa between 10,000 and 30,000 years before Neanderthals express them. But I doubt that this gap is evidence of different cognitive abilities. . .This suggests that the trajectory of we "moderns" in our transformations since the end of the Ice Age has varied enormously in material culture. Future archeologists would do well not to seek an explanation of this variation in terms of visible differences in our skeletal biology. "Modern" behavior may have appeared in different regions and among different groups of humans, much as would happen later in history with the inventions of agriculture, writing and transport.
We're not entirely certain that anthropology has been all about making a clear and precise distinction between modern Homo sapiens sapiens and everyone else. Generally speaking, the history of anthropology has been one of constantly lowering the barriers between people and other species. True, thought lately has tended towards the idea that anatomically modern humans originated in Africa and swept out with the nearly full complement of supposedly "modern" traits associated with them/us.
Well, now that we write it down, maybe he does have a point there. However, it doesn't seem to us to be that remarkable that other species would have several traits in common with H.s.s even though they did not express them to the degree or number that H.s.s. has. That is, one can find numerous instances of animal life that has some component of what was previously thought of as exclusively human traits (we're thinking of leaf-cutter ants and their rudimentary form of agriculture here) but not the full range of behaviors and so greatly expressed as we have.
So, read it, think on it, get back to us.