SGER: An Analysis of Late Pleistocene Human Fossil Remains from a Burial in Rampura, Gujarat, Western India

摘要2006年6月，在对纳尔马达河下游河谷进行古人类学调查时，在印度兰普拉发现了一具晚更新世遗骸。这一发现代表了印度这一时期的第一具完整骨架。本研究的重点是从该标本中清理、重建和收集形态和古生物学数据。对兰普拉化石形态的分析结果将阐明人类进化研究中的一个紧迫问题：现代人类起源的过程。虽然众所周知，从最早的更新世开始，人类祖先就占领了非洲以外的地区，但这些古老的种群与智人最早成员的关系是一个巨大的争论主题。争论的问题是，来自非洲的早期现代人是否与整个东半球现有的古老人口杂交，或不混合而被取代。如果兰普拉标本被发现表现出亚洲/非洲混合特征，这表明这两个地区都有多方向的扩散，在南亚等地理中间地区，具有古老/现代形态的种群混合在一起。这也证明了亚洲是“进化死胡同”的假设是错误的。如果标本只展示非洲的形态，这表明了一种通过将现代人从非洲分散出去来取代当地古代人口的情景。

AbstractA Late Pleistocene burial of a single individual from Rampura, India was discovered during a paleoanthropological survey of the Lower Narmada River Valley in June 2006. The find represents the first full skeleton from this time period in India. The present study focuses on the cleaning, reconstruction, and collection of morphological and paleobiological data from this specimen. The results of analyses of the morphology of the Rampura fossil will shed light on a pressing question in human evolutionary studies: that of the process of modern human origins. While it is well known that human ancestors occupied regions outside of Africa from the earliest Pleistocene, the relationship of these archaic populations to the earliest members of Homo sapiens is a subject of great debate. At issue is the question of whether early modern human populations from Africa interbred with, or replaced without admixture, existing archaic populations throughout the Old World. If the Rampura specimen is found to exhibit mixed Asian/African features, this suggests multidirectional dispersals from both regions and a mixing of populations with archaic/modern morphology in geographically intermediate areas such as South Asia. It also disproves assumptions that Asia was an "evolutionary dead end." If the specimen exhibits exclusively African morphology, this suggests a scenario of replacement of local archaic populations by dispersing modern humans from Africa.