Chris Stringer | |
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 Stringer in 2012 | |
| Born | London, United Kingdom |
| Alma mater | University College London Bristol University |
| Scientific career | |
| Institutions | Natural History Museum, London |
| Thesis | A multivariate study of cranial variation in middle and upper Pleistocene human populations (1974) |
| Doctoral advisor | Jonathan H. Musgrave |
Christopher Brian Stringer CBE FRS is a British physical anthropologist noted for his work on human evolution.
Growing up in a working-class family in the East End of London, Stringer first took an interest in anthropology during primary school, when he undertook a project on Neanderthals. [1] Stringer studied anthropology at University College London, [2] holds a PhD in Anatomical Science and a DSc in Anatomical Science (both from Bristol University). [3]
Stringer joined the permanent staff of the Natural History Museum in 1973. He is currently Research Leader in Human Origins.
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Stringer is one of the leading proponents of the recent African origin hypothesis or ″Out of Africa″ theory, which hypothesizes that modern humans originated in Africa over 100,000 years ago and replaced, in some way, the world's archaic humans, such as Homo floresiensis and Neanderthals, after migrating within and then out of Africa to the non-African world within the last 50,000 to 100,000 years. [4] He always considered that some interbreeding between the different groups could have occurred, but thought this would have been trivial in the big picture. However, recent genetic data show that the replacement process did include some interbreeding. In the last decade he has proposed a more complex version of events within Africa, which he has termed ″multiregional African origin″.
He also directed the Ancient Human Occupation of Britain project which ran for about 10 years from 2001. This consortium reconstructed and studied the episodic pattern of human colonisation of Britain during the Pleistocene. He is co-director of the follow-up project "Pathways to Ancient Britain". [5]
He is a Fellow of the Royal Society and Honorary Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries. He won the 2008 Frink Medal of the Zoological Society of London and the Rivers Memorial Medal from the Royal Anthropological Institute in 2004 [6]
He was elected a Member of the American Philosophical Society in 2019.
Stringer was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2023 New Year Honours for services to the understanding of human evolution. [7]
Human evolution is the evolutionary process within the history of primates that led to the emergence of Homo sapiens as a distinct species of the hominid family, which includes all the great apes. This process involved the gradual development of traits such as human bipedalism, dexterity and complex language, as well as interbreeding with other hominins, indicating that human evolution was not linear but weblike. The study of human evolution involves several scientific disciplines, including physical and evolutionary anthropology, paleontology, and genetics.
The Paleolithic or Palaeolithic, also called the Old Stone Age, is a period in human prehistory that is distinguished by the original development of stone tools, and which represents almost the entire period of human prehistoric technology. It extends from the earliest known use of stone tools by hominins, c. 3.3 million years ago, to the end of the Pleistocene, c. 11,650 cal BP.
The Piltdown Man was a paleoanthropological fraud in which bone fragments were presented as the fossilised remains of a previously unknown early human. Although there were doubts about its authenticity virtually from the beginning, the remains were still broadly accepted for many years, and the falsity of the hoax was only definitively demonstrated in 1953. An extensive scientific review in 2016 established that amateur archaeologist Charles Dawson was responsible for the fraudulent evidence.
Early modern human (EMH), or anatomically modern human (AMH), are terms used to distinguish Homo sapiens that are anatomically consistent with the range of phenotypes seen in contemporary humans, from extinct archaic human species. This distinction is useful especially for times and regions where anatomically modern and archaic humans co-existed, for example, in Paleolithic Europe. Among the oldest known remains of Homo sapiens are those found at the Omo-Kibish I archaeological site in south-western Ethiopia, dating to about 233,000 to 196,000 years ago, the Florisbad site in South Africa, dating to about 259,000 years ago, and the Jebel Irhoud site in Morocco, dated about 315,000 years ago.
Homo heidelbergensis is an extinct species or subspecies of archaic human which existed during the Middle Pleistocene. It was subsumed as a subspecies of H. erectus in 1950 as H. e. heidelbergensis, but towards the end of the century, it was more widely classified as its own species. It is debated whether or not to constrain H. heidelbergensis to only Europe or to also include African and Asian specimens, and this is further confounded by the type specimen being a jawbone, because jawbones feature few diagnostic traits and are generally missing among Middle Pleistocene specimens. Thus, it is debated if some of these specimens could be split off into their own species or a subspecies of H. erectus. Because the classification is so disputed, the Middle Pleistocene is often called the "muddle in the middle".
The Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology is a research institute based in Leipzig, Germany, that was founded in 1997. It is part of the Max Planck Society network.
Neanderthals became extinct around 40,000 years ago. Hypotheses on the causes of the extinction include violence, transmission of diseases from modern humans which Neanderthals had no immunity to, competitive replacement, extinction by interbreeding with early modern human populations, natural catastrophes, climate change and inbreeding depression. It is likely that multiple factors caused the demise of an already low population.
The Steinheim skull is a fossilized skull of a Homo neanderthalensis or Homo heidelbergensis found on 24 July 1933 near Steinheim an der Murr, Germany.
Human taxonomy is the classification of the human species within zoological taxonomy. The systematic genus, Homo, is designed to include both anatomically modern humans and extinct varieties of archaic humans. Current humans have been designated as subspecies Homo sapiens sapiens, differentiated, according to some, from the direct ancestor, Homo sapiens idaltu.
A number of varieties of Homo are grouped into the broad category of archaic humans in the period that precedes and is contemporary to the emergence of the earliest early modern humans around 300 ka. Among the earliest remains of H. sapiens are Omo-Kibish I from southern Ethiopia, the remains from Jebel Irhoud in Morocco and Florisbad in South Africa (259 ka). The term typically includes H. antecessor, H. bodoensis, Denisovans (H. denisova), H. heidelbergensis (600–200 ka), Neanderthals, and H. rhodesiensis (300–125 ka).
Feldhofer 1 or Neanderthal 1 is the scientific name of the 40,000-year-old type specimen fossil of the species Homo neanderthalensis, discovered in August 1856 in a German cave, the Kleine Feldhofer Grotte, in the Neandertal valley, 13 km (8.1 mi) east of Düsseldorf. In 1864, the fossil's description was first published in a scientific magazine and officially named.
Jebel Irhoud or Adrar n Ighoud, is an archaeological site located just north of the locality known as Tlet Ighoud, approximately 50 km (30 mi) south-east of the city of Safi in Morocco. It is noted for the hominin fossils that have been found there since the discovery of the site in 1960. Originally thought to be Neanderthals, the specimens have since been assigned to Homo sapiens and, as reported in 2017, have been dated to roughly 300,000 years ago.
The Bontnewydd palaeolithic site, also known in its unmutated form as Pontnewydd, is an archaeological site near St Asaph, Denbighshire, Wales. It is one of only three sites in Britain to have produced fossils of ancient species of humans and the only one with fossils of a classic Neanderthal. It is located a few yards east of the River Elwy, near the hamlet of Bontnewydd, near Cefn Meiriadog, Denbighshire.
In paleoanthropology, the recent African origin of modern humans or the "Out of Africa" theory (OOA) is the most widely accepted model of the geographic origin and early migration of anatomically modern humans. It follows the early expansions of hominins out of Africa, accomplished by Homo erectus and then Homo neanderthalensis.
The multiregional hypothesis, multiregional evolution (MRE), or polycentric hypothesis, is a scientific model that provides an alternative explanation to the more widely accepted "Out of Africa" model of monogenesis for the pattern of human evolution.
Neanderthals, also written as Neandertals, are an extinct species or subspecies of archaic humans who lived in Eurasia until about 40,000 years ago. The type specimen, Neanderthal 1, was found in 1856 in the Neander Valley in present-day Germany.
Prof. Clive Finlayson MBE FLS is a Gibraltarian zoologist, paleoanthropologist and paleontologist. He is the incumbent Director of the Gibraltar Museum. Finlayson has published various works mainly based on his research which includes ongoing excavations at Gorham's Cave in Gibraltar, the last known site of the Neanderthals.
Genetic studies on Neanderthal ancient DNA became possible in the late 1990s. The Neanderthal genome project, established in 2006, presented the first fully sequenced Neanderthal genome in 2013.
