Jean-Jacques Hublin

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Jean-Jacques Hublin
Jean-Jacques Hublin - Portrait.jpg
Born (1953-11-30) 30 November 1953 (age 70)
Nationality French
Scientific career
Fields Paleoanthropology

Jean-Jacques Hublin (born 30 November 1953) is a French paleoanthropologist. He is a professor at the Max Planck Society, Leiden University and the University of Leipzig and the founder and director of the Department of Human Evolution at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. He is best known for his work on the Pleistocene hominins, and on the Neandertals and early Homo sapiens , in particular.

Contents

Hublin is the president of the European Society for the study of Human Evolution. In 2019, the organization came under fire after Hublin was accused of both sexual and professional misconduct with younger researchers. [1]

Personal life and education

Hublin lived in Algeria until his family fled the country in the last year of the independence war in 1961. He spent his teenage years living in the subsidized housing of the northern Parisian suburbs. He later trained as a geologist and paleontologist at the Pierre and Marie Curie University of Paris, where he received his doctorate in 1978 under the supervision of Prof. B. Vandermeersch. He received his state doctorate ( habilitation ) in anthropology in 1991 at the University of Bordeaux. Hublin currently lives in Leipzig, Germany with his wife Svetlana.

Career

After being hired as a researcher with the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) in 1981 and working in different departments at the University of Paris, the National Natural History Museum in Paris, and the CNRS, Hublin became director of research at the CNRS. He was a visiting professor at the University of California - Berkeley in 1992, a visiting scholar at Harvard University in 1997, and a visiting professor at Stanford University in 1999 and 2011. In 2000, he was hired as a professor of anthropology at the University of Bordeaux I. In 2004, he became professor at the Max Planck Society (Germany) and moved to Leipzig to found the Department of Human Evolution [2] at the newly created Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. In 2005, he was made honorary professor at the University of Leipzig. Hublin has had several administrative positions at various points in his career, and in particular, was Deputy Director in charge of the Prehistoric Archaeology, Biological Anthropology, and Paleoenvironmental Sciences sector of the French CNRS in 2002-2003. Currently, Hublin is one of the Directors of the MPI-EVA in Leipzig. [3] [4] In 2010, Hublin founded the European Society for the study of Human Evolution (ESHE). Hublin was appointed invited professor and international chair of paleoanthropology at the Collège de France in Paris in 2014, and holds an annual lecture series aimed at making paleoanthropology accessible to a general audience.

In 2023 he was awarded the Balzan Prize. [5]

Controversy

In 2019, a largely-anonymous group of early-career researchers pledged to boycott the annual meeting of the European Society for the study of Human Evolution, a group led by Hublin, in the wake of allegations that he had pursued an extra-marital affair with a graduate student, "made sexual advances on other women at scientific conferences", dismissed a postdoctoral researcher out of jealousy over the researcher's partner, and bullied other researchers "around issues of intellectual property and co-authorship". In response, Hublin denied the allegations, calling them "a toxic mix of half-truths, professional rivalry, and conspiracy theory propagated by people who have no clue". [1]

Scientific work

Hublin has dedicated most of his career to the study of Middle and Late Pleistocene hominins, and in particular, to the biological and cultural evolution of Neandertals and to the origin of modern humans. He has also conducted fieldwork in various sites in Europe and North Africa. He also is the president of the European Society for the study of Human Evolution.

The origin of the Neandertals

Hublin’s research initially focused on the origin of Neandertals, and in early 1980s, he used cladistic methods to demonstrate that this extinct lineage of humans was rooted much earlier than was thought at the time. He demonstrated that none of the European fossil material predating 40,000 years ago could be related to modern human ancestry. [6] His views on Neandertal evolution were later fully confirmed by various discoveries, in particular, by the spectacular discovery of the fossil series from Sima de los Huesos (Atapuerca, Spain). He is best known for having proposed the ‘accretion model’ for the emergence of the Neandertals, a model that emphasizes the role of the environment, demographic fluctuations, and genetic drift in recent human evolution. This model has found much support in subsequent paleogenetical works.[ citation needed ]

North Africa and the origin of Homo sapiens

Another major focus of his research is on the origin of modern humans in Africa, specifically North Africa, where he has been conducting fieldwork for several years. In particular, at the site of Jebel Irhoud (Morocco), he has discovered important new fossil hominins, which document the emergence of our species more than 300,000 years ago and reveal that early Homo sapiens were not only represented in sub-Saharan Africa. [7]

The fate of Neandertals

Hublin's demonstration that modern behaviors were present in the very last Neandertals was a major contribution to the field.[ citation needed ] His work on Late Neandertal sites, such as those of Saint-Césaire and Arcy-sur-Cure (France)(list of Neandertal sites), provided evidence for the late survival of Neandertals in Europe after the arrival of modern humans and the beginning of a genuinely “Upper Paleolithic” culture on the continent. He was one of the first to promote the “acculturation hypothesis”, which seeks to explain the cultural evolution of the latest western Neandertals through the distant influence of the first modern populations already present in central Europe.

Virtual paleoanthropology

In 1992, Hublin published the first application of virtual manipulation for the reconstruction of a human fossil from multiple pieces. Since then, he has further developed these techniques which provide new insights into the understanding of the anatomical evolution, cognitive development, and life history of our ancestors and their extinct relatives. His group provided new evidence on diverse issues such as the timing of brain development in early representatives of the genus Homo, the birth process of Neandertals, and the dental development of early Homo sapiens and Neandertals.[ citation needed ]

Honours

Selected publications

Books

Articles and Chapters in Edited Volumes

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Human evolution</span> Evolutionary process leading to anatomically modern humans

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 that 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 the origins of humans involves several scientific disciplines, including physical and evolutionary anthropology, paleontology, and genetics; the field is also known by the terms anthropogeny, anthropogenesis, and anthropogony.

Milford Howell Wolpoff is a paleoanthropologist and professor of anthropology at the University of Michigan and its museum of Anthropology. He is the leading proponent of the multiregional evolution hypothesis that explains the evolution of Homo sapiens as a consequence of evolutionary processes and gene flow across continents within a single species. Wolpoff authored the widely used textbook Paleoanthropology, and co-authored Race and Human Evolution: A Fatal Attraction, which reviews the scientific evidence and conflicting theories about the interpretation of human evolution, and biological anthropology's relationship to views about race.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Early modern human</span> Old Stone Age Homo sapiens

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.

<i>Homo</i> Genus of hominins that includes humans and their closest extinct relatives

Homo is a genus of great ape that emerged from the genus Australopithecus and encompasses the extant species Homo sapiens and a number of extinct species classified as either ancestral or closely related to modern humans. These include Homo erectus and Homo neanderthalensis. The oldest member of the genus is Homo habilis, with records of just over 2 million years ago. Homo, together with the genus Paranthropus, is probably most closely related to the species Australopithecus africanus within Australopithecus. The closest living relatives of Homo are of the genus Pan, with the ancestors of Pan and Homo estimated to have diverged around 5.7-11 million years ago during the Late Miocene.

Paleoanthropology or paleo-anthropology is a branch of paleontology and anthropology which seeks to understand the early development of anatomically modern humans, a process known as hominization, through the reconstruction of evolutionary kinship lines within the family Hominidae, working from biological evidence and cultural evidence.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aterian</span> Archaeological culture

The Aterian is a Middle Stone Age stone tool industry centered in North Africa, from Mauritania to Egypt, but also possibly found in Oman and the Thar Desert. The earliest Aterian dates to c. 150,000 years ago, at the site of Ifri n'Ammar in Morocco. However, most of the early dates cluster around the beginning of the Last Interglacial, around 150,000 to 130,000 years ago, when the environment of North Africa began to ameliorate. The Aterian disappeared around 20,000 years ago.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology</span> Research institute based in Leipzig, Germany

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Neanderthal extinction</span> Prehistoric event

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.

<i>Homo rhodesiensis</i> Species of primate (fossil)

Homo rhodesiensis is the species name proposed by Arthur Smith Woodward (1921) to classify Kabwe 1, a Middle Stone Age fossil recovered from Broken Hill mine in Kabwe, Northern Rhodesia. In 2020, the skull was dated to 324,000 to 274,000 years ago. Other similar older specimens also exist.

The Omo remains are a collection of hominin bones discovered between 1967 and 1974 at the Omo Kibish sites near the Omo River, in Omo National Park in south-western Ethiopia. The bones were recovered by a scientific team from the Kenya National Museums directed by Richard Leakey and others. The remains from Kamoya's Hominid Site (KHS) were called Omo I and those from Paul I. Abell's Hominid Site (PHS) were called Omo II.

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Archaic humans</span> Extinct relatives of modern humans

Archaic humans is a broad category denoting all species of the genus Homo that are not Homo sapiens. Among the earliest modern human remains are those from Jebel Irhoud in Morocco, Florisbad in South Africa (259 ka), and Omo-Kibish I in southern Ethiopia. Some examples of archaic humans include H. antecessor (1200–770 ka), H. bodoensis (1200–300 ka), H. heidelbergensis (600–200 ka), Neanderthals, H. rhodesiensis (300–125 ka) and Denisovans.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jebel Irhoud</span> Archaeological site in Morocco

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Florisbad Skull</span> Hominin fossil

The Florisbad Skull is an important human fossil of the early Middle Stone Age, representing either late Homo heidelbergensis or early Homo sapiens. It was discovered in 1932 by T. F. Dreyer at the Florisbad site, Free State Province, South Africa.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Scladina</span> Caves and archaeological site in Belgium

Scladina, or Sclayn Cave, is an archaeological site located in Wallonia in the town of Sclayn, in the Andenne hills in Belgium, where excavations since 1978 have provided the material for an exhaustive collection of over thirteen thousand Mousterian stone artifacts and the fossilized remains of an especially ancient Neanderthal, called the Scladina child were discovered in 1993.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Katerina Harvati</span> Greek paleoanthropologist

Katerina Harvati is a Greek paleoanthropologist and expert in human evolution. She specializes in the broad application of 3-D geometric morphometric and virtual anthropology methods to paleoanthropology. Since 2009, she is full professor and director of Paleoanthropology at the University of Tübingen, Germany. From 2020 to 2023 she was Director of the Institute for Archaeological Sciences and since 2023 she is Director of the Senckenberg Centre for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment at the University of Tübingen.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Xiahe mandible</span> Hominin fossil

The Xiahe mandible is a hominin fossil jaw (mandible) discovered in Baishiya Karst Cave, located on the northeastern edge of the Tibetan Plateau in Xiahe County, Gansu, China. By the use of palaeoproteomic analysis, it is the first confirmed discovery of a Denisovan fossil outside of Denisova Cave, and the most complete confirmed Denisovan fossil. This fossil discovery shows that archaic hominins were present in a high-altitude, low-oxygen environment around 160,000 years ago. Discover, Science News and Nova all named the discovery of the mandible in their lists of Top Science Stories of 2019.

Apidima Cave is a complex of five caves four small caves located on the western shore of Mani Peninsula in Southern Greece. A systematic investigation of the cave has yielded Neanderthal and Homo sapiens fossils from the Palaeolithic era.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Salé cranium</span> Enigmatic Middle Pleistocene hominin specimen

The Salé cranium is a pathological specimen of enigmatic Middle Pleistocene hominin discovered in Salé, Morocco by quarrymen in 1971. Since its discovery, the specimen has variously been classified as Homo sapiens, Homo erectus, Homo rhodesiensis/bodoensis, or Homo heidelbergensis. Its pathological condition and mosaic anatomy has proved difficult to classify. It was discovered with few faunal fossils and no lithics, tentatively dated to 400 ka by some sources.

References

  1. 1 2 Williams, Shawna (August 30, 2019), "Scholars Boycott Meeting, Citing Misconduct Accusations", The Scientist; via "Weekend reads", Retraction Watch, September 7, 2019
  2. Jean Jacques Hublin at Who's Who in France (retrieved 10 November 2009)
  3. Department of Human Evolution at the Max Planck Institute (retrieved 10 November 2009)
  4. Vogel, G. (2009). "Aufbau Ost: Max Planck's East German Experiment". Science. 326 (5954): 788–791. Bibcode:2009Sci...326..788V. doi:10.1126/science.326_788. PMID   19892956.
  5. Balzan Prize 2023
  6. Trinkaus, E., Shipman, P., 1992. The Neandertals: Changing the Image of Mankind. Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York
  7. Callaway, Ewen (2017-06-07). "Oldest Homo sapiens fossil claim rewrites our species' history". Nature News. doi:10.1038/nature.2017.22114.
  8. "Award ceremony in Morocco". 2017-03-08.
  9. "Décret du 31 décembre 2018 portant promotion et nomination". 2019-01-01.
  10. "Prix Balzan 2023". 2023-11-21.

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