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PETER BOL: So I'm here with Professor Rowan Flad from the Department of

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Anthropology and Archaeology.

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He's come across the street from the Peabody Museum, and you recall that we

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went there earlier to see some of the early artifacts of China from the

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Neolithic period.

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Professor Flad is the successor to the late K.C. Chang, one of the first

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great archaeologists of China in the United States in

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recent times, I'd say.

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And you've just come back from China.

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ROWAN FLAD: I have, yeah.

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PETER BOL: And what were you doing?

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ROWAN FLAD: I was actually following in the footsteps of an even earlier

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father of Chinese archaeology, a guy named Johan Gunnar Andersson, who was

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a Swedish geologist.
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And he worked for the Chinese government in the early part of the

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20th century.

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He then became interested in archaeology, and made a lot of

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discoveries of prehistoric materials.

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PETER BOL: Isn't he the one that found Peking Man, Homo erectus?

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ROWAN FLAD: He did.

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He found Peking Man--

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or people working for him actually did-- but he identified the site of

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Zhoukoudian, where Peking Man was found.

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He also was the first person to identify Neolithic cultures in China

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at a site called Yangshao initially, and then other sites, as well.

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And he subsequently did some work in Northwestern China, in Gansu Province,

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where I've started a new project.

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PETER BOL: Let me ask you another question about something that I

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suspect in China has some sensitivity.

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I've heard that there's some work that suggests that Homo sapiens interbreed

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with Neanderthals in some cases.

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What happened to Homo erectus in China?

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Did they just sort of disappear?

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Did they die off?

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What's the story about Homo sapiens coming out of Africa into Chinese in

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these waves of migration?

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You once told me that there might be sort of a too strong

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out of Africa thesis.

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But what's your view on the origin of man?

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ROWAN FLAD: That's a good question that has become complicated in the

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last couple of years in a way that we didn't think it was previously.

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There are, broadly speaking, two out of Africas--

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two migrations out of Africa.

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And that is incontrovertible, that there might be too broad migrations

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out of Africa.

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The first results in Homo erectus being in East Asia.

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PETER BOL: Aha, so it was Homo erectus that is regarded

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actually as a migrant?

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ROWAN FLAD: Of course, yes.

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But what we think we know now is that all Homo were evolved in Africa, and

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migrated out of Africa, ultimately populating most of Eurasia, including

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East Asia, where we have the largest populations of Homo erectus, at

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Zhoukoudian in particular.

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But these are, of course, still small numbers.

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I mean, when we're talking about human evolution and the samples that we have

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to deal with, we're talking about small numbers for every time period

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for every period of the evolution.

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So that's the first out of Africa.
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And then the question you were sort of directing our attention to in

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particular was the second out of Africa migration, the emergence of

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Homo sapiens sapiens, and their relationship to Neanderthals, which

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are also a Homo sapiens sub-species according to most scholars' opinions

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at this point.

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And now we know there are some other critters out there

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that are very similar.

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There has been recent genetic work done which have been able to identify

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the degree to which there was interbreeding amongst these

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populations.

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So now we know that there's some interbreeding going on amongst these

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populations, which otherwise seem to have been morphologically distinct

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from one another.

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And that complicates our notion of a straightforward replacement model of

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Homo sapiens coming out of Africa, and just basically wiping everybody out.
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Neanderthals were more or less wiped out, but not without getting in a few

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shots of their own genetically.

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What that means for the relationship between Homo erectus populations and

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Homo sapiens populations in East Asia is not clear, because

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it could mean nothing.

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And there is no genetic reason to believe at this point that the

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existing populations of early Homo in East Asia had any contribution to

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subsequent populations in East Asia.

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There's not yet any reason to believe that Homo erectus populations in East

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Asia, like those at Zhoukoudian, contributed genetically to the later

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populations in the region.

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And there's a gap in the fossil record of about 60,000 years prior to the

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Homo sapiens in East Asia where we don't have any fossils.

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We do have archaeology.

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We know that there were hominins of some sort in East Asia, in China, at a

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number of different sites in the time period from 110,000 years to 40,000

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years ago, or 100,000 to 40,000 years ago.

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But we don't really have any fossil evidence.

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The problem, of course, is that the lack of evidence is never evidence for

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the lack of something happening.

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So until we find a fossil, or a number of fossils from that time period, we

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can't really say anything more confidently about the nature of those

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populations.

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PETER BOL: Yeah.

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I guess there is a problem of depending upon artifacts for evidence,

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whereas with text, you can always imagine something.

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ROWAN FLAD: Well, with artifacts, you can imagine a lot more.

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PETER BOL: Thank you very much.

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We appreciate you coming in.

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ROWAN FLAD: Sure.

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