Workshop: Human evolution in structured populations (360G-Wellcome-202775_Z_16_Z)

Understanding the origins and early demographic history of our species has wide ranging implications for the medical, social and biological sciences. Until recently, consensus for a single East African centre of endemism for Homo sapiens was widespread. However, archaeological, fossil and genetic data increasingly suggest that the emergence of our species occurred within a set of subdivided populations located across Africa, rather than within a small and isolated East African population. The complexity of our origins is further emphasised by admixture with archaic Homo species in Eurasia and possibly even in Africa itself. This notwithstanding, competing models of ours origins remain to be evaluated within an interdisciplinary context invoking evidence for intra-African dispersals, population size and structure. Instead, research on the origins and early demographic history of Homo sapiens remains frustratingly disjointed, with often-incompatible jargon and methods of data analysis. In this workshop, archaeologists, geneticists, palaeoanthropologists and related specialists will forge integrated, interdisciplinary models explaining the often-contradictory evidence gleaned from different sources of data. The workshop will begin with a public symposium followed by two days of discussion and debate, permitting the development of a new, integrated data hypotheses of the processes culminating in today’s cultural and biological diversity.