Their research is advancing on three fronts. Fossils of skulls
and bones expose anatomical changes. Genetics reveals the timing
and place of the Eve of modern humans. And archaeology turns up
ancient artifacts reflecting abstract and creative thought, and
a growing self-awareness. Just last month, researchers made the
startling announcement that Stone Age paintings in Spanish caves
were much older than previously thought, from a time when
Neanderthals were still alive. To help make sense of this
cascade of new information, a leading authority on modern human
evolution — the British paleoanthropologist Chris Stringer —
recently sat for an interview in New York that ranged across
many recent developments: the evidence of interbreeding between
Neanderthals and Homo sapiens; the puzzling extinct species of
little people nicknamed the hobbits; and the implications of a
girl’s 40,000-year-old pinkie finger found in a Siberian cave.
Dr. Stringer, an animated man of 64, is an anthropologist at the
Natural History Mus