'Three Roots of Human Recency: Molecular Anthropology, the Refigured Acheulean, and the UNESCO Response to Auschwitz' by Robert N. Proctor

Abstract

I welcome Proctor's attempt to show how some recent thinking about human origins fits into a broader intellectual context, but I should begin with a caution. I have been critical, at various times, of scholars from other disciplines who venture into mine, and I am prepared to be critical of Proctor despite his admission that my workwith Noble (Davidson and Noble 1993) was one of the publications that drew him into this field. I must challenge, as others will, his assertion that our view of the Acheulean is the "more common view." I do think, however, that increasing numbers of people (e.g., Hiscock and Attenbrow 2002, McPherron 2000) are prepared to accept the idea, following Jelinek (1976) and Dibble (1987, 1988, 1989), that the form of stone artefacts is a result of many influences often unrelated to an intention to produce the forms seen in the archaeological record (see Davidson 2002).Nevertheless, Proctor makes many points that seem fundamental to an understanding of what happened in the pre-textual past, in particular his footnote about the oddness of arguments that the Acheulean indicates cultural homogeneity on a continental scale.