Early Modern Humans (Homo sapiens)

The Isolation by Distance theory of human migration argues that Homo sapiens evolved in Africa and then separated into different groups within Africa, each group developing in isolation or dying off or combining again with others before leaving Africa at different times and by different pathways.

How old is the Middle/Upper Paleolithic transition in Europe? John Hoffnecker replies to some queries about the Kostenki site from John Hawks.

Archaeological and chronological data from the Kostenki site in Russia have convinced researchers that beneath a previously identified 40,000 year-old Aurignacian component representing Early Modern Humans is an early, previously unknown Initial Upper Paleolithic component, with secure dates at least as early as any other known modern human...

The Aurignacian period (40,000 to 28,000 years ago) is an Upper Paleolithic stone tool tradition

The Châtelperronian period is the name given to similar Upper Paleolithic Neanderthal (probably) stone tool assemblages, from about 32,000 to 30,000 years ago.

Fauresmith industries in the name archaeologists have given to a stone tool manufacturing technique dated to 75,000 to 100,000 years before the present.

The Mousterian industry is an ancient Middle Stone Age method of making stone tools, associated with our hominid relatives the Neanderthals in Europe and both Homo sapiens and Homo neanderthalensis in Africa.

The Out of Africa or African Replacement Hypothesis argues that every living human being is descended from a small group in Africa.

Paleontology is the study of prehuman animals and their lifeways; including dinosaurs and other long-dead animals but also early hominids, which is what we care about as archaeologists.

The plague of racism was at first enhanced, and then debunked, by the study of anthropology. Too bad we can't seem to convince people that the idea that some people are better than others ought to be permanently shelved.

Cro-Magnons are something that every kid hears about growing up; but scientists no longer use the term. What is a cro-magnon and why don't we use that term any more, and what do we use instead?