1 Chapter 1 The Past and Present of Human Origins in Southern Asia and Australia Robin Dennell and Martin Porr Introduction Debates about modern human origins remain among the most controversial in the ields of archaeology and anthropology and have generated both specialist literature and a high level of public interest. The debate not only addresses a topic relevant to each individual human being but also deals with possibly the greatest intellectual challenge altogether, trying to understand what makes us human and how humans became what they are today. Over the past decades, the scientiic examination of these questions has developed into a remarkable interdisciplinary endeavour involving several ields, such as developmental psychology, socio-cultural anthropol- ogy, palaeoanthropology, molecular biology and palaeolithic archaeology – to mention just a few. Thorough discussion of the integration of these types of evidence with their respective strengths and weaknesses is beyond the scope of this volume.While information from human fossil remains as well as ancient and recent genetic material continues to have a large impact on the recon- struction of the history of Homo sapiens (Dennell, Chapter 4, and Oppenheimer, Chapter 18, this volume) – edited by two palaeolithic archaeologists – concentrates on the role of archaeological evidence during the Upper Pleistocene (ca. 125–10 ka) in the vast geographical region that lies east of Africa. As with the editors, most of the contributors are palaeolithic archaeologists, and the volume is aimed primarily at the palaeolithic community. Two chapters have been included that provide links to two disciplines that are deeply involved in researching modern human origins: one by Oppenheimer on the genetic evidence from living populations, and one by Dennell that summarises the human skeletal evidence between Arabia and Australia from 125 to 30 ka. Given the inevitable constraints of an edited volume, we have had to choose between coherence and diversity: whether to include several chapters from one discipline or a few papers from many. In order to produce a coherent volume, we opted for the former. Large parts of discussions about modern human origins and how they might be detectable through material culture are framed in rhetorics emphasising centres of origins and subsequent dispersals. The reasons for this are complex and have as much to do with the nature of the evi- dence as with the politics, intellectual history and foundation of Palaeolithic archaeology and palaeoanthropology (see, e.g., Gamble & Gittins 2004; Landau 1993). The past hundred years 9781107017856c01_p1-7.indd 1 9781107017856c01_p1-7.indd 1 10/10/2013 3:27:51 PM 10/10/2013 3:27:51 PM