Divergence between Early Hominid Lineages: The Roles of Competition and Culture

While a “ single species hypothesis” for the hominids was originally proposed by Weidenreich (1943: 246; 1946: 3), it was Mayr (1950) who first applied the competitive exclusion principle of Gause to hominid taxonomy. I believe that I coined the phrase “ single species hypothesis” (Wolpoff, 1968), as a description of the most likely consequence of competition between culturebearing hominid species.