In the field of paleoanthropology there is perhaps no more compelling
issue than the origin of the human lineage. From the 19th-Century
proclamations of Darwin, Huxley, and Haeckel up to the present-day
announcements of authorities such as Pilbeam, Johanson, and Leakey,
controversy and debate have always surrounded the search for our
earliest ancestors. Most authorities now agree that many important
questions concerning ape and human ances- try will be solved by further
investigation of the hominoid primates of the Miocene and Pliocene, and
through exacting comparative anatomical and biomolecular analyses of
their living representatives. Indeed, these studies will yield a better
understanding of (1) the cladogenesis (branching order) of the hominoid
primates, (2) the morphotype (structural components) of the last common
ancestor of humans and the living apes, (3) the timing and geographical
placement of the hominid-pongid (human-ape) divergence and (4) the
adaptive nature and probable scenario for the initial differentiation of
hominids from pongids. In this context we organized a symposium entitled
"Miocene Hominoids and New Interpretations of Ape and Human Ancestry"
which met July 2-4, 1980, in Florence, Italy, just prior to the
convening of the VIII Congress ofthe International Primatological
Society. This Pre-Congress Symposium was at- tended by a small group of
anthropologists, anatomists, biochemists, ecolo- gists, and
paleontologists, all dedicated to a reanalysis of the evolutionary
position and a more parsimonious interpretation of the Miocene hominoids
vis a vis modern apes and humans.
