Well the discrepancy comes from some of his claims. Correct me if I'm wrong but he is stating that there were fundamental shifts in human behaviour that emerged between 50,000-100,000 years ago. From the article he seems to indicate that this included the wearing of clothes as well as the full emergence of language. I'm just saying that, from the evidence we have today I don't think that assertion can hold up.
No, I understand that. He got his claims from a paper published in like '99, and your link is only a couple years old; so I'm inclined to trust yours. But I'm a little bit surprised the discrepancy is so great between two peer-reviewed papers 12 years apart. Either way, this is a great article as far as summarizing where we are and where we're going. Pity he made some mistakes.
There has been a lot of progress in evolutionary anthropology over the past 10 years... and I feel like there is much progress to be made still. We can now test hypotheses with genetics and we have just started to do extensive field research outside of Europe. Yes, sorry for nitpicking - academics can be horrible for that - but the details matter - and new evidence always changes the scientific narrative. I did think it was well written and there was a lot of important points and perspectives shared by Mann.I'm a little bit surprised the discrepancy is so great between two peer-reviewed papers 12 years apart.
Either way, this is a great article as far as summarizing where we are and where we're going. Pity he made some mistakes.