Milford H. Wolpoff (born 1942 to Ruth (Silver) and Ben Wolpoff, Chicago) is a paleoanthropologist, and since 1977, a professor of anthropology and adjunct associate research scientist, Museum of Anthropology at the University of Michigan. He is the leading proponent of the multiregional evolution hypothesis that attempts to explain the evolution of Homo sapiens as a consequence of evolutionary processes within a single species. He is the author of Paleoanthropology, 1980 and 1999 editions with McGraw-Hill, New York. ISBN 0-07-071676-5), and the co-author (with Rachel Caspari) of Race and Human Evolution: A Fatal Attraction (ISBN 0-684-81013-1), which reviews the scientific evidence and conflicting theories about how human evolution has been interpreted, and how its interpretation is related to views about race.
His research on the Multiregional model of human evolution challenges the 'Out of Africa' theory. His basis for advancing the multiregional interpretation of human evolution derives from his disbelief in punctuated equilibrium (the idea that changes occur when new species are formed and only rarely are slowly and gradually accumulated during the stable periods between speciations) as an accurate model for Pleistocene humanity, noting that speciation played a role earlier in human evolution.
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Wolpoff received an A.B. in 1964 and a Ph.D., both in anthropology, from the University of Illinois in Urbana, Illinois. His research advisor and intellectual mentor was Eugene Giles.
Wolpoff is a paleoanthropologist, an anthropologist who studies the human past. Wolpoff was trained at the University of Illinois, as a student of Eugene Giles and a product of an aggressively 4-field department. Beyond anthropology, his training has been in physics and evolutionary biology and ecology. He brings to the study of the human and non-human primate fossil record a background that combines evolutionary theory, population genetics, and biomechanics.
With over 50 grants funded by the National Science Foundation, National Academy of Sciences, and the University of Michigan, Wolpoff has visited the museums where human and primate fossils are stored and has studied in detail and at length all the materials addressing the fossil evidence for human evolution across Europe, Asia, and Africa. His research foci have included the evolution and fate of the European Neandertals, the role of culture in early hominid evolution, the nature and explanation of allometry, robust australopithecine evolution, the distribution and explanation of sexual dimorphism, hominid origins, the pattern and explanation of Australasian hominid evolution, the contributions and role of genetics in paleoanthropological research, and the taxonomy of the genus Homo. In addition, he is a primary describer of many hominid fossil remains.
Drawing on this background and research experience, Wolpoff's continuing research for the last 15 years has been the development, articulation, and defense of his multiregional model of human evolution. Almost as time-consuming has been the preparation and publication of the 2nd edition of Paleoanthropology (1999, McGraw-Hill, ISBN 0-07-071676-5), Wolpoff's detailed 878 page presentation of the fossil record for human evolution and the many levels of explanation for the pattern it reflects. Writing with Rachel Caspari, their Race and Human Evolution (1997, Simon & Schuster) was very favorably reviewed in professional journals and in the New York Times, where it was recommended reading. It received the W.W. Howells Book Prize in Biological from the Biological Anthropology Section of the American Anthropological Association.
Besides these, Wolpoff has published 5 other books, 160 papers, and 22 book reviews, has presented numerous lectures and meetings papers, and has had many interviews and video appearances. His work has also appeared in The New York Times, New Scientist, Discover, and Newsweek. Since 1976 Wolpoff has graduated 18 Ph.D. students, 9 women and 9 men, all but two of whom have academic positions. These Michigan graduates include the discoverer of several new australopithecine species, the first paleoanthropologist to debunk the hominid status of Ramapithecus, the leaders in the study of late Pleistocene European evolution, three past or present chairs (or heads) of anthropology departments, and the past president of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists, and the editor of the American Journal of Physical Anthropology. Wolpoff is a member of many anthropological organizations, and is an Honorary Life Member of the Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Wolpoff suggests that after an African origin of Homo sapiens (including Homo ergaster/Homo erectus) and the subsequent migration of H. erectus throughout much of the globe with the exception of the Americas, local evolutionary events took place across the world (Africa, Europe, Asia, and when they were advantageous, they spread everywhere else. According to Wolpoff, populations of Homo evolved together as a single species. Change in Pleistocene populations did not involve speciation (the splitting of one species into two): all this time, the geographically distinct populations maintained small amounts of gene flow. This idea directly challenges the Out of Africa model, which claims Homo sapiens evolved recently as a new species in Africa, and then dispersed throughout the Old World, replacing the existing human populations without mixing with them.
In an earlier example of punctuated evolution preceding the global diffusion of Homo sapiens genes from Africa, some two million years ago, Wolpoff points to evidence of an earlier 'genetic revolution' that took place in a small group isolated from australopithecine forebears. "The earliest H. sapiens remains differ significantly from australopithecines in both size and anatomical details," he notes. "Insofar as we can tell, these changes were sudden and not gradual."
Other publications may be found at Wolpoff's web site and many can be downloaded.
His most recent publications are: