Ya gotta go where the fossils are not where they aren’t.
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This.
Look where today’s agricultural human enclaves are. They are near water. Most of Africa is dessert, and doesn’t support human life.
Humans went through such rapid evolutionary changes because the population densities of their agricultural enclaves fostered kill-offs from viral epidemics.
The best record of this fact doesn’t lie in fossilized bones, but in our own biochemistry. And it SCREAMS epidemic.
The SAHARA Desert was once GREEN & LUSH.
OK
All I meant was that fossil hunters have to go where fossils have been preserved. You are right that most human enclaves have been near water but that’s exactly the kind of environment where fossils are unlikely to have formed or survived if they did form.
Especially along ocean shorelines since sea levels have fallen and risen hundreds of feet over and over again. The last great rise in sea level occurred not so long ago in history during the period of 8k to 20k years ago and rose about 400 ft.