One could easily get the impression that over the last century hominid fossils had been found in the very order that their living forms had existed. As I m well aware, it can be difficult to tell the story of human evolution along with the story of the science of human evolution without one s audience confusing the chronologies, but when those chronologies are paralleled in this fashion it also can reinforce the general misconception of human evolution as a nice sequential ladder of progress culminating in modern humans, if not actually leading to us all along. Some of the arguments in support of this approach seemed almost desperate. For example, art was listed as an important criterion for modernity. Because it was already decided that Neandertals were not human, that is, were not Homo sapiens.
Art indicates modernity only if the artists are modern.
A great example of circular reasoning. Moreover, the emergence of all these different species of hominids, especially that of modern Homo sapiens some 150,000 years ago, was presented as a given but never accounted for. How this speciation event took place was never mentioned. The evolution of new species is common on the scale of all the earth s living forms but involves a very particular set of circumstances for each instance. Although a technical topic, a discussion of just how, and if, those circumstances apply to the later hominids is too important to be ignored.