William Diller Matthew - Asia Hypothesis

Asia Hypothesis

See also: Asian origin of modern humans

Matthew believed that the first humans had originated in Asia, he visited Asia by taking part in the Central Asiatic expeditions. Matthew was also well known for his deeply influential 1915 article “Climate and evolution”, Matthews theory was that climate change was how organisms came to live where we find them today in opposition to the theory of continental drift. His basic premise was that cyclical changes in global climate along with the prevailing tendency for mammals to disperse from north to south account for the odd geographic patterns of living mammals, he believed that humans and many other groups of modern mammals first evolved in the northern areas of the globe, especially centra Asia because of the shifting climatic circumstances, Matthew firmly placed hominid origins in central Asia as he claimed that the high plateaux of Tibet was the forcing ground of mammalian evolution.

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