This project will bring together specialists in the four fields of anthropology who have expertise in the regions of the Americas, Australia, and remote Oceania for a conference. The purpose of the meeting is to compare the colonization of these three areas by a comparative examination of the archaeological, historical linguistic, biological and ethnological evidence. They will criticize current theories of colonization, migration and expansion of human populations, and attempt a new synthesis. They will examine cladistic versus reticulate theories of development and historical versus evolutionary theories, and they will search for recurrent behavioral processes typical of human entry into regions where there are no pre-existing human populations-new landscapes. By employing a comparative method, the conference attendees hope to illuminate the central questions of whether language, culture and genotype co-evolve through time, or whether they are governed by different laws of evolutionary process.
