Glynn Isaac Defines "the Homebase Hypothesis"
             It has been argued since Darwin's day that the great apes were man's nearest living relatives, and as evidence emerged during the late 1960's of the hunting propensities and simple tool use of chimpanzees (Goodall 1986), anthropologists found more and more reason to presume similarity of behavior between modern (e.g., Pan troglodytes or Pan panicus) and ancient varieties of hominids (Tanner 1981).
             Still, modern humans are not chimps. Substantial differences of behavior exist between the great apes and hominids, and it was the late Glynn Isaac's notion that these differences began early in our history.
             Specifically, he noted that the modern human "habitually carries tools, food and other possessions either with his arms or in containers," communicates with other humans by a spoken language, that the acquisition and sharing of food is "a corporate responsibility," that modern human hunter-gathers conduct their foraging operations in the vicinity of communal gathering places or "home bases," and that humans seek to acquire high-protein foodstuffs by hunting or fishing. None of these are common behavior among the apes or are practiced to the extent that they are among Homo sapiens sapiens. (Isaac 1978)
             He also noted tool use both for gathering foods and for processing them for consumption, and different modes of social behavior, including long term pairing bonds ("marriage") between male and female humans and complex rules of kinship and interpersonal behavior.
             Many or all of these differences, Isaac felt, analyzing the archaeological data-- primarily broken stones and bones and geological reconstructions of ancient landscapes-- had been established at some point between 2.5 and 1.5 million years BP. Moreover, rather than being incidental, they were part of "a novel adaptive strategy" which led to modern Homo sapiens.
             Earlier researchers had attempted to establish sequences ...