This is also the point where the author lost me. But it was because of the dismissal of the molecular evidence. That molecular evidence is very compelling and has vastly improved our knowledge of early homo. Disagreeing with what the molecular evidence means would be valid, but dismissal is a sign of ignorance.

It is even more surprising that people dismiss genetics in a age when national borders are closed based on such analyses of COVID genomes. The nextstrain resource is a great way to get an intuitive grasp of what genetics gives us. https://nextstrain.org/ncov/gisaid/global