Tim will no doubt remember that is exactly what I claimed in the series of essays he put up for me. The inheritance element may be a little stronger than the author suggests though. Technology, even today, is often passed directly from father to son.

“For example the discovery of Acheulean technologies appearing in India where no contemporary human fossils have been found makes it unclear whether this represents a colonisation event, or if instead there was an independent and localised innovation on the part of the unidentified individuals residing there in the Early Pleistocene”.

Almost certainly a colonisation event although probably involving some level of admixture with any previous inhabitants. Independent innovation is less likely than most seem to believe. It’s usually postulated where the evidence doesn’t fit the current ‘fashionable assumption’.