The diffusion of sensational and incomplete analyses, as well as the misinterpretation of data,has led to a series of paleoanthropological paradigms which are, for the most part, purelyspeculative. These practices result from a lack of knowledge of the basic rules of classification,resulting in phylogenetic paleoanthropological discourses that are usually decoupled from therules of systematics. Since the 1960s paleoanthropological research has focused on thenomenclature and taxonomy of the Hominidae, reporting on the work of Dobzhansky andMayr. Today, the paleoanthropological discourse incorporates phylogenetic ideas butpaleoanthropologists neither use the tools nor the methods of phylogeny, or the rules ofsystematics. This issue was described by Bonde (1977) at a time when the cladist school wasbeginning to influence some paleoanthropologists. In subsequent years, discussions on thevalue and polarity of observed characteristics arose, replacing earlier debates based on overallsimilarity. Authors proposed species lists based on the presence of autapomorphic characters,and finally, cladograms were produced. However, after two decades, discussions on theconstitution of OTU (Operational Taxonomic Unit), the definition of characteristics, variability,and over-representation or redundancy of certain characteristics led to the rejection ofcladistics in paleoanthropology. Despite the fact that Barriel (1994) and Tassy (1996)responded to these objections in the 1990s, their points were ignored or misunderstood bypaleoanthropologists and, in the 2000s, cladistics was almost completely abandoned in favorof a return to classical evolutionary systematics or the new craze for phenetics; twoquantitative approaches. This paper investigates Niels Bonde's long-standing question andconcludes that this question is still relevant today: "Is it really impossible to transmit such asimple and logical method (phylogenetic systematics) to anthropologists or do they not careabout it? (Bonde 2012).