When Jane Goodall observed chimpanzees making tools, it became clear that here was yet another example of the continuum between humans and non-human primates. Use and manufacture of tools was not something that distinguished humans from their close relatives, & chimps could be said to have a form of culture. Now here’s a paper that […]
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x-rays & age
In the LA Times there’s a story about using X-rays of bones to estimate people’s age. The reporter’s talking about the potential for this technique to obtain fairly accurate ages for those tiny, brilliant, and possibly under-age Chinese gymnasts from the 2008 Olympics. But the underlying anatomical and developmental data have been applied to some equally problematic, but […]
Continue readingbrain food
Your brain is an energy-hungry organ – even when you’re resting, it can use up to 25% of available energy (chimp brains use about 8%: Gibbons, 2007). In other words, the running costs of a large brain are quite high. And yet humans, with their large brains, take in about the same number of calories […]
Continue readingmtDNA & neandertal/sapiens relationships
When I was at high school, mumblety-mumble years ago, the accepted wisdom was that modern humans and Neandertals were sub-species in the same genus: Homo sapiens sapiens and H. sapiens neandertalensis. That changed, to the view that they were probably separate species, with analyses of new fossil finds. More recently, molecular biology techniques have enabled researchers to compare sapiens & […]
Continue readingtooth wear & diet in paranthropus
There's been quite a lot of conjecture, over the years, about what our early ancestors ate. Much of the evidence has been indirect: size of teeth, size of chewing muscles (which can be estimated from measurements of the places where muscles attach to the skull), ridges & crests on the skull, & so on. Teeth […]
Continue readingneandertals in siberia
We know from fossil evidence that Neanderthals evolved in Europe around 400,000 years ago, and later (~150,000 years ago) spread into western Asia, before disappearing from all areas in their range about 30,000 years ago. However, it can sometimes be quite hard to be certain whether or not a fossil is from a Neanderthal, which […]
Continue reading“lucy’s child” – an answer to a question
Last month I asked the following question: In 2006 scientists announced the discovery of a new hominin fossil: a juvenile Australopithecus afarensis. The media quickly dubbed it "Lucy's child" (well, it was a catchy name, even though the underlying implied relationship had no evidence to support it!). So, tell me, how could scientists be sure that this individual […]
Continue readingorrorin tugenensis & the origins of bipedalism
Ever since its fossil remains were discovered, scientists have wondered about the place of Orrorin tugenensis and its place in our family tree. Was it bipedal? And where were its closest relatives? One controversial suggestion was that Orrorin was directly ancestral to our own genus – leaving the australopiths completely out in the cold.
Continue readingsome historical reading: darwin on human ‘races’
The other day one of my students came by my office to ask about his essay. He’d found a book that suggested that the human species was split into 3 races (black, white, & oriental, in case you’re wondering), & that these races differed in things like fecundity and birth rate. Should he include this […]
Continue readinguse of colour by early sapiens
This one’s been sitting in my ‘good blogging material’ folder for a while now: time to have a look at it, I think.
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